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Manufactured Outrage, The New Politics

It seems that ever increasingly that manufactured outrage is what fuels the political debate pushed squarely forwarded by the new Tea Party Movement and the ever growing political divide that seems to be seeping into ever level of politics.  This outrage very seldom seems to be based on any actual facts but instead ignore the facts all together and is based solely on propaganda manufactured senses of hysteria and threat.  This could be seen all threw the health care debate with the "not shovel read", "death panel" for grandma protest sign welding people, to the death threat, sending, racial slur, homophobic epitaphs shouting protester after the passage of the historic reform, but it can also quite often be seen on a local level.  Although usually more subdued even if not that much more rational when it comes to dealing with the real facts of issues.

A great example would be the local we had county council member who is on the planing commission introduce zoning proposal that would create a 660 foot "construction zone" around fuel pipelines that would require property owners to simply contact the pipeline ope rater to let them know they where going to be doing work as part of the permitting process.  It would not prevent them from developing their property in any way just make it so that the pipeline operaters where aware of the work going on and allow them a chance to coordinate with the property owner to help to insures that no damage is done to the pipeline that could cause it to fail down the line.  Something that especially considering it was very old construction damage that only 11 years ago the Olympic pipeline ruptured in whatcom falls park spilling thousands of gallons of gas into the creek, before it ignited killing 3 young boys.  But with out even reading the facts that they would not be limited on what they could and could not do, these people feed by the Anti government propaganda machine came crawling out of the wood work saying that the county was trying to take their land away from them.

It is this sort of willful ignorance that is becoming an increasing danger to the political discourse in this country, because it makes it increasingly hard if not possible at times to have an intelligent and respectful conversation/debate with some one that dose not share the same view as you.  It is practically impossible to have an respectful intelligent conversation that dose not wind up braking down when one side refuses to use any facts no matter how many sources are put in front of them, but instead release simply on feelings, on painting everything with an emotional brush.  As they are using the emotions as a security blanket, it feels safer to be afraid of the big bad government or insert other straw man here based on throwing out talking points and tossing aside all the pesky facts, because then you have a given entity to be afraid of instead of just the unknown. 

Then their is the other contingent among them the ones that know they are on the waining cycle of power and can see the writing on the wall, they can see that their hard line core social and political values (and in many cases economic) are no longer the ones that hold sway with a large number of the voters, nor with the ever increasing population of young voters, and this scares them.  These scared people then start to very loudly "protest" against the changes that they see as inevitable, in the hopes that if they do it loud enough that they can get people to think that they have more power then the acutely do, and thus hold on to what little power they have left for just a little bit longer. They are the most dangerous because if they can get those that are willing to be willfully ignorant (and willing to let their security blanket of fear direct them) then they have a chance of taking back real power and doing real harm, as these are the ones that are the acting out in violence these are the ones that actually wish to really take and remove the rights and to put back in their place those who they feel threatened by, these are the ones that we have to be worried about. 

From my prospective these increasingly are the ones that are taking over the Tea Party movement, it is a movement that in my opinion is increasingly more threatening as its penitent for violence, and it's radicalism seems to continue to grow the more time passes.  Yet the more radical it grows the more fallows it seems to attract, in my opinion this is the party that needs to have a close eye keeps on it, and it is the party that unless things especially economically in this country and not Wall Street, economically Main Street then they will continue to become more of a threat as more people willing to just go along with the security blanket of fear as they continue to look around and see things in the country going poorly  will continue to flock to them as they provide a target for that fear and an outlet for their frustration at the situations they find them selves in.
It is with this in mind that we all have to make very conscious efforts to do our parts to insure that the political discourse in this country remains grounded in facts, and that the extremists and violence are not considered acceptable.  Nor is rhetoric that calls for or threatens to incite violence against others of an differing viewpoint as it is that which if allowed to continue to fester will rip this nation apart and I strongly feel bring it to its collective knees.  I do hope for the sake of the country that reason can once again be brought back into the political process, and that the violence and violent speech is once again relegated to the radical fringes where it once sate chastised by both sides of the political coin.

As always thank you for reading and comments are always welcome. :-)

Comments

  1. good article...one thing I would at is...at the federal level at least...it seems there are those that wish to keep us arguing with each other in order to preserve their place of priviledge within society. as long as we can blame the liberals/conservatives/gay/religious then we don't see the massive tax shelters for the wealthy...or utter lack of legislative progress on any front. kind of like a big shell game.

    keep a cool head...and keep writing :)

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  2. I think the whole thing is a magic act. While we are busy looking the wrong way, distracted by the fighting and name calling and senseless posturing, things are happening that we aren't aware of because we are so bogged down with minutia, and bickering....

    I'm frankly sick of both parties! Neither of them actually listen to what we want, what we need. Nor do they listen to good ideas just because they didn't come up with them. They need to start realizing that they have those jobs because we voted them in there. And we need to start voting them out! You make a promise that's not far fetched, and don't deliver, they are out of a job.

    We have been letting them run us instead of the other way around. Unless we start voting for people who are not in the big two they wont change. Will be be throwing away our votes? Well, in a way, I guess so, but I'm sick of choosing the lesser of two evils.

    Thanks for making me think!!

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