We have heard it many times from the GOP. "We are at war with terror." "Iraq is the front line in the war on terror." "Terrorist fear our freedom" "Terrorists are trying to impact our elections." Terror...Terror...Terror. Now the GOP has a new ad that basically says Vote for us or terrorists will kill you. Now it bears mentioning that such a correlation is asinine, but we have come to expect nothing less of the GOP leadership. But I thought we could take a different look at the pillar of the GOP political platform: strength vs. terrorism.
To take a closer look, we first need to define the word terrorism, courtesy of our friends at Webster's. Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion . Webster's also defines terror as a state of intense fear. It would appear from the latest ad (which I won't do the bidding of the GOP by linking to it), which uses the image and threatening words of bin Laden, shows footage of terrorist training camps, and includes the sounds of a ticking clock morphing into a heartbeat, was made to play to the fears of the electorate.
Given the impact of 9/11 on all of our lives, for many of the electorate it would be intense fear. This, of course, is not the first time the GOP has used fear as an election tactic. They systematically use it. Finally, since the GOP can offer not salient reason to vote for them, the are using fear as a coercion tactic.
So this of course begs the question, why do we need to be terrorists to fight terrorists? The answer is we don't. Just like we don't have to give up our freedom to stay free. Hypocrisy has become a staple of GOP leadership...it is time to kick them into the minority. 13 days to the election, vote for change.
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