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Is Fear Going to Work for Bush Again?
"Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists," said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "They have spent years taking Roosevelt's notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear." Republicans manipulate us with fear. Democrats free us from fear, following in the footsteps of the iconic liberal, FDR.
Really? Let's check a few facts.
First, Roosevelt never said "We have nothing to fear." He said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror." It's a common mistake. Lots of people like the sound of "We have nothing to fear." They'd love to believe it.
But FDR never would have said that. He always told the voters they had something to fear. He spent his political life naming those sources of fear -- only occasionally was it "fear itself" -- and convincing the public that he was tough enough to stand up to the terrors and defeat them.
As a young state legislator in New York, FDR had hardly any positive program. He made his name fighting against the evil power brokers of Tammany Hall. By the time he became president, of course, the enemy was the depression. If FDR had said, in that first inaugural address, that the U.S. had nothing to fear, no one would have believed him. When he said the only thing to fear was fear, no one took him literally. Everyone knew what they were really afraid of: poverty.
And FDR's famous speech was a stirring call to arms against this new enemy, a plea to treat the depression "as we would treat the emergency of a war." He was already skilled at the language of warfighting. He had learned it from an expert, his revered Democratic mentor, Woodrow Wilson,.
FDR also learned from Wilson that the first casualty of war is truth, and the second is civil liberties. To gain public support for an unpopular war, Wilson mounted the largest propaganda effort the federal government had ever seen. To win the war, Wilson and his administration appropriated unprecedented power for the federal government -- including the power to throw people in jail for writing or speaking out against the war (made legal by the Espionage Act and Sedition Act). Wilson's success taught Roosevelt that the art of manipulating public opinion was essential to being a great president. No one ever did it better than FDR.
Again, his first inaugural address is fine evidence. Roosevelt said he would fight the depression just like he would wage a war. And if Congress didn't give him what he wanted, he would ask Congress for "broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe." Here he was threatening to become a virtual dictator, and even the arch-conservative Chicago Tribune applauded: "President Roosevelt's inaugural strikes the dominant note of courageous confidence."
But how much confidence can you create when you build your whole program around a negative, fighting against "unreasoning, unjustified terror"? That's the question Rahm Emanuel raised. Certainly the Republicans try to present themselves as the great American warriors against terror. They forget that the real terror we have to fear is our own unjustified feelings of terror, which far exceed the reality of the threat we face.
But if Rep. Emanuel wants us to believe that the Republicans are the only purveyors of fear-based politics, he's forgotten how FDR ramped up American's unjustified terror in the late 1930s. Even before Germany invaded Poland, Roosevelt was conjuring up images of the Nazis conquering South America and sending their bombers to destroy New Orleans and Kansas City, adding that the Japanese had designs on conquering the Western hemisphere too. Although no foreign army was closer than 3,000 miles away, he told Americans that the Germans and Japanese were "gangsters and bandits" trying to break into their homes and murder them. He wielded those frightening images so skillfully that most Americans were ready to support war well before Pearl Harbor was attacked.
Once the U.S. was in the war, Roosevelt remembered the other lesson he had learned from Wilson. He played on the nation's terrors to abridge civil liberties on a scale that makes the Bush administration look something like the ACLU. The internment of the Japanese was the archetypal example, though only the most egregious of many. As crazy as it seems today, when all the Japanese-Americans were either locked up in concentration camps or shipped overseas to fight for the USA, most white Americans probably did feel safer.
So Democrats as well as Republicans have played the fear card. They still do. The leading Democratic candidates for president all want us to believe that somehow the war will be brought to an end while tens of thousands of U.S. troops remain in Iraq indefinitely -- to fight terror, of course, and to be a bulwark against the specter of chaos that is supposed to terrify us. Like FDR, they craft their political message around the public's terror. Unlike FDR, though, they don't acknowledge that the unjustified terror that plagues us most is our own.
But perhaps the Democrats follow in FDR's footsteps not out of belief (no one knows what they really believe, just as even the best historians can't figure out what he believed), but out of common political sense. They see one unmistakable fact: The appeal to fear works. In the last month the Bush administration has turned the tables on antiwar Democrats, who are now running for political cover by embracing half-measures that offer no real hope of ending the war.
The conventional wisdom says the hawks are flying higher because of all the good news coming out of Iraq: We are turning the tide, light at the end of the tunnel, etc. But with all the bad news that still flows from Iraq, there's no compelling reason to believe the new rosy scenarios -- unless you want to. Enough people want to, it seems, that the political tide is beginning to turn.
Why? Because it gives them a way to accept the larger framework of Bush's war story: If we don't fight them there, they will follow us and attack us here. It's FDR's New Orleans and Kansas City scenarios all over again. The great unjustified terror now is that if we let down our guard in Iraq, chaos will erupt that will soon engulf not just the Middle East, but our homeland. Like the fear of Japanese-Americans in World War II, it doesn't matter how crazy it seems to thoughtful observers. What matters is how real the terror is that grips the average American. That terror drives many to grasp at any shreds of good news, any reason to justify continuing the war.
So this fall we'll have to endure the spectacle of the two major parties fighting to see who is better, not at fighting terror abroad, but at cultivating terror here at home. While we watch, it's worth remembering that all of them, Republican and Democrat alike, are still walking in the shadow of FDR.
Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder and author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin. Email: chernus@colorado.edu
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18 Comments so far
Show AllThe only thing I fear is the steady drip, drip, drip of our blood and treasure going to fight 'them' over there (just where UBL wants us) rather than making peace on the earth.
Connected to fear and our current situation, most Common Dreams readers probably know this Hermann Goering quote, but it is worth repeating: "Naturally, the common people don't want war, but after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
The only thing we have to fear is lying criminal politicians and corporate empire.
Yep!
And just look at the ratcheting up of bad publicity about Iran. Talk about a war-drumming circle!!!
If you liked Iraq, you'll love Iran.
They've created a very fickle audience during the Reagan years. We can tolerate scandal after scandal after scandal, corruption heaped upon corruption. The upshot: we forget easily. We may even forgive easily.
So they'll clearly need another reminder to get Americans back onboard with the mission, some reminder that we're not there for Empire, oil, Israel, the m.i.c. or somesuch.
When it does happen there will be that lingering doubt -- who really provoked it?
A very mature summation of the Democratic party. If only others on CD were so.
All true, but it could be argued that what FDR was actually trying to warn about was the debilitating results of "unfocused" fear, fear that has no concrete cause or target. Fear, the emotion, is one of the most important warning/defense mechanisms evolution has delivered and cannot simply be turned off, nor should it be. The definition of courage is the acceptance of fear, not the avoidance of it. Fearing poverty isn't "bad" if it motivates one to find a way out.
A country with the mightiest military on the planet fearing a tiny bunch of "terrorists" to the point where they are willing to shred their own Constitution - that's the kind of fear FDR was warning about.
Ira doesn't explain how safe people felt when FDR was president. I was in the SEABEES in Manila in WWII but FDR didn't cause me to fear. The Japs did. I felt like million's of the so called Greatest Generation we were fighting to save the world and had been attack. We didn't just start bombing a helpless country using lies and telling the people we were going to free them and then turn around and destroy their country as moron Bush has done in Iraq.I'm really not afraid of anything but I worry about this most criminal administration preaching fear to people who will believe their lies and who are for leaving our troops in Iraq to die for nothing except Bush/Cheney's greed(oil)and revenge.I don't understand how a country as great as our's was, can let a tyrant and a fool like Bush and Cheney destroy our constitution and evedrop,spy and read our emails and we aren't impeaching them and trying them as war criminal's.It didn't happen in my generation but we had strong democratic leaders and even some republican's stood up against Richard Nixon when he tried some of the things Bush is getting away with.When you have an idiot like Mitch McConnell and spineless democrats like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi who took impeachment off the table the country goes to hell and a pig like Bush gets away with murder and nothing's done.I feel sorry for this generation if they don't wake up and elect some strong democrats if there are any left and never vote for a loser like GWB or Mitch McConnell or 99% of of the rightwing republicans.It's people like Ira who try to tear down one of our greatest presidents that help get us in the mess we are in today along with Fox News,ABC,CBS, NBC and PBS who have given the creep and this administration a free ride. They are the reason -that many people still believe that Saddam and AL Qaeda worked together to cause 9/11 which any senseable person knows isn't true,Saddam hated AL Qaeda.I do believe you can fool some of the people all of the time. What a shame
I sometimes think that our politicians and this admin have managed the near impossible - to fool all the people all the time.
I'll belive this is not true when people start conducting massive sitdowns and refuse to work to support this ignominy.
Pardon me. The Nazis and the Japanese imperialists were "gangsters and bandits". On that FDR was correct. Fifty million people died in WWII. Howdy Doody didn't do that.
Tyranny has many masks. Let's not fool ourselves. This was a hands on nation, no matter its faults. It is becoming less and less so. We live from our couches. Vote from our couches. Debate from our couches. We argue with the tv or computer screen. The debate is no longer taken to the street or the factory floor. Dissatisfaction is at an all time high, those in power at an all time low. Tyranny fills that sort of void. Bush knows it. He doesn't care about polls. Tyrants never do.
You cannot fool all of the people all of the time but as long as you can fool 51 percent of the people all of the time then that's all that matters and democracy becomes a farce.
You may only need to fool about 25-40% of them, and have the mainstream media concoct the remaining percentage to make it 51%.
clyde,
I empathize with you greatly. My grandfather fought in WWII and died before I was born (not from the war). My father and uncles all enlisted into various branches. I nearly joined AF ROTC myself. There is great honor in serving one's country on a mission that that makes sense. One of the greatest damages the Reagan/Bush I/Bush II epoch has done to our country is a great smear against honor. Both the feeling that Americans have toward its own government, as well as our image abroad. How did we ever tolerate these scoundrels? If Jefferson were alive today he'd probably put most of D.C. out to pasture.
The only fear we really need to fear is... our becoming afraid of our own freedoms. To a prince, the constitution may be just a piece of paper but not to us. The constitution is us. Somebody tell that prince... Americans have NEVER wanted...kings. The constitution...our constitution, if not his... guarantees that.
However...at the moment...America is afraid...of failure. That's our nameless fear. We messed up and after we realized it that we can't fix it. We are afraid that we failed at what we did. America fail? That's what we are afraid to face and our politicians admit. Bush and Co have made a catastrophic mess of things and we all are afraid to face just how much.
On the other hand, you can fool a surprisingly large percentage of the people far more often than any of them will care to admit publicly. A third agrees with everything. A third will agree with some things and disagree with those same things depending on how the question is framed and a third would disagree with everything but nobody asks them the questions.
With the aid of a woefully uncritical press, all you have to do is make daily adjustments to the rolling official tale via proxy talking heads invited to interviews to relate carefully framed 'clarifying' statements! Unavoidable bad news immediately gets obsfucated under a barrage of positive spin till it all gets blurred into the whole and the sides settle down as before, little wiser for confusing messages and accounts.
Despite the evidence, our bombastic cowboy prince tells the Aussies 'we are kicking ass'. Never once in any of the articles printed here did I read any Aussie's response to hearing Bush make that claim. Given their tradition of outspokenness, one can only assume that many of the responses were unprintable. Just like many of the responses would be unprintable if Bush walked up to a street full of typical americans and made that claim to us. You wouldn't be able to print those responses either. So we aren't asked either.
But the fact that the Aussies' comments weren't printed actually does help fool a third of us who actually do believe whatever they read...and those who CHOOSE to believe what they read...anyway. If you want to believe Bush is kicking ass then you will be happy to hear him say that.
Curiously ...those who most believe what they read... are usually the ones who are most asked to give their opinion about it... by the people who wrote what was read. Odd coincidence that?
A third which never asks questions. The middle third asks questions about everything but never has the answers. The remaining third has answers but they never get asked the questions.
The law of thirds? A third of us has it wrong, a third has it right and a third of us isn't sure which one to believe. On an issue, a third are republican, a third are democrat and a third will admit to neither. Thirds.
The law of thirds is only a general rule. Basically just yes, no and maybe. Unless you add fear. We are afraid of different things and as a nation, we all share some fears in common but now with all the fears in the world, Bush's inept mess has made them all far worse. We are becoming afraid of that since it has kept on happening. So fear is getting easier to come by all the time because all around us, we feel afraid that things aren't getting better. Fear.
They target their spin to link it with fear for this reason. Lots of fear about to tap into on a variety of issues. It becomes a habit, the standard receipe when framing an issue.
We have fear these days. One very big one. Failure. Things don't seem to have worked out like we thought and we don't have a way to define ourselves as failing. If nothing else we fear facing our failure even if we do come up with a way to define America failing. This is America! We can't fail! How could that be? We do not have a word for America failing at something. We can discuss it in retrospect. America failed in Vietnam etc. but not while it was happening.
FDR said that oft quoted line, encouraging us NOT to have unreasoning fear. With apologies to FDR, that was then. These days... the Bush administration has ENCOURAGED us to fear. I guess fear is a habit we are made to get used to?
I think we have only one fear that we truly need to fear in this country ... and that is of us ...Americans... ourselves becoming afraid of our own constitutional rights and freedoms. If we lose them, we will soon lose everything else that was built on them. We lose America.
The only fear we really need fear ... is of us becoming afraid of our own freedoms.
If they succeed in making us fear,
American freedoms long held so dear?
We'll not long have those freedoms,
that much is clear! Fear that.
There was little doubt that General Petraeus would promote the White House's warmongering and fear-mongering agenda in his testimony. Somewhat less certain is how members of Congress will now respond to it. From a psychological perspective, such strategies often "work" because we fail to confront them with cogent and uncompromising counter-arguments. Resistance is especially difficult when the warmongers target our core concerns about personal and collective vulnerability, along with related concerns regarding injustice, distrust, superiority, and helplessness. I apply this analysis to the Bush administration's war in Iraq—and its possible plans for an attack on Iran—in a 10-minute online video entitled "Resisting the Drums of War." The video examines ten warmongering appeals and counterarguments against them. It's available for viewing HERE.
This is one of the most historically illiterate pieces I've read in a long time. I don't know what Mr. Chernus studies at Boulder, but if it includes Europe and Asia between the wars he has some problems -- and if it doesn't, it should. I'm well aware that Franklin Roosevelt was not without flaw, the internment of Japanese Americans was shameful (as the Supreme Court ultimately acknowledged) -- but the "frightening images" that Chernus says Roosevelt "wielded . . . so skillfully that most Americans were ready to support war well before Pearl Harbor was attacked" probably did not seem like "images" to the people in China (territorial losses to Japan began in 1931), the Sudetenland, Czechoslovakia, Spain, Poland, Hungary -- or even Britain. Does Mr. Chernus truly believe that there was no good reason to be "ready to support war well before Pearl Harbor was attacked"? This makes Bush and his colleagues seem informed and coherent by comparison
Americans are the quintessential "deniers," so it should be no surprise that so many want to believe "the new rosy scenarios" put out by Bush and his Republican fiends. The Congress was/is in denial about what Bush would do with all the war and spying powers it gave him; the public is in denial about how things are going in Iraq and whether Bush will attack Iran; and the Democrats are in denial about how much their base detests them for allowing Bush to literally get away with murder. Given that the US is the most religious country in the world, it's no surprise that such a high level of denial exists. People who believe in imaginary superpowers, virgin births, the rising dead, and the pearly gates are certainly not reality-oriented. Too bad their fantasies have to become our nightmares.
At the heart of many people including myself, folks just wanted Saddam gone. That is why the line about getting rid of him still works. Now, there were many better ways of getting rid of him rather than an outright invasion, but that would not have allowed them to grab the oil.