Tag: fear mongering

Trump’s midterm campaign of fear and lies

Will fear be the basis for your choices in the November election?

It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump is using fear as his motivating tactic to bring his supporters to the polls on November 6.  As he descended his elevator at Trump Tower he warned us that the bad people of Latin America were coming to the United States.

The jacket cover of Bob Woodward’s book, Fear, has this quote from Mr. Trump, “Real power is-I don’t even want to use the word-fear.”  The words of Candidate Donald Trump on March 31, 2016 in an interview while running for president of the United States.

Trump is now telling all who will listen that mobs of illegal immigrants are coming to rape your wives and daughters, create gang violence, and kill you.

At a Texas rally supporting Ted Cruz Trump said, “The Democrats have launched an assault on the sovereignty of our country, the security of our nation and the safety of every American,” He has even said that the Democrats organized the migrant caravan from Central America. . He has claimed without offering any evidence that the caravan includes criminals and “unknown Middle Easterners.”

Trump argues that Democrats want to create a socialist system of “gridlock, poverty and chaos” like Venezuela.

Trump has also warned of voter fraud, which doesn’t exist at significant levels, and claims the Democratic Party has been taken over by proponents of “unhinged” mob rule — even though his rallies are the ones where supporters yell for his political opponents to be locked up, and he praised a lawmaker for assaulting a reporter.

He said most Democrats opposed his opioid initiative, even though it passed 98-1 in the Senate and 393-8 in the House.

On Sunday Trump promised a new tax cut after the midterm election.  Bloomberg reports, “Even if policy makers hastily pulled something together at the White House’s insistence, lawmakers are out until after the election. After that, in the lame-duck session, it would be tough to take up a bill if Democrats are poised to take over the House in January. The Senate has already shown reluctance to consider the House legislation, which would make permanent individual income tax cuts set to expire at the end of 2025.”

On Monday, in an exchange with reporters, he could not support his earlier claim that there were riots in California over so-called sanctuary cities.

As most people are affected by fear many Americans will vote to support the fear monger.

Fear Mongers are Prevailing

I just posted a defense for minorities in the United States on December 1 and now two Muslims, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik have killed 14 people and wounded another 21 people. We don’t know their specific motive but it’s obvious that hate was part of their motivation to kill.

We have to control ourselves in not saying that all Muslims are killers. If it had been two Jews or two Mexicans we might have said it’s those minorities. “We can’t trust them” or words to that effect.

It was Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were the perpetrators of the bombing of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City. Two White men who were Christian. We do not believe that all Christians are inherently bad. So why should we believe all Muslims are bad?

Bad people everywhere does not justifying painting a brush that all Muslims are bad. That’s hard to do when there have been too many attacks in the past few weeks and many more during the past year.

I understand taking precautions in admitting Muslims into the United States. Donald Trump’s idea of denying Muslims into the United States plays into the jihadist call for a war on the West. Trump is playing on fear. That fear is driving many to buy weapons that won’t stop the mass killing.

I have no solutions. We must hope that the grown-ups speak out loudly against the fear mongers who seem to believe that a war will solve this challenge.

Exaggeration of the Week

Today’s Los Angeles Times front page headline is “Latest Ebola case raises U.S. anxiety.”  That makes a total of two cases.  Hardly an epidemic.  The news media loves to beat a story to death.  CNN is especially good at this kind of “reporting.”  They offered 24 hour a day coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.  That reporting continued until ratings dropped off.  Aren’t we all to blame?

As expressed in The Weekly Sift

From googling around and talking with my wife (who specializes in risk management), I’ve concluded that risk theorists do a bad job coming up with catchy names for common fallacies. Let me suggest that the principle in the opening quote be called “the Ebola fallacy”. (If you already know a name for this, please leave a comment.)
Wednesday was the first time a person died of Ebola in the United States. Thomas Duncan (who flew here from Liberia) was also the first person diagnosed with Ebola in the United States. (The handful of previous cases were Americans who contracted the disease in Africa, were diagnosed there, and returned to the U.S. for treatment.) Sunday, we got the first report of someone catching Ebola in this country: one of the people who treated Duncan at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas.

This is about what you’d expect from a hard-to-catch disease like Ebola. As CDC Director Tom Frieden explained: “Ebola has been in existence for decades—and has predominantly infected remote areas lacking basic health infrastructure.”

And yet, from the public reaction you’d think Ebola was the biggest health problem in the country. It’s all over the news. Lakeland Industries, which makes hazmat suits, has seen its stock soar 160% this month. Republican political candidates are citing the Ebola threat to support clamping down on the Mexican border. (So far there have been no Ebola cases in Central America. But when Republicans think about disease-carriers, Hispanics leap to mind.) And three Democrats joined 24 Republican members of Congress in calling for banning travelers from western Africa, and possibly quarantining Americans for three weeks after they return from western Africa .
And that’s just the reaction from people who are trying to look respectable. The conspiracy theorists are going completely crazy. “The CDC is working with Border Patrol authorities and the Department of Homeland Security to disappear potential Ebola victims attempting to cross the border into the United States.”

Meanwhile, about 700 Americans die in traffic accidents each week.
Want to be safer and live longer? Use seat belts. Don’t smoke. Don’t drink and drive. Eat better. Get the sleep you need. Exercise regularly. And if you need any additional motivation not to touch the bodily fluids of people who are visibly ill, maybe then you should think about Ebola. But stop obsessing about distant-but-horrible threats that have almost no chance of affecting you.