The Triumph of Fear

The ability to create fear is the most basic, primal and exploitive of the tools for manipulation. From the Garden of Eden, to would be Presidents amplifying the drumbeat that those that are different are rapists and killers, fear is the essential tool of demagogues.

To try and tamp down would be tyrants and exploiters, Roosevelt told us that the only thing we had to fear, was fear itself. Ed Murrow, in talking about Joe McCarthy, reminded us that McCarthy didn't create the situation of fear, “he merely exploited it...and rather successfully.” Today in our siloed, self referential, anti-factual culture, that fear is stronger than ever. Fear of change, fear of the new, fear of the other, fear of the future, are dominant.

Sasha Abramsky, in Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream, looks at where this fear might be taking us.

My WhoWhatWhy.org conversation with Sasha Abramsky:

Do we need a new war on poverty?

It’s been almost 50 years since Lyndon Johnson declared "war on poverty."  It’s been more than 50 years since JFK was moved by the poverty of Appalachia and Bobby Kennedy by the poverty of the South Bronx.

Today's poverty may not be as dark or desperate, but it is more insidious. While we focus on the growing gap between the one percent and the middle class, we often ignore those that have fallen out of the middle class, and sunk below the poverty level. That group is growing exponentially and it’s a blight on our nation. Certainly it’s not a part of the American exceptionalism the President spoke of last week.

Just as the House is voting to drastically cut Food Stamps, journalist Sasha Abramsky delves deep into the issues in The American Way of Poverty: How the Other Half Still Lives.

My conversation with Sasha Abramsky:

Voices of Poverty

What does poverty look like in America today? Almost fifty years ago, Lyndon Johnson, during a State of the Union address, proposed a War on Poverty . Today, in many ways, we seem to have lost that war.

The plight of the poor in America is growing worse and the attention paid to them declining. Perhaps if we really understood, separate from the politics of economics, what that plight was like, if we really understood the stories of individuals, beyond the stereotypes, maybe then society might take notice and take action.

A significant effort in this regard is under way with a new project, encompassing a website, and ultimately a book. The project is entitled Voice of Poverty and it’s the idea of freelance journalist and U.C. Davis lecturer Sasha Abramsky. The project could radically change how we think about the poor in America.

My conversation with Sasah Abramsky.

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