Fear and Loathing in the USA

So I'm thinking a lot about fear these days since much of what we see and hear in "the media" is about that of which we should be very, very "afwaid" as Elmer Fudd used to say. I'm putting "the media" in quotes because I disassociate that designation from anything remotely resembling journalism. If there's no standard, no editorial policy, it's not journalism, it's just "the media." Even some major broadcasters and publishers these days have forsaken journalism, thus qualify as part of "the media."

But rather than go off on that tangent, I'll stick to my concern about our national propensity to seek things we fear. We've gone way beyond jumping out from behind a door to scare our friends when we were kids. We've gone past screaming our way through a thrill ride at the amusement park and our love of horror movies. We've got fear on the front page, fear on the daily TV news and extra fear on radio and cable talk shows. No wonder we need drugs to help with our depression and anxiety. It's a small miracle that we get through each day without simply expiring from the fear.

Every discourse seems to devolve into what we must fear. For instance, the President proposed that all our citizens should have health care coverage. How quickly do the nay-sayers jump from scaring our pocketbooks (it will cost too much) to going for all out horror (death panels will kill Grandma)?

Or how about any of a hundred health reports that have raised alarms about the various threats to our well being, then subsequently been reported to be misleading? We do, in fact, live in a time of such an information glut that any study, however small and biased, can make its way into the public eye without benefit of context, causing anxiety and even panic for some.

I'll only briefly mention the heinous use of the WMD scare that got us into a war that has killed thousands, cost billions and resulted in an unknown advantage to peace in the Middle East or anywhere else. Like other Americans, I respect the men and women who wear our uniforms and go into harm's way, but I have grave doubts about those who send them there without demanding proper verification of what passes for intelligence.

Of course,, I realize that none of this is new. History can teach us, if only we'll allow it. We've had fearmongers from the very beginning and a number of women in Salem were the victims of early so-called Christians who used fear to burn them at the stake. And there was Father Charles Coughlin whose radio sermons of the 1920's turned into virulent political and economic attacks in the 1930's, ultimately ending when his apparent anti-Semitism was too much for his Catholic Church superiors. Meanwhile, it's reported that almost a third of Americans tuned in for his vitriol.

Fear has had its color spectrum. There was the "Yellow Peril" during the 1940's that used anger after Pearl Harbor to imprison thousands of Americans of Japanese descent, even as others served to defeat the Axis. During the "Red Scare" of the 1950's, suburban families built bomb shelters (like the one in my cousins' Atlanta basement) and schoolchildren were taught to huddle under their desks to avoid nuclear annihilation. We laugh about the foolishness of that now, but it was an effective tactic to spread fear then.

It is that fear is a well-worn tactic for manipulation that bothers me so much. My angst about this topic today was driven by an article about the Texas Board of Education group whose multi-million clout with textbook publishers allows them to rewrite history according to a narrow point of view. It's my thesis that this is based in fear of anyone "not like us" and is an attempt to disrupt any chance for acceptance of multi-culturalism in favor of that narrow interpretation of life.

So, you might ask, why the photo that accompanies today's rant? It's my whimsical look at multi-culturalism. Our cat, Mittens (now deceased), a teddy bear named Wilbur and our Shih-Tzu, Annie. They are clearly different species, speak different languages (although Wilbur is ever the strong, silent one) and yet, as the photo shows, found harmony. They could occasionally be found snuggled up together, finding safety in mutual warmth, despite their differences. Sure, Mittens and Annie liked to stage mock battles sometimes, but always ended as friends. Wilbur, less demonstrative, was always there for them. They simply don't do fear and their existences are better for it.

One of my favorite quotes of all time is from Franklin Delano Roosevelt--"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." In my view, fear is an emotion to loathe and to resist. I resolve to to speak out loud against fear. Thus, today's blog.