"....Fear Itself"

I try to live by the notion that I should approach issues or problems from a position of rational thought. I try to apply reason and observation to the world around me as I search for ways to make sense of things. But, my observations of world events and the our collective response to the issues of the day doesn't square well with a rational approach. The title of this essay is "...Fear Itself", which is of course, is a reference to the famous phrase Franklin D. Roosevelt used in his first inaugural address to the nation as he was about to embark on fixing the greatest financial calamity our country had ever known. He told the country, "the only thing we have to fear- is fear itself". Of course there were many things to fear besides fear itself, but there was a strong message for disheartened Americans in his words. He was telling the country to have hope and not give in to fear. He became an inspiration to his fellow Americans and our greatest President.



I wish we lived in a time when we could find inspiration in words like those again. Instead we live in a time when fear is purposefully being foisted upon us for political gain. Fear is always close to it's natural partner- blame. I don't believe I have ever seen a time in the course my life when the politics of fear and blame have been so blatantly in play as they are today. Examine any issue and you will find politicians who are all too ready to turn away from rational thought or scientific facts and revert to the tactics of fear and blame, not as a last resort, but as the weapon of first choice to win our political favor. We are very near another mid-term election to return a Congress that has grievously failed us for the last six years. And in spite of their continuous failure they refuse to face their own failure, and stubbornly cling to the politics of fear and blame.




It would be polite and much less challenging to the rational mind to shrug our shoulders and say, "both parties are at fault". It is somehow soothing to cast all the players as the hapless, talentless, buffoons caught in the "system" in Washington D.C. It would be easier to just say, it's the "culture" of Washington that's to blame. But that would not be intellectually honest. I believe that an honest appraisal of why government isn't working today rests almost entirely with the Republican Party. They have made it their stock and trade to use fear and blame to render the government unworkable, ineffective, and in many ways-useless. It should come as no surprise though. They vowed to do just that when President Obama took office and they have been true to their word.




Let's examine a few of the bigger issues of the day and apply a bit of rational thought to the problems in contrast to the Republican messaging. Start with ISIL, the latest in a line of Muslim boogieman we are told to fear. We find ourselves seemingly caught in a never-ending war stance in the Middle East. ISIL is a natural outgrowth of our actions there. The much smarter of the Presidents Bush knew when it was time to get out. After reclaiming Kuwait and crippling Saddam he got out. He did not dismantled an entire country leaving a huge void in a country where we were not wanted and that we could not hold. The younger President Bush was not nearly so wise. He used the ultimate fear and blame scenario. Following the horrific and shocking events of 9-11 he capitalized on the fear and uncertainty of those events to fulfill an agenda that was unconnected to the events of 9-11. He started the wrong war in the wrong country and destabilized the entire region. It only makes sense that a group like ISIL would emerge. Rather than look at the actual reasons for the mess, the Republican party has somehow decided that President Obama is entirely at fault for withdrawing our troops in Iraq and not going to war in Syria. Remember that we elected this President on the promise he would not prolong war in that part of the world. Let's not forget that we did not want the US in any more wars there. That was the case right up to the time two American journalists were beheaded. When those images hit the Internet and the news shows, the fear and blame game went into high gear. Suddenly these beheadings became the battle cry for more war and an excuse to stop examining policy decisions. My rational side tells me that we are just reacting with emotion and fear. My rational side says that we didn't get so indignant when Assad killed a hundred thousand people in Syria. My rational side says we don't really care that our friends the Saudi royal family conducts weekly public beheadings; so maybe we should question why these horrible things are enough to send us back into war now. Our rational selves won't go there because we have succumbed to the Republican fear and blame machine that will use any issue to make President Obama look bad and be blamed, no matter how inconsistent or disconnected those reactions are to reality.



When an intruder made it over the fence and into the White House the fear and blame crowd in the Republican Party immediately held Congressional hearings. Congress was indignant that this President could be so lax as to manage the Secret Service so poorly.  It was fairly transparent that that their indignation wasn't over concern for the Obama family, as much as it was another opportunity to be critical of the President. My rational mind knows the Secret Service should not be toyed with for political reasons- so my rational mind asks why we didn't blame President Reagan for his mismanagement of the Secret Service when they allowed him to be shot. But the politics of fear and blame knows no bounds when it comes to this President. The Republicans will even politicize the Secret Service to spread fear and blame, though it has never been done before.




The crisis de jour is the Ebola scare. No other (non-crisis) crisis more symbolizes the politics of fear and blame more than this one. Yes, the world has a real problem Ebola that needs to be addressed rationally using our best scientific reasoning and experience at disease control- and in spite of all the panic we are actually doing so. But listen to the politics being thrown around by the Republican party in Congress and on the campaign trail. We saw the Ebola crisis building in Africa for several months. There was no political will in the country or the Congress to anything about it. We have known about doctors and other health care workers contracting the illness for some time. But when one person from Liberia came here, became ill and died the fear and blame apparatus went into high gear- not because the science of this illness told us this was cause for panic, but because the know-nothing Republican politicians saw another opportunity to use this issue to spread fear and blame a month before a mid-term election.



 Our medical technology is the most capable one in the world. And let's face facts- in a country of nearly 320 million people; one death (a visitor from west Africa)  and two other domestic infections (where the two sick people are now completely well) should not be a reason to go into full-blown panic. But the fear mongers saw their chance and they took it. They ignored the science and spun incredibly wild scenarios wherein the entire country would be infected in weeks. And it only followed that this would all be the fault of a President who played golf while personally failing to be at every airport testing every traveler for Ebola. They forgot that President Reagan had over twenty thousand deaths occur before he would even acknowledged the AIDS epidemic. They forget that over 13 thousand Americans die from gun violence every year but our Congress will do nothing about it- and in fact have blocked us from having a Surgeon General because the nominee dared to say 13 thousand deaths is a health issue. According to the Republican party two sick (heroic) nurses is an emergency- but 13 thousand dead every year is not. The lengths that these fear mongers will go to literally lay everything at the feet of this President and ignore  their own hypocrisy challenges all reasonable thought.



I know most of us have heard the fear mongers suggesting the most far-fetched theories about Ebola. Last week I heard Republican Congressional candidates suggesting that ISIL terrorists would purposely become infected with Ebola, slip over our borders and mass infect America. They got a twofer- ISIL irrational panic AND Ebola irrational panic in one convenient package. Every medical expert in the world has told us that you cannot contract this terrible disease unless you are in direct contact with a person's bodily fluids when they are actively displaying serious symptoms; yet just the other day in an effort to spread the fear Republican Peter King of New York said, "we don't know how it is transmitted." Yes we do! But,  we have allowed the fear-spreading politicians and a willing corporate press to continue spreading lies. The motives are obvious and they fly in the face of well settled issues in the medical community.



There are things we need to fear. Unfortunately the real threats to our security, and our national needs are being completely neglected by a Republican led House of Representatives and Senate Republicans that will apply the filibuster for everything. The Republican party has decided to do nothing and they have set the record (quite literally) for doing nothing. Immigration reform: nothing. Climate Change: nothing. Income inequality: nothing. A Republican health care policy: nothing. Long-term Unemployment relief: nothing. A Jobs Bill; nothing. Women's wage inequality: nothing. Women's health care: nothing. Even while many of our allied countries met in Parliament to debated a response to ISIL, our Congress went on vacation with no debate, no nothing. (By the way, while they get face time on the news complaining about the all the crisis in the world, they are still on a two-and-a-half month long vacation)  The Republican party has made an art form of sitting on the sidelines and obstructing progress while at the same time offering nothing to the American people but complaints about a President they had no intention of working with from day one. If any of us behaved that way in our workplaces we would be fired in a heartbeat.



Next week this country will go to the polls to elect the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate. Most polls suggest the Republicans will hold the House and probably win control of the Senate. My rational mind asks why? What has this Party done except get in the way of progress, attempt to limit access to health care, hinder people of color and in poverty from voting, actively stunt the economy, ignore science and medical experts, shut down the government, neglect their jobs, and generally create dysfunction in government? Republicans in Congress have a 72% unfavorable rating. Congress as a whole has a 9% approval rating. With those well-deserved numbers my rational mind cannot understand why Republicans can expect to win next week- but it looks like they will. The only thing that makes sense to me is that they want us to vote out of fear- and most who will turn out will ablige them.  The very thing FDR asked us to reject is the actual game plan for the Republicans. My only hope is that people come out in large numbers and speak up for the kind of government they really want. My hope is that they will use real judgment and rational thinking in making important decisions and not be swayed by the fear mongers and the know-nothings who prey on fear. We can be better and smarted than to give in to fear itself.



Thanks for looking in.