Fear is an internal alarm – that beast chasing you is an immediate mortal threat! But fear is useless when dealing with the abstractions and nuances of modern life, where rationality is the survival skill.
· After 9/11, government fed our fear, railroading into a bloody foreign policy failure – without leaving a mark on 9/11’s true perpetrators.
· Splinter factions and fundamentalist shock troops are now equipped with tons of US ordinance we left behind.
· The ranks of ISIS are filled with Iraqi-military, after we pushed them into involuntary exile. This is lawless fundamentalism, armed and staffed by our intentionally groomed fear.
America stepped up from economic collapse to defeat history’s most advanced military and depraved political force, in World War II. Now we’re told to shudder before the “greatest threat since the Hitler’s Thousand Year Reich” – a band of desert sociopaths who, every last one of them, couldn’t fillCamden Yards.
Since 2010 (when DEFICIT!!! was the preferred panic of fearmongers)congress has cut Ebola vaccine research spending by half. They watched WallStreet loot your retirement, but *hooray!* less funding for science pimps. Political hacks will set public health policy on the fly, demanding dramatic travel boycotts that medical experts oppose, and theatrically harassing health workers; this fear response is from the fear of losing an election. Some gullible pols so fear their president, they boycott his nominations. When political grifters commandeer public health policy:
· We face the challenge of Ebola without a surgeon general.
· Vaccine research on Ebola is years behind where it could have been.
· Harassment of health workers becomes a political gimmick, and isolating the part of the world in most dire need of western expertise, as well as economic activity, hampers containment of this epidemic exactly where doing so is most critical: in western Africa.
From fear of a president’s nominees, fear of problems unaddressed by an empty office, to denial of educated expertise, so goes the nation that could once marshal resources, under a handicapped president, to defeat polio.
· We fear the virus from which one person has died in America.
· Flu kills as many as 49,000 annually, especially those without access to health care. Yet…
· The Tea-stained GOP House majority, rhetorically incontinent after the Affordable Care Act, barked through over 50 failed votes to repeal health care for tens of millions of people.
As firearms carnage mounts, our fearful/angry caucus breaks into the kindergarten bathroom dance, demanding more weapons everywhere.Elementary school shootings? Up-Arm the teachers! University slaughter? Concealed carry for campuses! Unhappy populace, jaywalking teens, you’ve watched too much“COPS”? Militarize the police! America no longer holds the lamp that lights the golden door; America twitches in fearful crouch, clutching so many guns wedon’t know which ways they’re all pointing.
Politicians sell fear because they think they’re selling to cowards. Whether telling epidemiologists to stay away (Thanks, Gov. Jindal!), birthing “democracy” in Iraq, “showing those thugs who’s in charge” our streets, or packing heat to buy a sandwich, when imagination extends only to fast, fearful responses, we hand our fate to Murphy’s bloody Law every time.
Fletcher Hall says
What is your point? Is the nation headed in the right direction or adrift and floundering? Next Tuesday may give us some answers to that basic question.
Pete Buxtun says
The best kind of irony here. Mr. Hall tells the writer of an op ed to “get to the point”. Hilarious!
Ed Plaisance says
Ahhhh….a breath of fresher air after Mr Hall’s messages of doom and gloom.
Refreshing to read an essay where not everything is Obama’s fault.
“…rhetorically incontinent…” …love that turn of phrase…better than “suffering from logorrhea”.
I read that Obamacare is extremely popular in Mitch McConnell’s home state of Kentucky…but they dare not call it that…they refer to it as Kynect…sometimes a rose by another name does smell sweeter.
James Nick says
Bravo to Mr Levy’s for a well written essay. But I have to question his opening riff on FDR’s famous quote, ie, “…fear is useless when dealing with the abstractions and nuances of modern life, where rationality is the survival skill”. Unfortunately I think Mr Hall’s short retort with all its dismissive in-your-face, we’ll-see-on-election-day smugness is a better reflection of where this country is at in these times of divisive and destructive politics that he represents.
I think it would be more appropriate to paraphrase Mark Twain, “Fear can travel half way around the world while rationality is putting on its shoes.” As reported in the Wall Street Journal yesterday (https://online.wsj.com/articles/u-s-third-quarter-gdp-expands-at-3-5-rate-1414672315), “The [third] quarter showed broad-based improvement in the U.S. economy. Business investment grew steadily. Exports showed resilience against a backdrop of slowing global growth.”. Meanwhile, the stock market soared to record levels today, unemployment is approaching pre-recession levels, and the US budget deficit is now half of what it was in the last year of the Bush administration. And we have withdrawn our troops from two futile and pointless wars.
But the Republicans have vowed that there will never, ever again, be a Democratic president like FDR that can take credit for using big government for the good of the people even if they have to take the whole country down with them. Their politics of fear, lies, obstruction, and manipulation have completely succeeded in convincing their base that President Obama is literally responsible for absolutely everything that goes wrong in the firmament. No matter what it is, it is due to Obama’s failed policies conveniently ignoring the fact that it is their unyielding six-year campaign of sabotage that has gridlocked this country. Theirs is a world of brute force, brain-stem-level, fear-invoking demagoguery and ISIS and Ebola are right in their wheelhouse. And they know that fear will trump rationality every time.
Joe Lill says
Very well said!
Another Mark Twain quote comes to mind when dealing with Mr. Hall.
“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
and,
Some Lincoln wisdom for Mr. Hall before he types another commentary.
“It is better to be thought of as a fool and remain silent than to speak and remove all doubt.”
MARY WOOD says
THANK YOU MR. LEVY. WE NEED TO HEAR THESE WORDS. I HAVE BEEN INVALIDED IN A PLACE WHERE DESPITE SEVERE INJURIES , PAIN -HOPE,COURAGE , KINDNESS ARE DEMONSTRATED ROUND THE CLOCK.- REHAB IN CHESTERTOWN
Ed Plaisance says
Thought I would share this analysis with everyone here, from my favorite analytical source, Stratfor:
https://us4.campaign-archive2.com/?u=74786417f9554984d314d06bd&id=aa297c0706&e=9bb6ada23b