Nothing to Fear…
…But Fear itself?
Perhaps.
I was watching “Charlie Wilson’s War” the other night with Mister Fatman. The story of the covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan always struck me as interesting. What did strike me as weird was the fear we had of communism. Fear of an economic system? the mid boggles, but that is another discussion for another day.
I remember in the 80’s the paraliyzing fear I had of Nuclear war. Prenitz forget me not (yeah.,.Raygun) kept the constant fear of the red phone, red button and ICBM clearly ingrained in my 10 year old mind. I was terrified of Nuclear War and would even have nightmares about it. When Red Dawn came out, I vowed to fight back, too. (Wolverines!)
As I got older, I started to have a strong desire to visit Russia. I wanted to see if there was a kid on the other side who was just as afraid of us as I was of them. When the Berlin wall fell I remember saying, “Well, I guess Russia isn’t far behind” and sure enough, it wasn’t. After it became “Russia” and not the USSR, I specifically asked my US studies teacher “Who are we going to be afraid of now?”
Well, the 90’s had no clear boogie man. Unless, of course, you count the Cleanis. I mean…Republicans were terrified of the cleanis! After that whole debacle, we still had no clear boogie man.
Until, of course, 9/11.
The fear of Mooslims has really gotten out of hand. I know now that the desire to destroy them stems from a complete misinterpretation and misrepresentation by those who are invested heavily in your healthy fear of brown people who aren’t *GASP* Christians! They play off this fear and appeal to the deepest racism that lives in even those who claim that they are NOT RACISTS!!! (I mean, they have a black friend and an asian friend, Right?)
This fear has started to manifest itself even more frequently. The “Obama is a mooslim because his middle name is Hussein” being the craziest. The irrational fear of someone other than a rich white man being in charge of this country has taken hold those who swear it’s not because he’s *GASP* a black man, it’s because his Dad was a Mooslim. These are the same people who state that his Christian pastor was uncool, but yet…he’s a mooslim and will kill babies, dammit. Because, you know, Mooslims eat babies for breakfast.
That, of course, is the most extreme example of wingnut fear. Lesser examples aren’t out of their own fear, but the desire to perpetuate the fear of the Brown man so they can continue to wage war against them and profit from it. Questioning Obama’s patriotism and commitment to war, for example.
There are far too many examples out there to back track on chronicalling it. I’ve decided, however, to start highlighting this and making people aware that their fear has consumed them. Most of them are hopeless cases, though.
July 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm
As to being terrified of an economic system–these appeals to fear only work as long as the Thing Terrifying Us is kept vague and scary and inflated.
Same theory is at play today. As long as we’re afraid of Terror, we won’t notice that the terrorists are mostly either a) radicals with strong anti-Western sentiment or b) recruits from places where people are poor and powerless and desperate. If we made a push for reforms to help those in group b, group a would find themselves in a world not safe for them.
But that would involve admitting the true nature of the problem, rather than trying to Scare the Living Fuck out of people all the time. So we know how likely that is…