The Watering Hole; Friday the Thirteenth; June, 2014; Fear

Without fear there’s no need for hate
Without hate there’s no need for guns
Without guns there’s no need for war
Without war there’s no need for fear
Without fear, what is life??

FEAR . . .

“So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” —Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his first Inaugural Address; March 4th, 1933.

Poor old FDR. He obviously never had to ponder what the potential fate of the United States might become if some future wayward foreign born Muslim Communist “Negro” second-term POTUS were to exchange, without consent of Congress, five Taliban 12-year POWs for one Taliban-held US Army 5-year POW. I mean, imagine the horror: there are now five — count ’em, FIVE!! — more dudes out there that kinda don’t like Amurka, and you can bet your last buck they’ll ATTACK US!! . . . and prolly kill millions in the process, maybe even ME! We’re doomed, DOOMED I say!! And all because of a foreign born Muslim Communist “Negro” second-term POTUS (that none of us TRUE PATRIOTS ever even voted for!!). Life is so unfair, so filled with FEAR!!!

And speaking of Fear . . .

“We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. There was, above all, fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: ‘Lift up your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once the devils will be destroyed, your miseries will be destroyed.’ It was the old, old story of the sacrificial lamb.” –Ernst Janning (Burt Lancaster) in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)

Sounds a lot like those rants that are far too common as verbal blasts from today’s fear-possessed Republican Party. In point of fact, I noticed just yesterday that Lindsay Graham apparently wet his choners during a hearing in which the administration detailed the scary scary parts of the current Iraq situation. After he changed his shorts, he demanded that the entire of the Obama Administration’s national security team be fired on the spot, all because Iraqi Sunnis were kicking Iraqi Shiite butts, and noting his fear that we here in Amurka are definitely next in line to get whumped by . . . well, by the bad guys over there; you know, those bearded Jihadist dudes who don’t like us. Over here.

It is, indeed, common knowledge amongst “our” fear-possessed Wingnuts that most of today’s really bad guys sport bushy beards — just like the five dudes Obama released from Gitmo in order to secure the release of the American POW held by the Taliban and whose father also has a beard and is, according to Fox News, therefore probably a Muslim Jihadist, making SIX bad guys that are gonna kill us ALL! And lest we forget, of course, there’s also President Obama whose middle name is Hussein, and . . . Uh oh. Scary scary.

So . . . maybe it’s a cosmic rule, one that states FEAR always rules, at least amongst those who are . . . ummm . . . who are not all that well equipped in their gray-mattered penthouse? If that’s really the case, then might it maybe be a worthy goal to somehow reach out to ‘the fearful,’ to enlighten them? I suppose we could reconsider FDR’s 1933 recommendations (spoken 81 years ago!) wherein he emphatically stated that “. . . our distress comes from no failure of substance . . .”

And that

We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men. [ . . . ]

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

Recognition of the falsity of material wealth as the standard of success goes hand in hand with the abandonment of the false belief that public office and high political position are to be valued only by the standards of pride of place and personal profit; and there must be an end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live.

Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

“Action, and action now” ?? Well, forget that. Not with THIS Congress, staffed as it clearly is with a majority of pejorative and fear-filled IDIOTS!

I do propose that there may be a solution, however. All those who are afraid of their own shadow, get a clue and do THIS next time you go out — to eat, to go to the store, to get scared, whatever.

There. Consummate fearlessness fear wrapped in pretend fearlessness? Whatever. Maybe the final solution is embedded in the concept that when you’re afraid of your own shadow, simply carry a big gun and next time you see your shadow, shoot the damn thing. Rata-tata-tata-tata-tata-tata-tat . . . Yeah, that should work.

Final question: Why are so many so filled with FEAR about what amounts to nothing at all? Wherefrom derives their embedded cowardice? And why the hell are the rest of us required to pay them any attention at all?

Beats me. And while there are huge numbers of “them” in these here parts that I could ask about it, I’ve decided not to. And no, not because of fear, but because I don’t really care to waste the time listening to their nonsensical and fearmongering rants yet one more time.

I’d far more rather converse with brainy critters:

OPEN THREAD