Fear Itself

Fox News has nothing but fear: Here’s how we fight back against lies — and win - Salon.com:

...Conservative hostility had multiple sources, not least the fact that everything conservatives had believed in during the Bush years had crumbled to dust. Nothing had worked the way it was supposed to. The Clinton era of relative peace and prosperity had given way to a time of catastrophic failure at home and abroad, and the 2008 electoral map showed it: for the first time since 1964, a Democrat won the states of Virginia, North Carolina and Indiana. Speaking of 1964, some Democrats hoped that Obama would be an LBJ-style figure, substantially updating and expanding the New Deal legacy which forms the core of what the modern Democratic Party means and has meant since the 1930s. But his allegiance to corporatism, Wall Street and neo-liberalism has made him more a Tony Blair-style figure of continuity with Bush than a sharp break with him. And yet, that has done nothing at all to dim the fears and hostility that’s been marshaled against him. If anything, Obama’s efforts to placate conservatives have only made them more profoundly hostile and suspicious on the one hand—as epitomized by birtherism, and the NRA’s repeated claims (here, here, here, etc.) that massive gun confiscation is imminent—and more demanding on the other, as epitomized by their ever-increasing demands to cut government spending on programs for the poor and the middle class...