The Politics of Fear in America: A Nation at War with Itself

By John W. White­head - Oct. 01, 2012

“Fear is the foun­da­tion of most gov­ern­ments.” – John Adams

Turn on the TV or flip open the news­pa­per on any given day, and you will find your­self accosted by reports of gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, cor­po­rate malfea­sance, mil­i­ta­rized police and maraud­ing SWAT teams. Amer­ica is enter­ing a new phase, one in which chil­dren are arrested in schools, mil­i­tary vet­er­ans are forcibly detained by gov­ern­ment agents because of the con­tent of their Face­book posts, and law-abiding Amer­i­cans are being sub­jected to the lat­est in gov­ern­ment spy technology.

These threats to our free­doms are not to be under­es­ti­mated. Yet even more dan­ger­ous than these vio­la­tions of our basic rights is the lan­guage they are couched in—the lan­guage of fear. It is a lan­guage spo­ken effec­tively by politi­cians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pun­dits from their cable TV pul­pits, mar­keted by cor­po­ra­tions, and cod­i­fied into bureau­cratic laws that do lit­tle to make our lives safer or more secure.

This lan­guage of fear has given rise to a pol­i­tics of fear whose only aim is to dis­tract and divide us. In this way, we have been dis­cour­aged from think­ing ana­lyt­i­cally and believ­ing that we have any part to play in solv­ing the prob­lems before us. Instead, we have been con­di­tioned to point the fin­ger at the other Per­son or vote for this Politi­cian or sup­port this Group, because they are the ones who will fix it. Except that they can’t and won’t fix the prob­lems plagu­ing our communities.

No amount of free­dom has ever been won by sit­ting back and watch­ing things play out, or by vot­ing for a cer­tain per­son, or giv­ing money to a cer­tain group. Free­dom is won through action, not just in terms of non­vi­o­lent protest or peti­tion (which are vital), but in terms of daily inter­ac­tions with friends and neigh­bors, dis­cussing the issues and how best to equip com­mu­ni­ties to deal with daily chal­lenges. Free­dom is won most effec­tively by tak­ing a stand, start­ing at the local level, whether it’s chal­leng­ing the influx of profit-driven red light cam­eras at street inter­sec­tions, tak­ing issue with a school board deci­sion that sends a mes­sage to young peo­ple that they have no rights, or demand­ing that local police de-militarize.

These small acts of rebel­lion are what win us our rights. Yet as infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy rapidly advances and mind­less enter­tain­ment pro­lif­er­ates, this type of “free” think­ing is being squelched. In the absence of indi­vid­u­als who will stand up for them­selves and their free­doms, it is all too easy for the pol­i­tics of fear to gain trac­tion. Hav­ing abdi­cated our respon­si­bil­i­ties as cit­i­zens, we have ceded power to bureau­crats and gov­ern­ment offi­cials who, with our tacit approval, con­tinue to dis­man­tle our basic rights while pro­vid­ing an illu­sion of safety and secu­rity. This lack of own­er­ship and will­ing­ness to engage in self-government on the part of the Amer­i­can peo­ple has, in turn, given rise to the rapid mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the police over the past 40 years, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of non-threatening activ­i­ties such as gath­er­ing with friends and fam­ily in the pri­vacy of one’s home for prayer and wor­ship, the sur­veil­lance drag­net which now tracks vir­tu­ally every Amer­i­can, and the gen­eral sense that we no longer have any con­trol over our government.

A per­fect exam­ple of this mas­ter­ful use of the pol­i­tics of fear to cow the pop­u­lace is the government’s War on Drugs. Reput­edly a response to crime and poverty in inner cities and sub­ur­bia, it has been the dri­ving force behind the mil­i­ta­riza­tion of the police, at all lev­els, over the past 40 years. While it has failed to decrease drug use, it has exac­er­bated social prob­lems by expand­ing America’s rapidly grow­ing prison sys­tem and allow­ing police carte blanche access to our homes and per­sonal property.

Unde­terred by its fail­ure to check drug use, the gov­ern­men­tal machine keeps chug­ging along. Con­sider that in 2011, half a bil­lion dol­lars’ worth of mil­i­tary equip­ment flowed from the mil­i­tary to local police, with another $400 mil­lion worth of equip­ment reach­ing local police by May 2012. In addi­tion to direct trans­fers of equip­ment, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment has given local police depart­ments grants total­ing $34 bil­lion since 9/11. The 50-person police depart­ment in Oxford, Alabama, for exam­ple, has acquired $3 mil­lion worth of equip­ment, includ­ing M-16s, infrared gog­gles, and an armored vehi­cle. All of these new toys lead to spe­cious SWAT team raids that evis­cer­ate the Fourth Amend­ment, accli­mat­ing us to the vision of police in jack­boots with assault rifles patrolling our streets.

Enter the War on Ter­ror, the log­i­cal end­point of con­struct­ing gov­ern­ment pol­icy based upon fear and para­noia. Marked by con­stant sur­veil­lance, tor­ture, kid­nap­ping, extra­ju­di­cial killing by our gov­ern­ment, and the result­ing loss of our basic rights, the War on Ter­ror is the cul­mi­na­tion of a men­tal­ity of fear cul­ti­vated by the polit­i­cal elite and will­ingly accepted by the Amer­i­can people.

A case in point is the cre­ation of the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS) in the after­math of 9/11. Sup­pos­edly tasked with pro­tect­ing the Amer­i­can home­land from ter­ror­ist threats, DHS has become more of a domes­tic army than a secu­rity agency. For exam­ple, in March 2012, defense con­trac­tor ATK agreed to pro­duce 450 mil­lion hol­low point rounds to be used by the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS) and its Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment (ICE) office. DHS placed another order for 750 mil­lion rounds of var­i­ous ammu­ni­tion in August 2012.

DHS is just one of many aspects of a total mil­i­ta­riza­tion of gov­ern­ment which has been tak­ing place since the 1980s and rapidly advanc­ing since 9/11. Con­sider that in August 2012, the Social Secu­rity Admin­is­tra­tion (SSA) placed an order for 174,000 rounds of hol­low point ammu­ni­tion. The SSA plans to send the ammu­ni­tion to 41 loca­tions through­out the United States, includ­ing major cities such as Los Ange­les, Detroit, and Philadel­phia, among others.

It’s unclear why the SSA would need hol­low point bul­lets, which are designed to explode upon entry into the body, caus­ing mas­sive organ dam­age. How­ever, it’s worth not­ing that DHS and SSA have already col­lab­o­rated in police exer­cises. In Jan­u­ary 2012, Fed­eral Pro­tec­tive Ser­vice offi­cers with DHS con­ducted a train­ing exer­cise at the SSA office in Lees­burg, Florida. One offi­cer car­ry­ing a semi-automatic assault rifle ran­domly checked IDs as peo­ple filed into the build­ing, while other offi­cers combed the build­ing with K-9 units. The exer­cise was part of the larger Oper­a­tion Shield, which, accord­ing to DHS offi­cials, involves fed­eral offi­cers ran­domly show­ing up to gov­ern­ment build­ings through­out the coun­try in order to test the effec­tive­ness of their secu­rity procedures.

DHS and SSA aren’t the only agen­cies beef­ing up their ammu­ni­tion stock­piles. In August 2012, the National Oceanic and Atmos­pheric Admin­is­tra­tion (NOAA), which houses the National Weather Ser­vice, requested 46,000 hol­low point bul­lets to be sent to loca­tions in Maine, Mass­a­chu­setts, New Jer­sey, and Florida, as well as 500 paper tar­gets. The NOAA later released a state­ment claim­ing that the ammu­ni­tion is intended for the Fish­eries Office of Law Enforce­ment which is entrusted to “enforce[e] laws that con­serve and pro­tect our nation’s liv­ing marine resources and their nat­ural habitat.”

The Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) and its state level coun­ter­parts are also becom­ing mil­i­ta­rized. Con­sider the increas­ingly vio­lent cam­paign against raw milk farm­ers in recent years. In April 2008, Mark Nolt, a Men­non­ite raw milk farmer, was arrested in a raid on his prop­erty involv­ing six state troop­ers and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Penn­syl­va­nia Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture. In April 2010, Dan Allyger, an Amish raw milk farmer in Penn­syl­va­nia, was sub­jected to a predawn raid con­ducted by agents from the FDA, US Mar­shals, and a state trooper.

These police exer­cises are the result of gov­ern­ment poli­cies engi­neered to max­i­mize fear and para­noia. Yet they are only pos­si­ble because of the acqui­es­cence of the Amer­i­can peo­ple to all gov­ern­ment pro­grams relat­ing to “secu­rity” since 9/11. Despite the fact that vio­lent crime rates are low, and ter­ror­ist attacks are rad­i­cally unlikely (in fact, one is more likely to die in a car wreck or be struck by light­ning than be killed by a ter­ror­ist), we are see­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies “pro­tect­ing” us by harass­ing, arrest­ing, and some­times killing our friends and neigh­bors, all in the name of secu­rity. This is the iner­tia of gov­ern­ment bureau­cracy. Cre­ated dur­ing moments of fear, such agen­cies and the cor­po­rate enti­ties that ben­e­fit from them always resist change once a cit­i­zenry gath­ers their senses and demands are made for the restora­tion of free government.

Thus, fear is the root of the prob­lem. The only thing which will improve our present con­di­tion is the tam­ing of our fear. We must act on courage. Courage to think dif­fer­ently, speak loudly, and chal­lenge directly the sys­tems which we know to be unjust. Vot­ing will do pre­cious lit­tle to cir­cum­vent the pol­i­tics of fear which Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans use to jus­tify their attacks on our per­sonal lib­er­ties. As author Mark Ver­non has noted, “…the pol­i­tics of fear plays on an assump­tion that peo­ple can­not bear the uncer­tain­ties asso­ci­ated with [risk]. Pol­i­tics then becomes a ques­tion of who can bet­ter deliver an illu­sion of control.”

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.