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Friday, January 14, 2005

Crisis? What Crisis?

What this guy said.

Basically, the problem is that the Republican Party understands two very critical things that work in its favor in selling scams like the Iraq War and Social Security privatization. The first is that fear-mongering works on the American public. It's titillating, it's sensationalized, and it just might happen to you. Never mind that you have a greater chance of being killed by falling out of bed, holding a winning lottery ticket, at the precise moment a jet airplane and a bolt of lightning hit you, than you do of getting killed by Saddam Hussein's minions.

The second favorable thing works hand-in-hand with the first -- the media obviously thrives on fear-mongering. It's easy, it's repetitive, and it glues butts to seats, so that they can see endless advertisements for SUVs and pharmaceuticals, neither of which they need, or really even want, if they were honest with themselves.

So if your message is entirely based on manufactured fear and crises, the hated liberal media does half the work for you, in marketing your snake oil. It's really a genius plan, if you think about it.

[basso profundo Voice O' Doom]:
Social Security -- could the smoking gun be a mushroom cloud?
Find out by letting someone lie to your face!

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