In simple terms, this is how Hobgoblin-Mongery plays out: A foreign people or place which has been groomed by relentless besmirchment with insults and lies by state officials and their organs in the press and popular culture industry is then held up as an imminent threat to our physical safety, or to the American Way of Life, or at least to our delicate sensibilities. Think: Russia; Iran; radical Islam or, most lately, Venezuela (of all things).
The pretended threat is then fanned into a call for war of some kind or another (metaphorical or real-deal). This, of course, is accompanied by a call for a corresponding growth in state wealth and power in order to properly prosecute the war.
Here is how a few wise folks describe this hoary but perpetually-successful scam:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” -H.L. Mencken
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