Wild Card Wednesdays: There is Room for Alarm But Should Be No Room for Alarmism
As will become clear from postings to follow on my pages, I am greatly disappointed by and even alarmed by the policies and conduct of the Obama administration when it comes to the State of Israel. I have come to a very slow boil, but now I am alarmed by and very much critical of what I perceive to be the way the cards are being dealt and played.
However, I am also alarmed by the irresponsible and indeed dangerous level or rhetoric I see every day on the Internet, via Facebook. One site which epitomizes this irresponsiblity is www.nowtheendbegins.com
I call all of you reading this to be aware of the climate of hysteria and maniplation that is raging in America right now, especially when it comes to what is said about Muslims. While in so much that is being reported is legitimatey a cause for alarm, and I AM alarmed by some of what I read, there is all the world of difference between alarm and alarmism. And let me say this: we should ALL be alarmed about alarmism. Alarmism is what leads to riots, pogroms, and lynchings.
Just as there is a difference between emotion and emotionalism, so there is difference between alarm and alarmism. Both emotionalism and alarmism are powerful tools for manipulating people and stampeding them in directions that can in the end be out of control. It is a standard ploy as in Israel when Arafat wanted to stamped Muslims, all he had to do was to assert that the Israelis were in some manner defiling or dismantling the Dome of the Rock and it was a done deal. This website, www.NowTheEndBegins.com is the most frightening alarmist and propagandistic screed I have ever seen coming from those who call themselves Christians.
The site takes every scrap of infomation that might be a cause for concern, and some that are not, and through graphics and rhetoric makes it to be a cause for alarm and emotionalistic alarmism. Anyone who does not see this to be the case has already been stampeded by alarmism, or is just not using their critical thinking skills. The treatment given on the site www.nowtheendbegins.com is manipulative in the extreme. Notice the picture chosen of Obama, notice the sense given of what he says in the headline, which omits the kind of general civic religion tone of his written statement which says, "In the United States, Eid also reminds us of the many achievements and contributions of Muslim Americans to building the very fabric of our nation and strengthening the core of our democracy. *That is why we stand with people of all faiths, here at home and around the world, to protect and advance their rights to prosper, and we welcome their commitment to giving back to their communities.*" All of that is ignored so that this irresponsible and sensationalist site, wth a name which is alarmist in the extreme, can continue stampeding the unwary, the uncaring, or the unspophisticated. This site uses PRECISELY the kinds of manipulative tools used to mobilize mobs against Jews in their Eurpoean experience, and used to mobilize Muslim mobs in various areas of the world.
This site is a disgrace---a case study in propaganda, half truths, and maniplation. And is always the case, anyone like me who says so is labeled a fool or a shill.
Everyone reading this should go out and rent a copy of "To Kill A Mockingbird" and learn a lesson from Atticus Finch, the greatest male hero of cinema, played indelibly by Greory Peck. Finch demonstrates a cool head amidst the Ku Klux Klan hysteria of the South in the 1930's or so. The rhetoric and mentality is a twin of NowTheEndBegins.
I call every one of you reading this blog to become keenly aware of and critical of all attempts at stampeding people through manipulative tactics and alarmism.
Again, I am critical of the Obama administration and its policies and approaches vis-a-vis Israel. I am alarmed about Muslim Radical Fundamentalism and the carnage in its wake. But I am MORE alarmed at the climate of hysteria and brushfires of alarmism that I see all around me.
Such brushfires have often, and will again, break out in the kind of conflagration NONE of us wants to contemplate.
Of the misleading information I read on social media, I find these things appalling. One is people accusing Israel of committing genocide. The other is accusing the USA and our president of funding Hamas. Another is calling the Israelis Nazis.
Alarmism, emotionalism and the instigators of thoughtless action that usually follows are the perpetrators our national condition ... a bipolar nation. By any measure the path to irreconcilable differences has been advanced by President Obama. Your kindness in defense of his rhetoric regarding Islam is noble but disregards political motive. The calculation of political reaction may be manifest in the unpleasant and manipulative motive you criticize. In equal and opposite reactions one must first access the azimuth of source energy to determine the direction of a response to the action in question. And then there are the frictional and hysteresis consequences attendant to the process.
This is complicated enough in a purely physical world but in the American political world where near equal division exists, the complication of motive by the politically powerful is a degree of difficulty that requires mind reading skills that are sometimes claimed but never proven consistent or reliable.
To give President Obama the high ground in this without certainty of motive is perhaps an equal and opposite emotional response to an alarm...... which might lead to the Full Monte of I can pick a winner thinking.
My bias is born of my loss of trust in political leadership where many politicians are excused for a firm belief acquired through bad data, not enough data, misleading data or the act of another leading to a mistake, ultimately seized upon by a viscous and ideology driven equal and opposite opposition.
I have no solutions, lots of disgust and no hope to hear a Disney chorus of Ding Dong the Witch (who cursed us with enduring ideology conflict) is Dead.
Sorry for the hopelessness regarding the indefensible nature of politicians of our day.