I wrote that post earlier about Bush accusing Kerry of scare tactics, and a fellow calling himself Doc Rampage saw fit to “rampage” against it, posting the following comments:

That’s not shameless scare tactics, that’s prudent warnings. Shameless scare tactics would be saying that there are going to be bombings _if_ John Kerry gets elected. Or saying that other nations are going to hate us if we elect John Kerry. Or telling our allies that they were attacked because they’re friends of George Bush. You know, the kind of stuff Kerry and his pals say.

Just warning that there might be bombs doesn’t benefit Bush in any way, so it isn’t a “scare tactic” is any recognizable sense of the word. It may “scare” people, but since it doesn’t help Bush it isn’t “tactic” to help him get re-elected.

My new colleague at Stop the Internet! was quick to point out that what the good Doctor just described is exactly what Cheney did not too long ago.

September 8, 2004, Des Moines, Iowa - A November win by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry would put the United States at risk of another “devastating” terrorist attack, Vice President Dick Cheney told supporters Tuesday.

…”If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again — that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States,” Cheney said.

How short our cultural memory has become. I myself had even forgot about that little gem. In any event, I wanted to address the other half of Mr. Rampage’s comments, about how having people scared does not assist Bush in any way. This couldn’t be farther from how I look at the issue.

What you need to remember is that humans are nothing more than monkeys whose “ride” has been evolutionarily “pimped”. Our internal wiring, however, has not changed too much from our hairy jungle brothers. And Bush’s entire presidency since 9/11 has capitalized on that primitive simian streak.

Essentially, we see Bush as our tribal warrior-chieftain. He is the captain of our band of apes. Before 9/11, he was just a goofy monkey and everybody knew it. But when the other monkeys came over and started throwing feces at us, we got angry and scared, because they were violating our monkey territory. And when animals are angry and scared, too many chemicals flood our bodies and we start panicking and making bad decisions. So we all looked to the main monkey for guidance. We never trusted him before, but since we were all so confused, all he had to do was put on his “war face,” and now we suddenly we could rally behind.

After the initial “success” in Afghanistan, deep in the heart of enemy-monkey territory, the confusing chemicals in our body started to subside again. And then people started to question Bush and all the monkey-brained decisions he had forced on us in our weakened mental state. But the lure of the warrior-king monkey was still strong. All he had to do was have his men in monkey-suits issue a constant stream of new terror warnings to gently release those confusing emotions and chemicals in us again.

And they’ve done it ever since. Any time anything damaging comes out against Bush or people question him too much, they just release an extremely vague threat about those awful towel-headed monkeys killing our little babies and eating our fruit. And then when no attack comes, Bush and his monkeys proudly thump their chests, saying that it was their strong leadership which protected us from the enemy-apes. Over time, it has become a Pavlovian response. When we hear the word “terrorist” we have been trained to (1) get scared, and (2) look to our intrepid leader for protection.

So, for Bush to suggest that there might be terrorist attacks during our elections, he is attempting to throw us into a state of fear where we will make decisions based on this network of associations his team has built up, rather than on good solid reasoning about the most logical direction this country should follow.

I hope this clears it all up for Doc Rampage and all the other monkeys out there clicking away on your keyboards. Myself included, of course. Oohh-oohh-aahh-ahh.

1. More funny pictures of Bush and monkeys.