November 5, 2018--What Are We So Afraid Of?

It is not inappropriate, the day before the most consequential midterm election in memory--perhaps in all of American history--to explore the power of the defining political issue--Fear.

This time around, we really do have nothing but fear itself to fear.

Fear is the central theme, the emotion being evoked by the defining presence in the campaign--Donald Trump, who has nationalized the process. 

Rather than this election being about Congress, which by definition is what midterm elections are--they occur midway through a president's term of office, usually his first term, by its nature it is about 435 separate House of Representatives and this year 35 separate Senate contests--Trump has turned it into something different, something unprecedented. 

Because of Trump's behavior--daily or twice daily rallies, endless political tweets and interviews--this midterm is a version of a presidential reelection campaign. In this case, Trump is seeking something resembling reelection (or minimally a vote of confidence) after fewer than two years in office. 

He has absconded with the electoral process and has tried to make it all about him. 

I suspect he has succeeded. 

Instead of the Democrats having an outside chance to pick up two or three Senate seats (and thus regain the majority), as a result of Trump's endless campaigning the Republicans are likely to flip a couple of seats and thus hold onto the majority, and rather than a Blue Wave that would see Democrats flipping 50 seats in the House, it looks as if 30 is more likely (which thankfully is just enough to regain the speakership).

This is the conventual wisdom. But I worry since this also feels like deja-vu all over again, Remember how "everyone" thought Hillary would easily defeat Trump in 2016? 

Retrospectively we know that fear then was also something Trump was perversely skilled at stoking.

This time, he has focused on the alleged threat represented by a so-called "caravan" of Central Americans heading north through Mexico toward the U.S. border. Taking his talking points from Fox News, Trump, without foundation, tells those attending his rallies that not only do the marchers include "very tough people, "M-13 gang members, but also how many are infected with exotic diseases, including leprosy (which though not easily contagious sounds very frightening and, for the Evangelicals in his base, is the disease most frequently mentioned in the Bible).

Caravans of asylum-seekers are not new. There have been any number of them over the years. Most recently, in April, on Trump's watch, 1,500 headed toward San Diego. About 300 made it. Only 14 were arrested. Almost all others were mothers with young children. Objectively not much of a threat but rich fodder for demonologizing.

The current caravan is estimated to be larger. Still 800 miles from the border, based on the April numbers perhaps 700-800 will reach U.S. Customs at about Christmas time. Impartial observers report that as in the past most are mothers with children.

Nonetheless, this minimalist threat is enough to incite Trump's most fervent followers. His order to send up to 15,000 U.S. troops to join the 20,000 border patrol agents in defense of the border (which is illegal for the military to do) is a fearful over-deployment of resources. But it does contribute to fear about the magnitude of the threat. It is thus more a political than a tactical move. After Tuesday, no matter the results, expect this military ploy to evaporate from the headlines.

More disturbing, what has happened to us? To Americans? Why have we become so fearful? How can it be that this caravan of women and children is enough to paralyze more than a third of the population?

Have Americans who responded so bravely to real threats such as the attack on Pearl Harbor and on 9/11 the World Trade Center, become such wusses that we need the Army to protect us from women and children in flip-flops marching 1,000 miles to seek asylum?

For a depressing number of Americans the answer appears to be yes.

January 9, 2015--Charlie Hebdo

In solidarity, my plan for this morning was to publish one of Charlie Hebdo's covers in which there is a satirical image of the Prophet Mohammed.

I had a good one selected--a full face caricature of the Prophet in which he looked just like a lascivious Yasser Arafat, saying, "100 COUPS DE FOUET, SI VOUS N'ETES PAS MORT DE RIRE." ("100 lashes if you don't die of laughter.")

But just as I was about to hit the Publish button, I hesitated, spend an anguished hour thinking about what to do, and then took it down.

I was afraid that somehow an Islamist would track me down and . . .

I have never been more ashamed of myself.

September 4, 2014--Fear Itself

Reading Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, the first of Rick Perlstein's monumental trilogy of books about the contemporary conservative movement, there is this about Fred Koch, the Koch Brothers' sire, and his comrades in 1960 when they were working largely out of view to promote the conservative movement. Specifically about the role of fear in American politics:

. . . Conservatism was a conservatism of fear. They harped endlessly on the "communist income tax," how the economy would be decimated by inflation every time a worker got a raise. (Taft Republicans, joked The Nation, feared "only God and inflation.") Their scapegoats were unnamed subversives who were invisibly destroying the system from within: "I am at a lose to understand the current public attitude deflating the inflation psychology," Fred Koch wrote in a self-published pamphlet. "Perhaps it is propaganda, of which we have been fed much of late--pink propaganda, in as much as, in my opinion, Russia's first objective is to destroy our economy through inflation."  

Politically the philosophy lost when it won [my italics]: if you removed the fear of subversion by catching subversives, you ended the fear that brought you to power in the first place--although, of course, you could never catch all the subversives, for the conspiracy was a bottomless murk, a hall of mirrors, a menace that grew greater the more it was flushed out. 'The Communists have infiltrated both the Democrat and Republican Parties for many years," Koch wrote. "If we could only see behind the political scenes, I am sure we would be shocked."

Thinking about this early the other morning, I speculated that there are basically two underlying sources  from which political power derives--

Fear is one force. Real, imagined, and often, by politicians, manipulated. Recall that during the 2008 primary campaign Joe Biden, famously calling Rudy Giuliani out as a fear merchant, said that everything he says is made up of a "noun, verb, and 9/11."

When looking at the social psychological reasons why people, without coercion, will give up their freedom to authoritarian leaders, Erich Fromm in Escape from Freedom, offers evidence that they do so because they either have real things to fear (economic collapse, external military threat, discrimination) or are fear-driven in their orientation. Like the Kochs they see threats all around even when they do not in fact exist.

Progressives, on the other hand, are willing to give up some of their autonomy--freedom, if you will--for the collective good. At least the collective good as they perceive it--that no one should go homeless or hungry or untreated if they are ill. Seeking the greatest good for the greatest number is what drives them politically.

As with conservatives, there is with them also the possibility, and often the reality, of self-delusion. And they have not always been reluctant to embrace their own manipulative methods. What one may claim to be the greatest good for others is not often put to the test--asking those for whom decisions are being made if they perceive them to be in their best interest.

So, in the first instance the instinct for a version of survival drives belief and behavior and in the latter case arrogance can take hold as those with power decide for the rest of us what is supposedly in our best interest.