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Dear Auntie Pinko,
A new video appeared reportedly from Osama bin Laden. Each time he makes a video, media outlets spout that this might be a "boost for Bush". My question is: how? How does Osama, who orchestrated the attacks on the USA almost five years ago and still is not captured, help Bush's ratings? Shouldn't new videos from Osama show how much of a failure Bush is at foreign war?
Ryan
Fort Smith, AR
Dear Ryan,
It does seem counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Nevertheless, the media outlets who have consistently handed out this analysis of events have often been right, in the past. They are aware that the power of fear trumps the power of logic every time. The shock of the 9/11 attack was traumatic for Americans on many levels, but perhaps the most fundamental was the visceral fear evoked by its unprecedented nature. With the exception of Hawaiians, no Americans in living memory have experienced an attack on US territory by a foreign agent that has resulted in so much death and devastation. The very surprise and unfamiliarity of it, coupled with the powerful video images and the emotional experience of shared horror, made a profound impact on us.
The facts that more Americans die on the highway from drunk drivers every year (a LOT more!) millions die from preventable illness, etc., can’t begin to put this into perspective. It was the sudden, shocking nature of such an unprecedented attack, and the helpless horror of watching it unfold in slow motion, that burned the fear so deep. And that fear was a veritable gift to Mr. Bush and his administration, who have been using it to control us ever since. In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Americans needed someone to trust, and by virtue of his position, Mr. Bush was able to capitalize on that trust, making all the right promises and saying all the right things about resolve and safety and retribution.
What they aimed for was an equation that would enable them to use that trust whenever Americans’ newly-sensitive “fear” button is pushed. Use that trust to support legislative initiatives, to bypass scrutiny of policy decisions, to enable Mr. Bush and his administration to advance their agenda in a fog of uncritical compliance, because people trusted him when they were afraid. It worked extremely well.
But the diabolical aspect of the whole process is that, had Mr. Bush and his administration been worthy of trust, that’s exactly how things are supposed to work. In normal times, our government is a deliberative process, in which almost every action is subjected to intense scrutiny, debate, and criticism. It makes things painfully, maddeningly, frustratingly slow sometimes, but it keeps us from making too many hasty, boneheaded, unbalanced decisions that turn out to be costly mistakes. In an emergency, fast response is so critical that we need to risk mistakes in order to achieve short-term goals that will abate the worst of the emergency. Had a trustworthy leader been in office in the wake of 9/11 or hurricane Katrina, the fear/trust equation would have worked for America’s citizens, enabling responsible leadership to respond with speed and effectiveness, hopefully without doing too much structural damage to our normal deliberative process.
Mr. Bush and his administration, however, chose to exploit the fear/trust equation to achieve other goals, goals that had little or nothing to do with bringing Mr. bin Laden to justice, securing America’s domestic safety, or helping the people of the Gulf region avoid Katrina’s worst consequences and recover from the devastation. He chose to use the fear/trust equation to expand the power of the Executive Branch of government, hand out no-bid contracts to the business interests that support him, and pursue an unrelated vendetta at the cost of thousands of young American service personnel and an uncounted number of innocent Iraqi lives.
It has worked superbly well, Ryan, partly because of the strength of that fear/trust equation, forged in the traumatic crucible of 9/11. Every time Americans were reminded of 9/11, they were also reminded of the trust that Mr. Bush’s words evoked in the days following, and of the first flush of seeming victory as the Taliban government in Afghanistan was toppled and the al-Qaeda training camps were broken up and scattered. Those of us who never trusted Mr. Bush have a hard time understanding just how deep that trust went, and how many of our fellow-Americans really believed in Mr. Bush’s sincerity.
It has taken five years for Americans to see enough evidence of how badly Mr. Bush and his Administration have abused that trust to erode it to the point where a majority of us see Mr. bin Ladin’s continued freedom and his recorded taunts as evidence of that abuse. The same media that is operating on those old assumptions about the pervasiveness and strength of the fear/trust equation is more than a little responsible for the fact that it has taken so long for Americans to understand how thoroughly we’ve been lied to and exploited by our own leaders. It’s hardly surprising that they don’t want to acknowledge the responsibility they bear for their share in that, and it’s hardly surprising that they are continuing to operate on those assumptions. Anything else would expose their own complicity in Mr. Bush’s abuse of the public trust.
We will recover from this abuse, but the long-term damage will affect America’s ability to respond to emergencies. Will another President, more worthy of the public trust, be able to count on that trust when another man-made or natural disaster strikes? Auntie Pinko certainly hopes so, but it doesn’t look good. Thanks for your question, Ryan!
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