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Re: [OPE-L] Crashes, Panics, and Expectations

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--On Monday, March 27, 2006 8:01 AM -0500 Jerry Levy
<Gerald_A_Levy@xxxxxxx> wrote:

... Mass fear didn't
just happen,  it was created by the state and other bourgeois social
institutions.  Indeed, one could claim that while new communication
technologies make an expansion of  knowledge among the working
class possible,  some of those same technologies have become a  new
medium for deception and the creation or reproduction of irrational
fears.  What happened post 9-11 was an example of  manipulation
of  popular opinion through the creation of mass fear and hysteria.


Jerry,

There is a material base for 'mass fear' in Palestine and Iraq, e.g., but
do we in America really live lives of 'mass fear' of violence against
ourselves?  (I'm not speaking of 'mass fear' of unemployment.)  We are not
Chile of 1973+, or Indonesia of the 1960s or Japan of 1944-45 or Burundi of
a decade ago.

'Mass fear' is not a very useful concept (yet?) of the overwhelming lives
of most Americans and we need to know how privileged they are (9-11
notwithstanding) relative to other parts of the world and relative to
history.

I hope you understanding correctly what I am trying to convey.

Paul


***********************************************************************
RESEARCH IN POLITICAL ECONOMY,  Paul Zarembka, editor, Elsevier Science
******************** http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/PZarembka

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