Scaring Up Votes
James Goodby and Kenneth Weisbrode wrote in The Financial Times last week that the Bush crew has snuffed the optimism of F.D.R., Ronald Reagan and Bush père: "Fear has been used as a basis for curtailing freedom of expression and for questioning legal rights long taken for granted. It has crept into political discourse and been used to discredit patriotic public servants. Ronald Reagan's favorite image, borrowed from an earlier visionary, of America as `a shining city on a hill' has been unnecessarily dimmed by another image: a nation motivated by fear and ready to lash out at any country it defines as the source of a gathering threat."
Instead of a shining city, we have a dark bunker.
Well, personally, I live in
an actual city (sometimes shining, sometimes dark) which sometimes feels like an all-too-penetrable bunker. It's the folks in suburbs, small towns and rural areas across the country, who can't face the fact that a terrorist is never,
EVER going to explode a truck bomb outside their WalMart or launch a rocket-propelled grenade at their Knights of Columbus Lodge, who think they're in a bunker, because they're out of their minds with paranoia, solipsism, and boredom.
posted by Blicero : 11/22/2003 10:49:00 PM
