Fear Ye, Fear Ye

Digby and Maha coincidentally delve further into something I noted earlier in the week re: the GOP game of Fear Factor.

Hullabaloo sees the irony:

...for 40 years --- and certainly for the last 25 since Reagan became president --- we have had to listen to endless blathering about how the Republicans want to "get the government out of your lives." "If someone says 'we're the government and we're here to help you' you should run." Rugged individualist Republicans, taking care of their own, not looking to the state to solve their problems like the betwetting girly men and manly girls on the left.

During the 90's the atmosphere was redolent with militia fevered, anti-government rhetoric that echoed throughout the right wing message infrastructure...

9/11 changed everything. Suddenly the he-men of WalMart and the NRA leaped into Big Brother's arms and shrieked "save me, save me! Do what ever you have to do, they're trying to kill us all!" They now look to Daddy Government not to discipline the children, but to check under the bed for them every night, reassure them that the boogeyman won't hurt them and then read them a nice bedtime story about spreading freedom and democracy. It turns out that underneath all this swaggering bravado, the Republicans aren't the Daddy party --- they're the baby party.

Mahablog:

All over the Right Blogosphere...righties argue that Bush must be allowed unprecedented presidential powers because we are fighting terrorists. And terrorists are scare. They killed people on 9/11. They might kill more people like me. I'll gladly trade some civil liberties for safety.

In today's Boston Globe, H.D.S. Greenway writes that fear is distorting our judgement:

I have no doubt that one day the Bush administration's curtailment of civil liberties, especially the torture of prisoners, will be looked back on as a national shame. I never would have thought I would live to see the day when the president of the United States would threaten to veto a bill in Congress to ban torture, or when the vice president would spend his days lobbying Congress in favor of torture. That little shop of horrors, the vice president's office, seems to be the place where fear regularly gains ascendancy over good judgment.

The Bush administration's predilection to torture was clearly a result of mind-clouding fear caused by the greatest terrorist attack in history on Sept. 11th, 2001. The same can be said of the excesses of the Patriot Act, and, too, the decision to use the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens without benefit of warrant as required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

The Bush administration has shamelessly used fear to get its way. Both the president and vice president have tried to picture a withdrawal from Iraq as resulting in an Al Qaeda takeover of Iraq, and an Al Qaeda-led Caliphate stretching across the Muslim world. In reality al Qaeda hasn't the remotest chance of taking over Iraq, not with 80 percent of the population either Kurdish or Shi'ite, and a timely end to American occupation might sooner lead to an Iraqi-Sunni disenchantment with foreign terrorists.

Maha also cites this Lance Mannion quote:

...that's why the Right hates the Left these days. We aren't as afraid as they are.

They hate us for our freedom from fear.

THAT'S why I'M beginning to suspect that Bush's directive re: warrantless searches, was less a program to, oh, I don't know, actually CATCH TERRORISTS, and more the kind of sinister political gamesmanship "his brain" Karl Rove is famous for.

It'll be REAL interesting if we ever find out just what sort of stuff the NSA ended up collecting. It might just explain a few things re: Team Bush's propensity for lying (noted below). They're lying because they have something to hide. Something illegal, unethical--and I don't doubt it also exposes their incompetence...or worse.