leighredf

Party politics in the U.S. has become infected with fear and demonization. Each party accuses the other of doing it, when in fact they both do it.

When we allow our votes to be swayed by a politician's use of fear or demonization, we encourage more of the same.

No wonder our country is so divided.

Fear and demonization are poor substitutes for telling us why or why not a certain program should be approved.

Laws that stem from fear are usually poorly written and ineffective.

This will continue until we police our own -- those on our side who use those strategies.

I'll give examples in the next post but not here - PN won't read a long post.

highway80west

It does not surprise you any that each party accuses the other of being infected with fear and demonization, does it, Leigh? They look so silly that way.

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leighredf

Anyone who was against the Iraq War was labelled as being unpatriotic or not supporting the troops. There are those who were both, but they were a minority. There were many people (my retired USMC father-in-law, Hugh Hefner) who were adamantly against the war but who clearly support the troops.

Anyone against same sex marriage is a bigot while same sex marriage proponents are perverts who are trying to indoctrinate. Again, this is true for some people, but not most.

We should be intolerant of these types of arguments:

If you are against President Obama, you are a racist. He's the President. Did anyone think that everyone would just go along with everything he said?

If you were against President Bush, you are unpatriotic. No one has a franchise on patriotism, and some of the biggest pro-war people aren't very patriotic.

Bush/Obama is Hitler. They aren't. You'll get tuned out.

Obamacare will turn the U.S. into a socialist nation. Explain why you think that the new plan has too much government involvement and why that is bad. When you say "it's socialism", you misuse the term and, in the manner you use "socialism", the current healthcare system would already have "socialist" elements (medicare, medicaid, government healthcare plans including state and local).

Any argument presented in terms of a hysterical panic or kneejerk reaction. Remember when gas prices shot way up and the politicians immediately went nuts, wanting investigations, new laws, etc. Before they could do anything, prices went back down. Global warming was presented in a "panic" type mode -- now it has settled back down. This makes us look like cowards to other nations.
When we had the one recent action that did require a quick response (9/11), we succumbed to our fears by going overboard with new security/surveillance laws.

We should be skeptical of claims that someone is racist or a hater. And, we shouldn't be so quick to excoriate people who cross the line by saying the wrong thing. It is too big a weapon to use and most of us have said things during our lives that would get us in the same boat if we said them as politicians. The people who are the quickest to claim racism or hate are usually the ones who engage in the same conduct they complain about (Jesse Jackson's "hymietown" comes to mind).

leighredf

It may look silly to some, but apparently fear and demonization works. People (not only politicians) know that they can use people's fear of being labelled a "racist" or "hater" to their great advantage. Try to discuss potential problems with the post 9/11 security/surveillance laws, you get labelled a traitor or unpatriotic.

They don't even hide the use of this strategy (well, the Republicans did but they got busted when someone left the memo). President Obama said that he was going after the insurance companies. Insurance companies are so demonized (and somewhat rightfully so) that no Republican makes any attempt to point out how a large portion of our current healthcare system does not involve insurance.

It works because everyone wants the one-line fix. "People die" and "we'll be Cuba" says it all for a lot of people.

We whine and moan about all the political bickering, but we bring a lot of this on ourselves. When you say "you kill people when you support the current system" or "you are a socialist for supporting the changes", why would you think the other side would be nice?

The only organization big enough to stop it would be the media. If the media would consistently call out every politician engaging in those tactics, they would stop. They won't. They enable it. They love it. Fear sells.