Associated Baptist Press - Fear Not: What does virtual rumor-mongering say about Christians?: "Gullibility may grow out of fear and anxiety, he added. And that directly relates to what people believe.
“I suggest to my students, ‘Tell me something about your fears, and I will tell you something of your theology,’” Tillman said. “Dealing with our fears -- an action usually dismissed or ignored -- may be one of the keys to understanding just which e-mails we forward and those we don’t.”"
and this one as well, which I can't help but think is a bit related.
Secret Service under strain as leaders face more threats - The Boston Globe.
8 comments:
The first article was excellent and I have seen it discussed in a variety of settings. As for the second, there may be some relation, but that article was long on ideas, but short on facts. I have to take what the Southern Poverty Law Center says with a grain of salt. They do some really great work, but tend to take a too broad (IMO) definition of extremism.
I think I am making the connections more than the article is. But I think there really has to be little doubt that the far right is more violent than the far left in this country. The history of that violence is pretty clear, isn't it? And how else do we explain that during the Bush admin, with one of the most unpopular presidents, and one that many on the left considered to be a threat to our Democracy--but we did not see a rise in violence or the threat of violence against the government. Now that Obama is in, we see that threat?
How else do we explain that?
There are more threats, but I guess I don't see the "rash of domestic terrorism." I think there is a tendency for some in the media and their "experts" to attribute a wide variety of crimes to political motives.
We had a murder about 20 miles from where I live that made the national news. Some guy killed 3 people, including an anti-abortion activist. Some tried to say the killer was politically motivated, but I knew people that went to school with him that said he had a reputation for being very aggressive and unstable. It is more likely that motivated his crime, as opposed to politics.
As for crime rates, they peaked in the 1990's and have declined since then. Speaking of the 90's, I feel like we have gone back to them with all this talk about militias. Most are kooks, but certainly not the boogeymen that some paranoids would make us believe.
So let's just deal with the fact that the Secret Service has more threats than they have ever had. Tell me that is not because the right wing in this country is not more willing to at least threaten violence than the left?
As for the militias, I am unsympathetic. Sorry. I have very little sympathy for people who run around in the woods playing soldier to get in touch with their inner male--or whatever the hell they are doing. And I am also not completely convinced that many of them are not advocating radical politics.
I will also apologize in advance as I am a bit prickly today from work stress and perhaps some sleep issues. Sorry.
One more note. Those militia types have every right to play soldier and even have radical politics. I am not suggesting otherwise. But I am not convinced that they are not anti-government types who deserve a little attention.
No problem, I hope you feel better.
I think the vast majority of militia members are kooks, playing soldier. I just see them as mostly harmless, despite their radical talk and conspiracy theories. To this day, many people still think Tim Mcveigh was in the Michigan Militia, despite evidence that he was never in any militia. I was at a speech that Clinton gave following the bombing and he blamed the militias. I am not suggesting that some shouldn't be watched, but I am saying that the threat isn't credible at this point.
As for threats against the President, it is scary, but I would want to know how many are found to be credible and how many are just nuts spouting off.
Thanks for the good thoughts.
I think we can assume that many of the new threats are not serious. But that would always be true. Why would there have been so many fewer threats of all kinds during the Bush administration? I know many of my fellow lefties hated that guy and thought he was a threat to our liberties. I shared that belief. I think he undermined our basic constitutional protections and did so for some of the worst reasons.
Yet out of all of that anger and "Bush delusion" or whatever it was called, far fewer threats even of the non important or critical kind.
I think the right wing has to ask some serious questions about that and how their rhetoric is tilted in that direction. I had a run in with a distant in-law who told me that Obama was not deserving of respect even as President because he was a Socialist. The continual portrayal of Obama as non-American and alien has consequences. As does the continual mantra of anti-government rhetoric that still permeates the Republican party.
I plucked an interesting nugget from that very good article.
“In general, we need to help Christians act like Christians in public life and not just in private life, and not to get sucked into the polarization, partisan idolatry and demonization so common now in media and government,” Gushee said
It is my belief that the politicization of the Church over the last 30 or more years has caused more attention and adherence to a set of doctrines (political or theological)rather than attention to right behavior (the old orthodoxy vs orthopraxy argument)
The whole email thing is an outgrouth of that issue, IMO.
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