Fear on the Tancredo Planet...

We're still a year away from the US Presidential election, but you know it's never too soon to scare the voters to the ballot box.





Republican Presidential candidate and current Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo is playing the fear card in a big way this week, with the launch of his "end of the world as we know it" vision, a thirty second political commercial showcasing a horrible attack somewhere in an unprepared America.

Somehow, candidate Tancredo has decided that the Canadian and Mexican borders are the biggest problems that the USA has to face these days. Apparently becoming just a funnel of terrorism leading those with ill intent right to the heart of the American landscape.

He's continuing on with the ongoing political theme from the Republican leadership of the day, a belief that the world is out to get them. A very dangerous place with enemies all around them; in every town, on every bus, in every mall.

This despite the fact, that with the exception of September 11, 2001 there hasn't been one single incident of terror related mayhem in the U. S. since. It was a truly despicable act of cowardice and horror on that day, but as events would show it did not represent the beginning of any kind of uprising from within. And surely in these suspicious times since those days, there have not been any legions of terrorists pouring over the border from those weak willed nations north and south.

Instead, since that horrible day, there has just been a lot of ratcheting up the fear level, playing rather loose with the American Constitution, playing twister with the colour coded alert system and showcasing grandstanding politicians trying to make a name for themselves by capitalizing on fear.

Of course when you're bereft of actual ideas to get elected, scaring the hell out of the citizenry is a sure fire way to get your name and mug into the national media.

There was a guy in the late forties and early fifties with much the same approach to keeping America safe, flushing out the enemy of the day "The Reds" as they were known as, at every opportunity. Whether the targets were or weren't a Red, or even a danger to America, seemed irrelevant to the goal; that of supposedly keeping America safe and Joseph McCarthy on the front pages and top of the news cycle.

Fast forward some fifty years and one wonders if this incubating world of Tancredoism, will one day rival the darker days of McCarthyism...

An era that put a whole new spin on the term "Fear Monger", a title that the Colorado Congressman now seems dedicated to collecting as his own.

In the end McCarthy's overzealous pursuit of those who he perceived to be the Un-American, led to his downfall and eventual disappearance into the shadows in disgrace.

Possibly a fate that soon will beckon for Mr. Tancredo, who seems to have overplayed his hand in a most disturbing manner.