Fear is whats on sale, and sadly humans are more motivated by fear than opportunity. For all the end-of-the-world clamor around this year’s elections, you’d never guess that the economy is growing at 3.5 percent, unemployment isbelow 6 percent and gas prices are way, way down. Even Halloween candy was cheap this year. But good news, schmood news. This year, we’ve decided to be miserable and afraid. Once all the votes are cast and counted, it will be interesting to see if telling voters to be afraid sent more of them to the polls or kept them home, hiding under the covers. My guess is the latter: Fear, like guilt, is an emotion that creates more upset than action. The feeling of being afraid doesn’t usually lead to rational efforts to address the things you’re afraid of. At least, that’s what Washington has banked on this year. For all the fearmongering ads, for example, Congress has done nothing to improve the nation’s response to Ebola, other than a House oversight committee hearing where Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) went on and on for the TV cameras about something he called “Eboli” that he said was from Guyana. For all the politicking on the threat posed by the Islamic State, Congress decided to neither debate nor vote on the U.S. military fight against the group in Iraq or Syria. As the president announced expanded military deployments in the region, Congress canceled its remaining workdays in October and November, until after the election. Congress thinks it’s more advantageous to run ads about how scary the Islamic State is than to face the real threat of actually taking a vote on what to do about that threat. Rachael Maddow from the Washington Post
Posted on: Wed, 05 Nov 2014 11:47:46 +0000
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