My own gut feeling

Of all people, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, in an interview yesterday, became the first right-winger, to my knowledge, to suggest there might just be something to my “pattern theory.”

To wit, when there’s bad news for Bush, there’s another TERROR alert or story to keep Americans in a constant state of fear.

Tucker stated that, due to Bush’s slug-belly poll numbers, there might just be some “Machiavellian reason” for Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that there will be a summer terrorist attack in the U.S. of A.

Tucker suggested, and I paraphrase, that this might be a way of whipping Americans into submission with a little homegrown terror.

Duh.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, Tucker, but I think there’s a lesson somewhere in the old horror flick, “Night of the Living Dead.”

Maybe it’s the line, “They’re coming to get you, Barbara.”

Maybe it’s the classic line from the sheriff on how to kill zombies, “Well, there's no problem. If you have a gun, shoot 'em in the head. That's a sure way to kill 'em. If you don't, get yourself a club or a torch. Beat 'em or burn 'em. They go up pretty easy.”

Maybe it’s the dire and prescient warnings of the radio announcer.

Maybe it’s the horrific ending.

Or, maybe it’s just the idea that if we let fear consume us, we are the “living dead.”

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For Keith Olbermann’s (“Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” MSNBC) outstanding recounting of such patterns, see my post, “Read or ignore, it’s your country,” 7 June 2007: LINK