Be Very Afraid: The Truth(iness) is Out There

The prevailing political winds seem to be blowing nothing but fear. You take it in through your lungs and it goes straight to your brain. Wingnuts are afraid that Obama is a closet Muslim and will lead the country down the road to socialism, while lefties like me are afraid that Republicans are practically pissing themselves for the chance to trash social security and Roe v. Wade. (The difference of course being that liberal fears are totally legitimate.) Everyone’s going ape-shit over fearful speculation, imaginations are running berserk. If there were a stock market for fear futures, that would be where to put your money because it’s going to keep going up. Just the mere concept of Stephen Colbert’s “March to Keep Fear Alive” is as close to truthiness as you can get.

About the only good thing you can say about fear is that it doesn’t discriminate. It infects left and right, rich and poor. Is there any American out there who isn’t afraid, who’s truly fearless? Just send them a piece of mail with “Internal Revenue Service” in the return address and see what happens: a puddle. And I’m not talking about around the feet. Because as FDR famously said, we have nothing to fear but fear itself...and the boogeyman. Death, taxes, and now, of course, jihadists.

This invites a tangential thought: are jihadists fearless? Think also of Japan’s kamikaze pilots in WWII; each undertakes a suicide mission seemingly without fear. Why? Because the individuality I talked about last time has been subjugated to a higher cause. So why are we Americans so full of fear? Maybe because as confirmed individualists we have more self at stake. Not to mention more stuff. (That stuff’ll get ya every time...)

In a world fraught with uncertainty, this much is dead certain: if the Republicans retake the government, their agenda will be to restore the (sub)standard operating procedures of the Bush-Cheney era. And just like the WMDs in Iraq, truth and reason will become figments of the imagination. But not fear. Under that regime we’ll always be able to count on the certainty of fear.

Is this what Americans pine for?