Of zombies, fear, and state power

S. T. Karnick makes an interesting point in the context of an essay on the new popularity of zombies:

Both the zombie appeal and the swine flu fears are caused by two things: the news media’s increasing use of scare tactics in trying to lure audiences, and the socialists’ continuous use of fearmongering to press for political power. In their neverending quest to wrest more power by creating what H. L. Mencken correctly characterized as an endless series of hobgoblins requiring a socialist elite’s powers to destroy, the socialists and their media satraps continually raise fears of everything conceivable:

medical and public-health scares from Alar in apples to Gulf War Syndrome to Asian flu to swine flu

all-out nuclear war it never happened because both sides indeed knew it would be catastrophic and wouldn’t get them what they wanted

a housing “crisis” that could hit innocent homeowners and investors as opposed to being the necessary consequences of irresponsible actions by lenders and borrowers and bring down the entire economy

the earth overheating and killing all life on the planet

. . . and so on and so on for decade after decade.

This habit of the political elites and mainstream media is quite sufficient to account for the dominant sense of unease and constant fear one can see among much of the contemporary American public.

The irony is that for the public to give in to this scam would be the one sure way for the zombies to win.