Fear

Americans, I'm sad to say, are afraid. They're chicken shits. Because there was an attack on Paris. Over 100 people were killed.

Yet every year, over 10,000 Americans are killed by guns. We don't care. It's not that Americans die, it's HOW they die. Jealous husband -- that's life. Crazy guy -- it happens. Kid playing with dad's gun -- it's a tragedy. Depressed teen -- it was hormones. Black people -- take your pick of reasons that we write off.

The truth is, we're not afraid of killing. It's all around us. We're afraid of whatever the media and some fear-monger tells us to be afraid of. Because if we were objective about it, we'd do something reasonable. But fear isn't reasonable; it's the wrong stimulus to elicit a reasonable response.

Same with our compatriots in the armed services. If they die from an IED -- that's war. If they die from friendly fire -- that's war. If they drink themselves to death at home after PTSD -- that doesn't count.

Americans are afraid of the wrong things.

No, Syrian, Iraqi and other refugees aren't going to storm our borders like is happening now in Europe.

No, they're not going to "infiltrate" us through our southern border either. Not when ISIS or Al Qaeda could just send hundreds of jihadists with European passports to the U.S., without a visa, to wreak havoc.  Jihadists who can buy guns without a background check, and, in many states, openly carry firearms legally.  Why would terrorists take the former route, which takes at least 18 months, and may ferret out a real terrorist?  Why take the time and risk?  It defies reason and logic.

And yet we're afraid of them nevertheless, these refugees.

Americans are pussies. Especially the right-wing ones who say they want to defend America. They're the biggest fraidy cats of them all.  They'd rather upend the Constitution to defend against a lightning strike than take commonsense steps to defend themselves against much more likely causes of death.

But why?

It's the media. The same "lib'rul media" or "mainstream media" or "biased media" that they despise making them so afraid. They all -- we all -- get our information from SOMEWHERE.  So where are they getting information that's telling them that Syrian women and children are a threat to their very lives, to the American way? They didn't think of it themselves, that's for damn sure.

They are just as manipulable by the media as any liberal, as any other person... nay, more so, because they think their ideology gives them special perspicacity. And yet their fear blinds them.

And so I say, CHILL THE F--K OUT.  Stop being such f---ing pussies. If we're the strongest nation in the history of mankind -- and we are -- then that comes with some responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is to serve. And serve we do -- at least some of us. Our men and women of the armed services go where we tell them, train whom we say to, kill whom we say to, and come home if they're lucky. But we civilians also have responsibility to NOT BE SUCH F---ING PUSSIES, and out of our fear, our ignorance and idiocy, send our brothers and sisters into harm's way halfway across the world to fight some bearded loonies in their caves, unless it really means something, unless it really protects us at home, or defends our interests as enumerated in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

The latter responsibility is where we're falling flat. Oh yes, we "honor" our troops with ribbons and FB posts... as we send them into one unsolvable mess, one quagmire after another.  As we ignore them when they return home and try to live in our great American society. Have we no shame? Have we no compassion? Have we no honor, to send these men & women of honor into stupid, dishonorable battles for nothing?

Swallow your Stars & Stripes and choke on them if you use them to justify your fear, to cover up you inadequacy, your latent racism, xenophobia, or religious vision of apocalypse.

Don't use our United States of America for your own stupid, selfish, fearful, short-sighted aims.

Don't buttress your own pathetic shortfalls with the might and resolve of the U.S. Military.

Don't ask our diplomats to say bullshit they don't believe.

Don't deceive yourselves, your family and your neighbors that you're in this fight when you're really not. You know nothing of war, or risk, or death or bloodshed or loss.

Just STOP. Just f---ing quit it. Just STOP.

Fuck Trump. Fuck Carson. Fuck Cruz. And yes, fuck Hillary. Fuck anybody who thinks we can solve civil wars or terrorism with "balls" or "bigger balls" or "brass balls" or salty balls or any kind of balls you can think of.  All that "balls" means is, some guy in a suit in a mansion with body guards sends thousands of Americans in uniform to die. Is that what you want?  Is that what you really need to feel safe, to go about your day?

If you really, truly need that, then I pity you. I despise you, yes. But I pity you.

You're not a worthy inheritor of America's greatness.  You're a scared little girl cowering under her sweaty bed sheets.

U.S. intel. director: Earth is (still) a scary place

We're all gonna dieeeeeeeeeeeeee!  Aaaaaaaah!

Aw Lawdy, please save us CIA and NSA, save us!  

Let me quote Michael Cohen at length [emphasis mine] in his critique of the annual world threat assessment that the National Intelligence Director is obliged to give the Senate:

There is the habitually frightening adjective war front, "an assertive Russia, a competitive China; a dangerous, unpredictable North Korea, a challenging Iran." The sober-minded might look at these countries and conclude that a more accurate set of descriptors would be "an enfeebled and corrupt Russia, an economically slowing and environmentally challenged China, a contained and sort of predictable North Korea and an isolated and diplomatically-engaged Iran". But that would be a pretty lame threat assessment, wouldn't it?

Then there are the really scary sounding threats that aren't actually threats to Americans. Things like, "lingering ethnic divisions in the Balkans, perpetual conflict and extremism in Africa; violent political struggles in … the Ukraine, Burma, Thailand and Bangladesh." [...]  [B]ut the idea that any of these are serious "crises" or "threats" to America and its citizens is ludicrous.

This is what makes Clapper's argument – and indeed the entire process of writing a "worldwide threat assessment" so fundamentally unserious and distorting. America doesn't face a single truly serious security threat. We are a remarkably safe and secure nation, protected by two oceans, an enormous and highly effective military and dozens upon dozens of like-minded allies and friends around the world. Truly we have nothing to fear – except perhaps global climate change, which oddly merits a one-paragraph mention (pdf) in this year's threat assessment.

To listen to Clapper and others in the intelligence community one might never know that inter-state war has largely disappeared and that wars in general are in the midst of a multi-decade decline. 

And let's not forget that Clapper is the same guy who lied to Congress about not spying on U.S. citizens!:

The irony of all this is that Clapper has been under fire for months now because he allegedly lied to Congress over the extent to which the National Security Agency was collecting phone and e-mail records of individual Americans.

Yet, the yarn he spun on Capitol Hill last week was far worse than that: deceiving Americans about the nature of the world today and the threats facing the country. But in a political environment in which threat mongering and exaggeration is the norm rather than the exception, Clapper not only gets a pass – hardly anyone even noticed.

I've had enough of these obvious lies from "serious" spies protecting their administrative turf and bloated billion-dollar budgets.  There is no way that the U.S. is in more danger now than during the Cold War.  We have no enemies who can attack us, save Russia with its ICBMs. Terrorism is a mosquito on the list of actual threats to American citizens.

The James Clappers of the U.S. military-intelligence community might bamboozle and intimidate our Congressmen and journalists with their doomsday speeches, but not me.  What about you?

James Clapper might as well be called director of US fearmongering

By Michael Cohen

February 6, 2014 | Guardian

URL: http://gu.com/p/3mgk3