{"id":5387,"date":"2010-04-06T07:00:39","date_gmt":"2010-04-06T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=5387"},"modified":"2010-04-07T22:03:21","modified_gmt":"2010-04-08T03:03:21","slug":"the-business-of-fear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/the-business-of-fear\/","title":{"rendered":"The business of fear"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure style=\"width: 265px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/alancleaver\/3674434567\/\" class=\"tt-flickr tt-flickr-Medium\" title=\"Welcome to America\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3623\/3674434567_d33728e469.jpg\" alt=\"Welcome to America\" width=\"265\" height=\"500\" \/><\/a> <figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Welcome to America | Illustration by Alan Cleaver<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Sunday night I watched Michael Moore&#8217;s <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/B00008DDVV?ie=UTF8&#038;tag=malesurvival&#038;linkCode=as2&#038;camp=1789&#038;creative=390957&#038;creativeASIN=B00008DDVV\">Bowling for Columbine<\/a><\/em> over <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hulu.com\/watch\/133831\/bowling-for-columbine\">on Hulu<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The documentary takes a broad look at America&#8217;s obsession with guns and the fear that&#8217;s strangling our country.<\/p>\n<p>I was really intrigued by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hulu.com\/watch\/133831\/bowling-for-columbine?c=2638:2874\">Moore&#8217;s interview with Marilyn Manson<\/a>, who was often blamed for the shootings in Columbine.<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a poster boy for fear. I represent what everyone&#8217;s afraid of&#8230; <\/p>\n<p>(The media) turn it into fear, because then you&#8217;re watching television, you&#8217;re watching the news, you&#8217;re being pumped full of fear &#8212; there&#8217;s floods, there&#8217;s AIDS, there&#8217;s murder. Cut to commercial. Buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they&#8217;re not going to talk to you. If you have pimples, the girl&#8217;s not going to f*ck you. And it&#8217;s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that&#8217;s what I think it&#8217;s all based on, the whole idea of &#8216;keep everyone afraid, and they&#8217;ll consume.&#8221; &#8211; Marilyn Manson<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m just thinking quickly about the things we&#8217;ve been trained to fear just by watching the nightly news along with the commercials (depending on who&#8217;s spinning the story)&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Obama-care<\/li>\n<li>Socialism<\/li>\n<li>Lack of health-care<\/li>\n<li>Our current (or previous) health care system<\/li>\n<li>Erectile dysfunction <\/li>\n<li>Big business<\/li>\n<li>Government takeovers<\/li>\n<li>Frequent urination<\/li>\n<li>Hair loss<\/li>\n<li>Osama bin Laden<\/li>\n<li>Muslims<\/li>\n<li>Immigrants<\/li>\n<li>Foreign attacks<\/li>\n<li>Homosexuals<\/li>\n<li>Liberals<\/li>\n<li>Right-wing conservatives<\/li>\n<li>Vehicles built by Toyota<\/li>\n<li>Black males<\/li>\n<li>Teenagers<\/li>\n<li>Urban youth<\/li>\n<li>The Religious Right<\/li>\n<li>Bad prescription medicine<\/li>\n<li>Unemployment<\/li>\n<li>Further economic catastrophe<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And the list could go on and on&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Have you ever stopped to notice, that as soon as we buy into one or more of these fears, those perpetrating the fear always have a solution we can buy into.<\/p>\n<p>Whether it&#8217;s a miracle drug, a new toy to help us keep up with the Jones&#8217;, the latest hand gun or assault rifle, a high-tech home security system, a vehicle that&#8217;s rated #1 in safety features, a political party or ideology or a religious affiliation &#8212; we&#8217;re all consuming things based on our fears.<\/p>\n<p>But imagine if rather than buying into our fears we started turning the tables and said enough is enough&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Imagine if we refused to be led astray by our fears&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Imagine if we stopped fearing rejection or hurt from others&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Imagine if we started turning strangers into friends and began sharing life with others&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Imagine if we stopped seeing us vs. them and started including the outsiders and started building a new &#8220;us&#8221; and a new &#8220;we&#8221;&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Imagine.<\/p>\n<p>How different would your outlook on life be? How different would your attitude towards your family be? Or your neighbors? Or others in your city and community?<\/p>\n<p><strong>What would it take for <em>you<\/em> to break the cycle of fear in your life?<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday night I watched Michael Moore&#8217;s Bowling for Columbine over on Hulu. The documentary takes a broad look at America&#8217;s obsession with guns and the fear that&#8217;s strangling our country. I was really intrigued by Moore&#8217;s interview with Marilyn Manson, who was often blamed for the shootings in Columbine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19],"tags":[3472,1219,3470,3473,3471,882],"class_list":["post-5387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections","tag-bowling-for-columbine","tag-business","tag-fear","tag-marilyn-manson","tag-michael-moore","tag-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1oT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5387\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}