Lies and fear. There is a part of our population that seems to thrive on a good dose of fear. Scare them and they're happy. Tell the lies and scare them and they're even happier. I admit that I'm a glass half empty kind of person, but you try to scare me too often and I start going in another direction.

But this doesn't seem to happen with a lot of people. It's like they are addicted to fear. OOOH the boogeyman is going to raise your taxes. OOOH the boogeyman is going to let the terrorists overrun us. OOOH the boogeyman is going to give all our money to the riffraff. OOOH we need to revert to the fifties, where men were men, and women were women and the men went to work and did manly things, and the women stayed home and did womanly things, and blacks only showed up to do work around the house and then went quietly away, and there were no other minorities to contend with because no one would sell a house to them, and everything was just about perfect.

Except for a few minor problems. Wife beating was acceptable, after all you had to sometimes keep them in line. Lynching was out of favor in most of the country, what a shame. The unions were powerful, not so good. A married woman didn't have the right to make a major purchase without spousal approval, but who cared right? Schools were segregated as they should be. As an aside, in my school we had whites bused in so they wouldn't have to go to the schools in their area that were black. Reverse busing I guess you could call it. Of course since they lived in the projects they couldn't mingle with the rest of us. There are limits after all. And of course child beating was not only acceptable, in some areas it was expected. Girls were not encouraged to go to college, for the most part, after all they were just going to get married, so they didn't need an education.

Fear and change. Fear of change. Striving for something that never was. Is there a name for that? I think it's called a Republican.