Sympa-Thorazine for the Devil

Opposition politicians are already suffering attacks impugning their 'americanism,' courage, and 'support for the troops,' which are certain to be the cannon (canon)-fodder of the coming campaign. Already these attacks include the false assertions of their complicity with terror on the basis of their legal, ethical, and constitutional reservations to the increasingly authoritarian imposition of Bushevism.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., UT), who continuously decries the bitter partisanship in Washington, implied this week that Democratic success in November's election could result in terrorist attacks on America. Hatch was quoted in Tuesday's Tooele (Ut.) Transcript Bulletin as saying Middle East terrorists are "waiting for the Democrats here to take control, let things cool off and then strike again."

Democrats are criticizing Hatch for what they see as "ridiculous" partisan hyperbole.
"There they go again trying to use smear and fear to win in November," said Stacie Paxton, spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee.

While Hatch now says he does not recall making the reported statement to the Tooele newspaper, it would not be the first time he tied terrorist action to Democrats seeking office.

During the 2004 presidential election, Hatch suggested al-Qaida members wanted Democratic challenger John Kerry to defeat President Bush. Terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry," Hatch said in a Washington Post story printed in September 2004.
Welcome to the politics of fear.

Opposition to gutting FISA (which is AL-fucking-READY an affront to the Constitution I was taught) can EASILY be sold to a terror-numbed electorate as sympathy for the devil...

It's numbness they're counting on; and creating it is the purpose of the relentless onslaught of propaganda, dys-, and mis-information on, and about, terror. Narcotized by the incessant barrage of inflammatory, provocative information, and overwhelmed by their own existential problems and issues, the People are rendered 'stupid'*, in the classical sense of the word.

Because of the precariousness of their own life-worlds, and the all-inclusivity of the terror meme, the People respond only passively, if at all, to each new incident, each fresh affront. In an understandable desire to just bear their daily lives, they give up on 'politics', which is where, after all, all this up-setting and disturbing information comes from anyway.

The net effect is the psycho-social equivalent of the regular administration of thorazine, via daily injections of mediated, televised 'reality'.

*stupid: 1541, "mentally slow," from M.Fr. stupide, from L. stupidus "amazed, confounded," lit. "struck senseless," from stupere "be stunned, amazed, confounded," from PIE *(s)tupe- "hit," from base *(s)teu- (see steep (adj.)). Native words for this idea include negative compounds with words for "wise" (cf. O.E. unwis, unsnotor, ungleaw), also dol (from root of Ger. toll "mad," related to Gk. tholeros "muddy, turbid"), and dysig (see dizzy). Stupid retained its association with stupor and its overtones of "stunned by surprise, grief, etc." into mid-18c. The difference between stupid and the less opprobrious foolish roughly parallels that of Ger. töricht vs. dumm but does not exist in most European languages.