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With polls down, a possible electoral loss what's a corrupt and inept administration continue to do? Introduce, again, one more installment of what, so far, has worked for them: 1- Bring back Osama and Al Zawhiri and expect those unthinking Americans, who need a "father figure" authority to protect them, to start running back to Father Bush in fear. 2- Bring back another phony issue like the UAE port deal to distract attention from their incompetence, and their unconstitutional power grab. The Administration is goading the Democrats, bloggers, etc., into a frenzy against this issue. Even though he is for the deal to go through now, in the end Bush will be against such a deal, if it gains negative traction with his base. It will distract the American public long enough but will have the same fate as the Harriet Miers fiasco-another attention grabbing phony issue. The Fear Mongering, Obfuscation and Distortion are scare tactics influencing us to hide behind Father Bush's version of authority in pursuit of protection. It is basic that obedience to authority offers plenty of justifications. It makes a society thrive by developing "resource production, trade, defense, expansion, and social control". The other alternative, anarchy, renders life "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short". Since birth we are taught that obeying proper authority is right and disobeying it is wrong. Into adulthood this obedience becomes a snap unthinking response to authority's demands with little if any conscious deliberation. We just want authorities to take care of problems because we do not have the time to think about far away difficulties that seem not to affect us personally and immediately. We assume that the government is right and will proceed with our best interests in mind. We assume, again, that if we had the time to think about their demands we would reach the same conclusions and agree with our authority's requests. In most instances when dealing with legally established and honest authority this reasoning may be correct. Americans have difficulty saying no to authority because most of us misperceive its profound impact and we are usually at a disadvantage in the presence of compliance situations. To avoid being led astray into submission by authority status the removal of its elements of surprise is necessary. Therefore, we need to: 1- Be very aware of the power of authority, and 2- Recognize that authority can become any or all of the following: easily faked, corrupted, illegal, incompetent, and autocratic. There is one problem with authority; we do not want to resist it completely or even most of the time because abiding by authority is usually in our best interest since authority usually knows what it is talking about and demonstrates that knowledge through its performance by maintaining society functioning. An attempt at influence by any authority should be met with this question: Is this authority truly and expert? This question helps us focus on the authority's credentials instead of meaningless and irrelevant emotionally laden and fear evoking symbols meant to elicit our snap unthinking response that father knows best. Which leads to the following: 1- What are this authority's credentials? 2- What is the relevance of these credentials to the topic at hand? 3-Despite credentials and relevance of topic, is this authority truthful? credible? This authority should have superior and competent knowledge of the topic or situation that is relevant to his attempt at influencing us. Since impartiality is not expected in political influencing we can gauge an expert authority's truthfullness and credibility by seeing whether what he is going to lose is overcome by the gains obtained at the expense not only of political opponents, but of our individual liberties, our political system, our environment, and our standard of living to name a few. So far not enough Americans are asking these questions about the Republican Administration and the Republican Congress. If we did the failure of Republican control would cry out. Republicans have shown no expertise. Republican Credentials are: Easily faked: Bush as CEO Michael Brown and FEMA Corruption: Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, etc. Illegal: NSA wiretapping, Plamegate Incompetency: Katrina debacle Autocracy: Bush despite breaking law, vows to continue breaking the law. With their record would you consider the Republicans truthful? Credible? Americans should ask these questions every time Father Bush comes trying to scare and influence us with the so called War On Terror. That war will never end, it will only perpetuate a corrupt, incompetent and autocratic Republican majority which is against the common good, against our individual interests, and which we will regret more and more.
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