Fear Mongering at home.
3 May 2008 - 29 ניסן 5768 by Huw
You’ve got to love this headline from The Buffalo News:
Flurry of reports of abduction attempts shows higher awareness, despite false alarms
The headline tells it all: There’s be a whole spate of reports of attempted abductions. They were false alarms.
In other words, there’s been a whole spate of false alarms.
Read the story. It repeats the same story three times: the incident not reported until “four days later” - can you hear the scary music? Everything is reported in the most macabre and gothic manner. I hope you’re afraid to let your children out of the house ever!
Hell. The paper makes me afraid to be a middle-aged man. I love this one:
Adults, especially middle-aged men, have to be aware that whether they’re looking for their dog or for some scrap metal, they have to be careful about their actions and comments to pre-teenage children.
This reminds me of the “National Gang Initiations” that were supposed to be going on a few weeks ago. They were reported, at the behest of the local police, in all the Buffalo papers and even on the local NPR Station. The same reports were totally ignored in other cities where they were sent. In a totally unrelated event, this week, several members of a gang were actually arrested in Buffalo.
The federal agents had been watching them for more than a year. NPR reported that “this was the only National Gang in Buffalo” thus putting the lie to their earlier story about “national gangs” etc… Sigh. even the local NPR station can’t be trusted to keep the news straight. I’m thinking Buffalo is some kind of testing ground for stories to counteract parents who are raising their children right - without fear.
See: if you are terrified and timid, you raise your children to be even more terrified and timid than you are. Where you are afraid to drink coffee with sugar, they will be afraid to enter Starbucks.
This is what the real terrorists want: fear gives bullies control. But perfect love drives out all fear.
Like the Internet-predator scare or the one about Dungeons and Dragons 25 years ago (which I understand resulted in one Reefer Madness-like scare film, Mazes and Monsters starring Tom Hanks just off his gig with ‘Bosom Buddies’).
Oh yes… be afraid. Be very afraid!
This is SO true. And it’s the one major and ongoing source of disagreement between myself and my wife’s family.