October 29 2008

The first real post. My First post is on Shaping America

America works in a very different way to many other countries. For example, America is the only current Country to have states, and the richness of the population. America is often regarded as the richest of countries, and certainly often spoken about. It’s politics make sense, and a great deal of the population of Earth waste away a great deal of time predicting how the election every 4 years will turn out. The U.S president has a great deal of power, and this is what he can use to shape America.

While listening to the daily show with Jon Stewart, someone was interviewing the Americans on what they thought would happen if the candidate not in their favor won, and listening to the responses, I realized that a great deal of the population, on both sides, were very similar in their response. Some examples[1]:

Interviewer: What do you think would happen if the other side wins?

Palin supporter: Obama will go into the White House, terrorists will get into our country and then all is lost.

Obama supporter: McCain will make more enemies in the wars until eventually we are invaded.

Obama supporter: I have a 10-year old daughter, and she has grown up in war, I just want her to have 4 years of peace.

Palin supporter: Obama will be too easy on the terrorists, and we’ll end up dead.

As you can see, all supporters have, more or less, the same end result of the other side winning. As it always has been. What brings this ominous attitude about defeat? America has never had a full scale invasion, and yet people are always worrying. This, is how America has been shaped. America has been shaped into a world of fear.

America has over 300 million people, imagine if 1/100 dislike the President and his way of rule. Slowly rebellion begins. If only 1 in 10,000 people rebel, then the Government has 30,000 rebels all over the country. So how can they rule a country so large without too strict a system? The current method, tried an tested, is fear.

Borrowing an old Star wars saying: Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate. If the leaders of America have enough power to get people to fear something, anything, then they slowly grow angry at whatever it is, then slowly get to hate it.

With people hating something other than the Government, the Government have nothing to fear. If the thing America is afraid of is a Country or group, such as the Taliban, then the Government can get away with a small investigation or raid, see how the people react, check if all is good, move a small group in, check the reaction, and that is how the Iraq situation was created.

[1] Not exact speech