Ebbie:

The mechanisms of mass-think which lie behind the "looming so large" including instinctual automatic copying and re-stimulation of old pain as a basis for present thinking. Thus, when Cheny says we will be attacked by terrorists if we vote the wrong way, even though it is analytically a ridiculous statement with no merit to it, it does stir into play two mechanisms: people get stirred up on their old losses and pains, whatever the thought of danger brings up for them, with all the confusion and insanity inherent in those memories; and second, people start copying each others' reactions or fears or pictures of chaos instead of understanding the communications involved. This starts chains of mass reaction which intersect and reinforce each other.

Wolfowitz, Rove and Co. are distinctly aware of this sort of machinery in the public mind, and play to it at every opportunity. That's why the administration puts out blaring but illogical statements -- it isn't an effort to communicate but to steer a stampede of re-stimulated negative emotions, massively copied as though with mirrors, and illogical reaction. If they tell scarey lies with enough certainty they will steer the herd their way.

It is despicable, but it is politics. It has worked for every successful dictator. Government through fear and buzzword.

A