Summary: Our news media overflows each day with a new crop of fear-mongering It should disturb us that both Left and Right seek to persuade us through fear. To manipulate us. These are skilled political engineers. They know us better than we know ourselves, and they obviously see us as fearful sheep. It’s our choice: When we wish to become men and women, like our ancestors, we will do so. Until then, they’ll spin stories of imminent doom from which only unquestioning obedience can save us.
“If God didn’t want them sheared, he would not have made them sheep.”
— Calvera, bandit leader in the movie “The Magnificent Seven” (1960)
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(1) Jon Stewart looks at the Nightmare on Graham Street
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(2) “New Fox News paranoia: ISIS at the border!“, Salon, 16 September 2014 — “Fox has a new way to scare its old white audience: Not just drug mules but terrorists are coming up from Mexico”
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(3) “Warmest August on Record, Global Warming Continues“, Greg Laden, Science Blogs, 15 September 2014 — Gotta love his mad graphic!
“According to data just updated by NASA, last August was the warmest August for the entire instrumental data record, which begins in 1881. This has been something of a mixed year but overall warm.”
Excellent fear-mongering. Note the absence of numbers in his post.For good reason, as the numbers debunk the burning world image.
- He cites the NASA’s GISS dataset, but doesn’t mention August was only 0.07°C over 2013, and only 0.01°C over previous record set in 2011.
- By the RSS satellite data, the lower troposphere temperature anomaly in August was only +0.19 deg C above the 30 year average.
- By the UAH satellite data, the lower troposphere temperature anomaly in August was only +0.20 deg C above the 30 year average.
- The data for the HADCRUT4 and NCDC datasets are not yet out.
Citing the warming since 1881 is misleading. The core climate consensus as expressed by the IPCC — validated by many surveys of scientists — is that it is “extremely likely” that we have caused more than half of the warming since 1950. The warming of the previous 100+ years was largely from natural causes (CO2 levels skyrocketed after WW2). The total warming since 1950 is roughly 1°C — not setting the world on fire.
The headline “global warming continues” is the activists’ war cry, their long effort to conceal the pause in surface atmosphere warming since roughly 2000. Meanwhile climate science moves on, with a flood of papers discussing the causes of the pause and estimating when it will end.
Conclusion
Fear is a natural emotion. Letting it rule us is a choice. Acting ike sheep is a choice. We can do better. Then those who seek to influence us will adapt, using logic and data. And America will become stronger.
The Litany Against Fear
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone pst
……I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain
From Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965).
For More Information
(a) Are we cowards?
- Are Americans easily panicked cowards? I think not, but many experts disagree., 24 April 2009
- Today’s fear-mongering (they think we’re cowards, but I’m sure they’re wrong), 4 May 2010
- Why are we so fearful? Have we become cowards?, 16 September 2014
(b) See all posts about us, Americans as sheep. Here are some examples:
- The American spirit speaks: “Baa, Baa, Baa”, 5 August 2008
- We’re Americans, hear us yell: “baa, baa, baa”, 6 August 2008
- This crisis will prove that Americans are not sheep (unless we are), 8 January 2008
- About security theater, a daily demonstration that Americans are sheep, 25 January 2009
- Attention fellow sheep: let’s open our eyes and see the walls of our pen, 16 October 2009
- Hear the cattle bellowing in the chutes. Will they revolt?, 8 September 2011 — Different metaphor; same message
- Our leaders explain that we’re sheep. Our role: to obey. Rebel sheep will be imprisoned or destroyed., 7 March 2012
- Captain America: the Winter Soldier – high-quality indoctrination for sheep, 14 April 2014
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