The magic of FUD - one man's frustrations on the world today

I'm really surprised at the amount of FUD we're seeing on the health care debate, and in politics in general these days.

"Death Panels"
"Losing our Freedoms"
"Destroying the Village Concept"
"Ruining our Quality of Life"
"Developer Roads"
"Government Mismanagement"

Man, that's a lot of FUD coming from a lot of folks.

So....what's FUD?

If you look it up on your Wikipedia, FUD is defined as the following:

Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD) is a tactic of rhetoric and fallacy used in sales, marketing, public relations, politics and propaganda. FUD is generally a strategic attempt to influence public perception by disseminating negative information designed to undermine the credibility of their beliefs. An individual firm, for example, might use FUD to invite unfavorable opinions and speculation about a competitor's product; to increase the general estimation of switching costs among current customers; or to maintain leverage over a current business partner who could potentially become a rival. FUD techniques may be crude and simple. Alternatively they may be very subtle, employing an indirect approach.

I think that is exactly what's going on, locally, in our region, in our state, in our nation.

We're a nation of scared little kids, not actually taking the time to read and understand, ask intelligent questions, get all sides of the issues.

Is some of the FUD legitimate? Yeah, I think a little bit of it is. Debate is a good thing, but I really do think that we have a lot of sheep in our midst who would rather parrot what they see on a blog or hear on a radio station or TV report than to actually take the time to become informed.

Being informed defeats FUD. Being informed, unfortunately, is a time-consuming process, possibly far too time consuming for our soundbite laden minds to overcome.

In a world where so much information is available to us in so many different ways, we've become complacent. If it doesn't jump right out at us, obviously something is wrong. Perhaps it takes actually reading and comprehending, asking questions (not making accusations without base) and actually having dialogue with others (my goodness, talking!) to understand that no side is that evil to take away our "liberties" or turn us into a society that we don't want to be.

I know that America was founded and grown on revolutionary ideals - religious freedom, the balances of power in government, the preference of the free market, but in my opinion, the screams of those who believe their "rights" are being trampled on are based on fear, uncertainty and doubt - FUD. And people today thrive on fear.

Temper your fear with reality - take the time to really do research, ask questions, and LISTEN to the answers. Call City Hall, the County Admin folks, your senator or congressman if you have a true concern about something going on.

Stop relying solely on crap like these blogs, that TV, the newspaper.

Let's kill the FUD and get reality back in America.