Saturday, October 06, 2007

Bush, fear mongerer?

Occasionally when I’m bored, I like to look in on the ultra liberal Huffpo blog to see what new inane drivel is being offered there in an attempt at serious journalism.
I was not disappointed when cruising down to the third post I found what looks like a psychoanalytic analysis of President George Bush (sort of) by a Dr. Martha Stout. The good doctor is a clinical psychologist, author and instructor with impeccable credentials from Harvard Medical School, Mass General and other prestigious institutions.
After listing what appears to be her own historically researched 10 typical behaviors of leaders that use Paranoia to keep their minions under their control, she comes to the conclusion that Bush fits each of the ten descriptions and therefore is a “fear mongerer”. Furthermore, she hopes that in 2008, the country votes in someone who is not a fear mongerer. To paraphrase, someone who will not “wage emotional war against us” and “make our worse fears his best friends”.
I wonder if our good doctor ever heard the expression…. Is it still Paranoia if it’s real?
Dr. Stout’s dabbling in political history (an area of study somewhat removed from her field of expertise) makes it easier to understand why from the early days of the 1930’s until the Nazis invaded Poland in the fall of 1939, there was no successful “fear mongerer” who may have derailed Hitler’s rise to power. Countless of millions of innocent lives might have been saved. Were there academic elites with impeccable credentials admonishing the great unwashed masses to be weary of their leaders lest they “wage emotional war against their people”?
That was then. We should have learned a hard lesson from WWII but this lesson seems to have been forgotten far too fast.
Currently, there is a plethora of warning signs and even direct blustering statements from tyrants who want to wipe entire nations of the map. Islamic extremist terrorists have attacked and murdered over 3000 of our neighbors. Is history repeating itself ..... again?
I think the good doctor had better dispense a better prescription and take off the rose-colored glasses

9 comments:

Pete said...

Certainly Winston Churchill was considered a fear (and even war) mongerer throughout the 1930s.

He was seen as out of step with the widely held feeling that Herr Hitler should be appeased.

However distinguishing between the foresight of good leader and the fear mongering of an average leader is a tough one.

Pete

beakerkin said...

Muslim terrorism is a worldwide problem. The far left rationalizes
this abhorent behavior.

Obviously the rioting in Malmo is the fault of the Swedes yada yada yada.

roman said...

pete,

The Huffpo post exemplifies how the opposition party uses every means open to them to cast the current administration in a bad light. This insinuation of "fear mongering" on the part of Bush is just one more tactic in the battle for the hearts and minds of voters.
It is, at the very least, somewhat disingenious because all the signs of Jihadist terror have been on full display for at least the last 20 years. The opposition has every right to attack the administration's handling of the GWOT but they should not try to state that it does not exist or is overblown for political reasons. Bush is a lame duck president.... the motive just is not there. This tactic is synonymous to "beating a dead horse" and I believe the average voter will see this as a blatent attempt at political mudslinging with nothing that will stick. Unfortunately, it is just one more reason for the international press to fan the flames of anti-americanism worldwide.

roman said...

beak,

The far left rationalizes
this abhorent behavior.


This is what is at stake if one of the far-left pandering Democrats (even one RHINO) gets in. The scary thing is that some of them actually believe that the 9/11 attack was somehow our own fault. No wonder my blood boils every time I hear one of these "traitors to conscience" (and country) speak.

Frank Partisan said...

I wonder what Huff will be like, after the Dems, get the presidency, and nothing changes?

roman said...

ren,

Since they cannot get any more partisan than they already are, I hope that the focus of their coverage will start to come closer to the center and their reportage on political mischief (real or imagined)will be from both sides of the aisle. Wishfull thinking, I know.
They won't have Bush to "kick around" anymore.

Dr Kuha said...

The problem, Roman, is that Bush is not helping Americans become stronger and secure, he's constantly picking at a wound and not letting it heal. He digs and he digs and he digs and he makes people forget how important it is move on.

Bush IS a fear-mongerer. That is true. Whether you believe that this paranoia is actually helpful to a traumatized populace is, I guess, your own deal, but I for one, would like to see America start thinking for itself than letting this monster continue on his insane oil-crusade.

roman said...

doc,

Lets hope that no matter who gets into the oval office next, he/she will keep in mind that voters (like us) are their main constituancy and not just special interest groups and large corporations with deep pockets. This basic recognition alone will be a profound positive change over the last 150+ years in US politics.
As far as the "fear mongerer" moniker goes, I can't place Bush in the same league as some tyrants and dictators from the past who employed this tactic to stay in power. The moniker, for me, is a bit of a reach and smacks too much of political partisanship.
Bush is guilty of dropping the ball on spending (no vetoes on spending bills), mishandling the war in Iraq and falling asleep on the border issue but not of "fear mongering". We were brutally attacked and over 3000 of our neighbors were killed. Bush's national security response has been, for the most part, appropriate and proportional to safeguard the country from the next attack. That's his job. To use the customized and somewhat self-serving criteria employed by the Huffpo shrink, we would have to call every president who was in office during any conflict that was defending our nation a war mongerer. Presidents like Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, Eisenhower would be lumped in with the likes of Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini.
I know what you're saying about constantly picking at a wound. To me and many others, this wound is just a first of many to bring down the concept of the liberal democracy. The 9/11 attackers, a bunch of nihilistic religious fanatics who place only value upon life after death, have spelled this out and I believe them.
I wish that I could bring myself to accept that this wound, if left alone, will heal and we can all live happily ever after but with the prospect of a nuclear weapon in their hands, the next wound may be fatal.

Dr Kuha said...

It's not really about leaving the wound alone. It's about taking proactive steps to acknowledge it and accept that it happened. Invading Afghanistan was perfectly justified.

But Bush used the residual fear and anger from 9/11 to propel us into a doomed occupation of Iraq. An occupation that really has become a zero sum gain--in that we've spent way more money on the war in Iraq than we ever could have earned from oil--and it only served to make his friends a lot richer. Bush used fear to make his friends rich and America poorer.

We have become horribly unstable as a nation because of these thoughtless, ill-conceived uses of psychological manipulation of the American people.

I just don't understand how you can defend Bush on this fear-mongering thing because he clearly uses fear as a tool to manipulate people. He's not talking about America being strong in the face of adversity, he's using the completely arbitrary terror alert scale to keep people on edge. Which is really clever on his part because as soon as people stop being able to be scared, they get apathetic and let him get away with whatever he wants.

Even if he isn't consciously being a fear-mongerer, it basically amounts to the same thing, no matter how unintentional.