Take license and substitute the word "scare" for "fool" in Abraham Lincoln's popular proverbs: "You can scare some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not scare all of the people all of the time."
Merchants of consumer advertising use the subliminal technique of fear relentlessly. If buyers don't use Product A, they're told their teeth won't be as white, their hair won't shine, their sex life will be dull, they won't be appealing to the opposite sex, and more.
Merchants of fear hope to shape public opinion by targeting Americans who're especially gullible.
After World War II, the John Birch Society, among others, spread the alarm that the U.S. government was awash with Soviet Russian spies (not true), President Eisenhower was a communist (not true), and the American government and every major institution were controlled by sinister elites of the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the Committee on Foreign Relations (also nonsense).
Then came scare mongering about the United Nations, including the flakiness about black helicopters surreptitiously mapping the United States and mysterious trains moving inland with foreign soldiers preparing for a UN invasion and takeover.
If those were outlandish, the current wave of fear mongering is perfectly loony.
Some simple-minded gun owners believe President Obama will seize their weapons. With more than 200 million guns in private hands, how he'd pull off that extraordinary feat isn't explained. Obama can't even get consensus on health care reform, much less launch a door-by-door roundup of guns.
Some say the president also is an illegal immigrant or non-native born American and holds office illegally. That wacky theory spread by "Birthers" has even been denounced as silly by the master of deceit and dirty tricks, Karl Rove, but still accepted by a handful of addle-headed congressmen and their faithful.
Obama also is a "socialist" and hates white people, presumably even his own white mother, according to Fox TV weirdo Glenn Beck. Another fringe group alleges Obama will repaint and rename the White House.
Remember Barack and Michelle Obama fist-bumping? A Fox News commentator suggested it was a secret Muslim greeting. Fist bumps, in fact, go back decades. Long before Obama, NBA star Michael Jordan used it powdering his palms and not wanting to shake hands before going on the court.
True hokum was spewed in Congress, however, by North Carolina Republican Rep. Virginia Foxx, who suggested that President Obama's plan to pay for living will counseling would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."
Jeepers.
