![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI keep seeing people telling us the thing we need to most worry about is being safe, and that so long as people hear one side promising to do that, the other side will lose.
And I wonder when America became afraid.
Not the reasonable reaction to actual attack. No, I mean the deep-down, nervous in our bones because we are vulnerable, everywhere, all the time.
It baffles me. When I was younger I was unaware of it. FDR said the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, and that was so much gibberish. Fear wasn't something to be afraid of, because it wasn't common. Something scares you, you deal with it and move on. The beasties under the bed... they go away (I was terrified for weeks of the creatures in the dark, it seemed, after watching [at the age of about nine], The Haunting of Hull House. I've seen it since, and it's not all that horrific, but memory still tells me that movie is terrifying, but I digress). A flashlight, and a few nights of not being killed in the night and all is right with the world.
So what was the big deal about fear?
Then came the big puch for, "Law and Order." I seem to remember campaigns about this in the past (when I was a wee tot, about the same time that movies kept me from dangling my arm between the bed and the wall) being about how tough to be on the people we caught. These days, however, it's about how to protect ourselves (or our children) from the menace that lurks in the dark. It started with carjackers, and break-in robberies (not that that's anything new, back in the days of wattle and daub houses, raiders would kick the walls down and make off with whatever they thought valuable. That's when breaking and entering was done in earnest. There I go, digressing again).
Now it's child-molesters (who can't be allowed to live too close to schools. If they live within a quarter mile they are somehow more dangerous. Me; I figure anyone who can convince a kid to walk a home with them can probably get them to hop a bus or get in a car... but that plays on fear.
Maybe it started in 1982, with the Tylenol Murders in Chicago (oddly enough I was in Chicago at the time they happened). People went nuts. Since then we've banned commercial sale of capsules, put, "tamper-proof" seals on damn near everything (which only sort of work. Someone managed to put acid into contact lens solution in Los Angeles some time back. Since I was wearing contact lenses at the time I noticed it).
It probably started in the fifties. The air-raid drill to save ourselves from "The Bomb". I can remember that dread. The first night I noticed the orange glow that was the city lights trapped by yesterdays smog, and wondering if it was Los Angeles being reduced to ash. The camping trips with my Scout Troop, on which the Troop Leader brought a small radio. We all knew it was to check the news, "just in case."
It didn't help to have a president who joked about, "The bombing starts in 15 minutes." I like a piece of black humor as much as the next guy, maybe more, but that one didn't work. That's gone now, mostly, and instead we worry about e-coli in our burgers and heart attacks from our diet pills.
But the risk of these things is small, trivial. Lightening is more likely to strike one than an event like that to have personal effect.
If it stopped there (with the nervous looks at everyone when heading into the parking lot, and the annoying seals on packets, from band-aids to chewing gum) it would be bad enough, but not something to worry about, but it's soaked into our political discourse. We have let fear become our agenda.
And it's killing us. Not, perhaps literally (though one wonders at the rates of depression) but spiritually. We have let this vague dread that something might happen to us to shape our politics. The president of the United States can get up, and with a straight face say his most important job is to "keep Americans safe," and that he will do, "whatever it takes," to bring that about.
Excuse me? I think a guy who's supposed to be the Executive of a country with 300 million people, an economy in the strangest, "recovery" or "robust condition" or whatever odd-description they are using to describe a gap between rich and poor which is so great it can be called a gulf, who has deficits so large that they surpass the idea of, "real money" atributed to Ev Dirksen.
Fear is scary stuff. I've been afraid. The short-term, breath-stopping, gut-clenching, knee-weakening, just short of bowel-loosening fear. I've also been the long-term, slow-grinding, sleep-destroying, joy-killing sort of fear. They both sucked, but you know what? Fear is the enemy there. You figure out what, if anything you can do about the thing which is actually threatening you, and you cope with it. You can shove that genie back in the bottle. He'll get out again, but fear is only dangerous when you let it be.
The White House is using fear. I don't know what they want, but what I see happening angers me (I was going to say scares me, but that's not right). Every time they turn around they are scaring us. Terror Alerts (until that nerve was so worn out it might as well be dead), terrorists (under every bed) WMD, Rogue States, fifth colunists and sleeper cells, everywhere you look is something dreadful.
And if you would only trust them that they know what it is you need to be afraid of, they can protect you.
Bullshit.
It's a emotional club, like an abusive parent who says you aren't pretty, or talented, or smart. This trope is that we don't know what to do, or how to protect ourselves. So we have to trust them. They know what's best. Looking at the record, I have my doubts.
But we've bought into it.
Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that Democrats risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration's wiretapping but cannot show that Americans' civil liberties are at risk.
The Democratic governor, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid, said the party will suffer if it continues to be perceived as weaker than Republicans on national security.
. . . "If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did," Vilsack told Des Moines Register editors and reporters. "And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap," he said. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe."
From what are we being kept safe? Terrorists? Not likely. Not the way we're doing it.
"The sum of "international" and "domestic" terrorist attacks in 2005 was 3991, up 51 percent from the previous year's figure of 2639. The number of deaths that resulted from those attacks was 6872, which is 36 percent higher than the 5066 that occurred in 2004."BTC News if you follow the links to the Terrorism Analytical Data Baseof the National Counterterrorism Center, you can do lots of searcing, make spiffy graphs and see how well the whole thing has been going. There's a a lot of stuff there.
Fear has always been part of the political landscape. Fear of the other, fear of our baser nature, fear of those who actually want to do away with us.
Walt Kelly saw this, and summed it up, "We have me the enemy, and he is us." Which was a restating of Ben Franklin's answer when asked what sort of nation the Constitutional Convention had given us, "A Republic madam, if you can keep it."
FDR said, "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," and that facing a depression so widspread we called it "Great."
Al Gore quoted Eisenhower, and Justice Brandeis, President Eisenhower said this: "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."
Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote, "Men feared witches and burnt women."
Feared witches and burnt women.
What are we afraid of? Are we burning down the house to stave off the dark dread of the beasties that lurk in the night? If we do that, there will be nothing to keep the bitter wind of winter from our backs.
And I wonder when America became afraid.
Not the reasonable reaction to actual attack. No, I mean the deep-down, nervous in our bones because we are vulnerable, everywhere, all the time.
It baffles me. When I was younger I was unaware of it. FDR said the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, and that was so much gibberish. Fear wasn't something to be afraid of, because it wasn't common. Something scares you, you deal with it and move on. The beasties under the bed... they go away (I was terrified for weeks of the creatures in the dark, it seemed, after watching [at the age of about nine], The Haunting of Hull House. I've seen it since, and it's not all that horrific, but memory still tells me that movie is terrifying, but I digress). A flashlight, and a few nights of not being killed in the night and all is right with the world.
So what was the big deal about fear?
Then came the big puch for, "Law and Order." I seem to remember campaigns about this in the past (when I was a wee tot, about the same time that movies kept me from dangling my arm between the bed and the wall) being about how tough to be on the people we caught. These days, however, it's about how to protect ourselves (or our children) from the menace that lurks in the dark. It started with carjackers, and break-in robberies (not that that's anything new, back in the days of wattle and daub houses, raiders would kick the walls down and make off with whatever they thought valuable. That's when breaking and entering was done in earnest. There I go, digressing again).
Now it's child-molesters (who can't be allowed to live too close to schools. If they live within a quarter mile they are somehow more dangerous. Me; I figure anyone who can convince a kid to walk a home with them can probably get them to hop a bus or get in a car... but that plays on fear.
Maybe it started in 1982, with the Tylenol Murders in Chicago (oddly enough I was in Chicago at the time they happened). People went nuts. Since then we've banned commercial sale of capsules, put, "tamper-proof" seals on damn near everything (which only sort of work. Someone managed to put acid into contact lens solution in Los Angeles some time back. Since I was wearing contact lenses at the time I noticed it).
It probably started in the fifties. The air-raid drill to save ourselves from "The Bomb". I can remember that dread. The first night I noticed the orange glow that was the city lights trapped by yesterdays smog, and wondering if it was Los Angeles being reduced to ash. The camping trips with my Scout Troop, on which the Troop Leader brought a small radio. We all knew it was to check the news, "just in case."
It didn't help to have a president who joked about, "The bombing starts in 15 minutes." I like a piece of black humor as much as the next guy, maybe more, but that one didn't work. That's gone now, mostly, and instead we worry about e-coli in our burgers and heart attacks from our diet pills.
But the risk of these things is small, trivial. Lightening is more likely to strike one than an event like that to have personal effect.
If it stopped there (with the nervous looks at everyone when heading into the parking lot, and the annoying seals on packets, from band-aids to chewing gum) it would be bad enough, but not something to worry about, but it's soaked into our political discourse. We have let fear become our agenda.
And it's killing us. Not, perhaps literally (though one wonders at the rates of depression) but spiritually. We have let this vague dread that something might happen to us to shape our politics. The president of the United States can get up, and with a straight face say his most important job is to "keep Americans safe," and that he will do, "whatever it takes," to bring that about.
Excuse me? I think a guy who's supposed to be the Executive of a country with 300 million people, an economy in the strangest, "recovery" or "robust condition" or whatever odd-description they are using to describe a gap between rich and poor which is so great it can be called a gulf, who has deficits so large that they surpass the idea of, "real money" atributed to Ev Dirksen.
Fear is scary stuff. I've been afraid. The short-term, breath-stopping, gut-clenching, knee-weakening, just short of bowel-loosening fear. I've also been the long-term, slow-grinding, sleep-destroying, joy-killing sort of fear. They both sucked, but you know what? Fear is the enemy there. You figure out what, if anything you can do about the thing which is actually threatening you, and you cope with it. You can shove that genie back in the bottle. He'll get out again, but fear is only dangerous when you let it be.
The White House is using fear. I don't know what they want, but what I see happening angers me (I was going to say scares me, but that's not right). Every time they turn around they are scaring us. Terror Alerts (until that nerve was so worn out it might as well be dead), terrorists (under every bed) WMD, Rogue States, fifth colunists and sleeper cells, everywhere you look is something dreadful.
And if you would only trust them that they know what it is you need to be afraid of, they can protect you.
Bullshit.
It's a emotional club, like an abusive parent who says you aren't pretty, or talented, or smart. This trope is that we don't know what to do, or how to protect ourselves. So we have to trust them. They know what's best. Looking at the record, I have my doubts.
But we've bought into it.
Gov. Tom Vilsack said Monday that Democrats risk political backlash if they object to the Bush administration's wiretapping but cannot show that Americans' civil liberties are at risk.
The Democratic governor, who is weighing a 2008 presidential bid, said the party will suffer if it continues to be perceived as weaker than Republicans on national security.
. . . "If the president broke the law, that's unacceptable. But I think it's debateable whether he did," Vilsack told Des Moines Register editors and reporters. "And I think Democrats are falling into a very, very large political trap," he said. "Democrats are not going to win elections until they can reassure people they are going to keep them safe."
From what are we being kept safe? Terrorists? Not likely. Not the way we're doing it.
"The sum of "international" and "domestic" terrorist attacks in 2005 was 3991, up 51 percent from the previous year's figure of 2639. The number of deaths that resulted from those attacks was 6872, which is 36 percent higher than the 5066 that occurred in 2004."BTC News if you follow the links to the Terrorism Analytical Data Baseof the National Counterterrorism Center, you can do lots of searcing, make spiffy graphs and see how well the whole thing has been going. There's a a lot of stuff there.
Fear has always been part of the political landscape. Fear of the other, fear of our baser nature, fear of those who actually want to do away with us.
Walt Kelly saw this, and summed it up, "We have me the enemy, and he is us." Which was a restating of Ben Franklin's answer when asked what sort of nation the Constitutional Convention had given us, "A Republic madam, if you can keep it."
FDR said, "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," and that facing a depression so widspread we called it "Great."
Al Gore quoted Eisenhower, and Justice Brandeis, President Eisenhower said this: "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America."
Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote, "Men feared witches and burnt women."
Feared witches and burnt women.
What are we afraid of? Are we burning down the house to stave off the dark dread of the beasties that lurk in the night? If we do that, there will be nothing to keep the bitter wind of winter from our backs.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 06:55 pm (UTC)Anyway, went off on a tangent there, it is interesting to think about the different ways people react to fear both individually and collectively.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 07:09 pm (UTC)Hijackings, poisoned baby-food and serial-killers are boogey-men. They ought to be in the same category as the Norsemen of Middle English Prayers, dealt with as they happen, but only used to scare children.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 07:26 pm (UTC)I really hope you can come to NY with Maia in March. It would be a lot of fun to have you here.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 07:33 pm (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 08:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-07 10:09 pm (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-08 02:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-08 02:47 am (UTC)http://www.waronterrortheboardgame.com/
no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 07:30 pm (UTC)