While commenting on my favorite website (Huffington Post), I came across a comment by a fellow poster, posting under the name of Matt7. “Matt” had reacted to a speech in the House of Representatives by Virginia Foxx (R-NC). In the short span of 1 minute and 4 seconds, Ms. Foxx had managed to speak the word ‘fear’ a whopping 7 times, about once every 9 seconds!
It set me wondering, “What is there about these times that makes fear such a potent motivator”?
Of course, that question was easily answered; September 11, 2001.
Since that day, our nation has behaved largely as a nation in fear of it’s own shadow. Virtually every issue that has been part of the national dialogue since that date has been framed in terms of ‘fear’.
Health Care Reform? Fear of ‘Socialized Medicine’.
The ‘War on Terror’? Fear of attack by Islamic radicals. (Never mind the incongruity of a ‘war’ on a concept, which is what ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’ is. And, of course it has to be presented as ‘war’, since this nation is so consumed with war as an instrument of national prerogative.)
Of course the ‘War on Terror’ was a fantastic vehicle for the previous administration to launch the most egregious assault on civil liberties that I have witnessed in all my years. The “Patriot Act” was the Trojan Horse that allowed the Executive Branch to spy/pry into every aspect of civilian life without fear of reprisal; Fourth Amendment to the Constitution be damned! Of course, if anyone, private citizen or Congressperson raised objections they would instantly be branded as ‘traitors’, their opposition was ‘treasonous’. At one point it became so ludicrous that even a private citizen’s choice of books to be withdrawn from a public library could be portrayed as having sinister design.
Some months back I read the account of one of the secret service people who guarded Vice-President Richard Cheney on the day of the 9/11 attack. He recounted how, in the basement secure bunker area designed for just such a contingency, Cheney appeared visibly shaken and constantly fearful despite the presence of the guard. As the years have gone by since that day, it has become fairly common knowledge that the Vice-President always carried a gas mask whenever he left the Vice-President’s residence. Mr. Cheney went so far as to have his residence obscured in the Google ‘Earth’ database and video files. This, then, is a man very intimately acquainted with fear. That may explain, ultimately, why he sought and received 5 deferments from military service during the Viet Nam era.
Fear, of course, is one of our most primal emotions. It can trigger the ‘fight or flight’ reflex when we encounter the unanticipated. Not only primal, but powerful, the Republican party has built it’s entire raison d’etre around fear.
Of course, just the act of change can be a fearful experience. This is what fuels the conservative message; the fear of change of the status quo.
Conversely, this can explain why many in the Democratic party seek to bring about change.
It is generally accepted that there cannot be growth except through change. Much of the Democratic party is directed toward growth, acknowledging that time marches forward, not backward and that yesterday’s comforts cannot be certain in a world that changes all around us.
One of the most iconic figures of Democratic values in the 20th century was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And, perhaps one of his most oft-repeated audio clips was, “We have nothing to fear…but fear itself”.
Even author J.K. Rowling in the famed “Harry Potter” stories put forth the adage that “Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself”.
Perhaps that is why the current Republican strategy to thwart meaningful health care reform finds such resonance by branding the reform as “ObamaCare” rather than ‘health care’. We all know what health care is. Many of us do not know much about President Obama and so, by branding health care reform in such manner, the Republicans seek to capitalize on fear of Barack Obama, as he is a relative newcomer to the national scene. In this case new represents change and thus departure from the comfort of the familiar, the status quo.
There can be little doubt that the motive of the major insurance companies in the health care reform dialogue is to thwart any kind of meaningful reform; as that would negatively impact the insurer’s bottom line-profits, in a word.
Now that we know the motivation of the insurance industry, it is not a great leap of reason to understand why they would seek to utilize fear to paralyze meaningful reform.
Preventing genuine reform means an end to the exorbitant seven-figure bonuses the heads of these firms can collect from their legalized extortion under the guise of providing insurance services to the ill.
In a recent hour-long special commentary on health care reform, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann put it most succinctly:
Death is the issue! How can we not be unified against death? I want my government helping my father to fight death! I want my government to spend taxpayer money to help my father fight to live and I want my government to spend taxpayer money to help your father fight to live! I want it to spend my money first on fighting death. Not on war! Not on banks! Not on high speed rail!
Spend our money, spend my money, first: on the chance to live!
You can find Keith Olbermann’s full commentary here. I suggest you read it. Then, think again about FDR’s famous words. No doubt if you are over the age of 25, you have heard them replayed at some point in time, “We have nothing to fear…but fear itself”.
I believe that it was John Donne who once wrote, “A coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man, only once”.
So, what are we afraid of?
