Be Afraid, America

I grew up during the “Cold War” in the fifties and sixties. The threat facing us was not one guy wearing explosive underwear, but thousands of nuclear weapons on intercontinental ballistic missiles pointed at us. I do not remember the nation being steeped in this eternal miasma of fear that we are in today.

I cannot speak from personal experience as to the Cuban missile crisis, since I was at sea during that episode and Navy sailors are not much given to cowering under their bunks, especially those serving on diesel electric submarines. But friends and family report that, while there was tension and some anxiety, the nation was less fearful then than it is today, more ten full years after the unrepeated events of 9/11.

The United States faces nothing whatever which poses a threat to us as a national entity. None. Zero. Nada. Zilch. I don’t remember who said it, but it is absolutely true that, “They can knock down some of our buildings; they can kill some of our people; but they cannot harm us as a nation; only we can do that to ourselves.”

And with our leadership, past and present, preaching endlessly of the violent steps we must take to protect ourselves from a national threat which does not exist, we are doing precisely that; destroying the nation that our founding fathers created. We are doing what terrorists cannot do; destroying our freedom.

Whatever else you have, living in fear is not freedom, and we are living in fear. This Democratic president is no less a fear monger than his Republican predecessor was, and in fact he is more so. He not only keeps us afraid of the guy in the explosive underwear, but he makes afraid of his opposition political party. A major aspect of his reelection campaign is the terrible things that will happen if Republicans gain control.

And he is selling that message. I was in a conversation on a political blog with some interesting and thoughtful people the other day, who were trying to persuade me that I must support the Democratic Party. These were not, by any means, Obamabots; far from it. But they were literally terrified of what would happen to this nation if Republicans take control of the White House; some even fearful that democracy itself would not survive.

Not since Joe McCarthy has anyone so successfully turned America against itself; made Americans distrust and fear each other to this degree. Republicans are running a foul and filthy campaign against Obama himself, but Obama is drumming up fear and distrust of the Republican clan in its entirety. Never before, in fifty years of following campaign rhetoric, have I seen such a pervasion of abject fear of the opposition as I hear from liberals today. More than anyone we have the Fear Monger In Chief, Obama to thank for that.