3 This failure of prophecy may be an intellectual weakness, yet prophecy continues because it provides the popularizers with a profound rhetorical strength : it releases the power of fear. The central role of this sentiment in political rhetoric has long been understood. Arousing fear, though, is not always easy. Even as far back as Aristotle, it was observed that we fear things less the more distant they are. Hence when Churchill sought to rouse the British, he brought the Germans to the beaches, landing grounds, fields, streets, and hills of our island. So, too, to arouse fears the popularizers have to present pictures of imminent calamities that could befall their relatively comfortable and well-off readers. Environmental disasters like endemic waterborne disease due to inadequate sewage treatment in faraway nations do not fit this category. The prospect of my getting skin cancer due to ozone depletion does. Without such immediacy, one could only arouse a sentiment like compassion, which is not as strong as fear.

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