What Part of Home of the Brave Don't You Understand, Mr. Bush?

[McCamy Taylor]

In 1941, in his annual address to Congress, FDR made a case for greater involvment in the war against Germany. He described the four essential American freedoms--freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear---for which America was fighting against fascism. http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/od4freed.html The fourth freedom echoes back to his first inauguration speech, delivered during the depression, when he said "So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory." http://www.historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/

Compare FDR's style of governing with that of George W. Bush. While I have no way of counting how many times W. has uttered the word "terra", I can do a Google. There was over 54 million Google entries for "George W. Bush" and "Terror". That is many millions more than for "George W. Bush" and "freedom". That is many millions more than for "George W. Bush" and "democracy." During his tenure, words like "terrorist", "alert", "warning", "danger", "crisis", "threat" have been tossed out by the president and his political party so often that you would think that the United States in under a constant state of seige.

The mainstream news media has done its part to create the fiction that America is held together by nothing but duct tape and illegal detentions. Every time the FBI arrests three muslims with cell phones and pictures of a bridge, all three 24 news networks obliging interupt their programming with "Breaking News" of this new "terrorist plot" that the federal government has uncovered. No one ever reports when the three muslims are found to be innocent. When the administration amped the color warning to red time after time to distract America from a scandal, the press went into full crisis mode, amplifying the fear. If FDR was correct that fear paralyzes, it is no wonder that Iraq is a quagmire, the nation's economy is stagnant, NOLA can not get rebuilt and our defense has not improved. We are literally paralyzed with fear.

There is another way. Take the shows that so called news programs choose to produce. They focus almost exclusively on murders, rapes, violence--when there is no terrorist threat to get scared about. Compare this to the role Hollywood adopted for itself during WW II. "Hollywood responded with enthusiasm-if there was one subject Hollywood producers thought they knew, it was America. The Hollywood propaganda machine poured out countless morale films, in an effort to sustain spirits on the home front. Stuios produced upbeat stories with happy endings about people who were beautiful, witty, and successful, but not so far removed from a middle class norm as to make it difficult for audiences to identify with the actors. The films presented an idealized version of American society, glorifying the average citizen who made personal sacrifices for the war effort."<snip>"In addition to praising the virtues and importance of the factory workers, Hollywood attempted to bolster the courage of the American people by depicting the integrity and fortitude of the average citizen dealing with homefront constraints." http://history.acusd.edu/gen/st/~ksoroka/hollywood5.html

I am not saying that the news should become a propaganda machine. But, if Hollywood could use its imagination to summon up images of inspiration and courage in a time of war, maybe the mainstream news media and our elected officials could refrain from compounding the ordinary day to day stresses of life by assaulting us with Terra messages every five minutes. Or maybe they cant. Terra is a cheap and easy way for the news media to get ratings and advertising revenue. And it is a cheap and dirty way for Republicans to stay in power. Maybe the press and the Republican Party have forgotten how to do anything except talk Terra.

Too bad, because America did not enter WWII cowering in Terra, as W. and our Republican Congress would have us do now. America did not give up its free speech or its freedom of worship and say "Here, you take these, just please keep us safe." Those who valued freedom from fear the most were those who fought the hardest, and they fought all those who would take away our freedoms, away and at home---that includes people like W.'s granddaddy, Prescott Bush who for reasons of his own helped finance the rise of the Third Reich, which FDR saw as such a threat to America's freedoms.

Over half a century has passed, and the Bush family is still waging war against basic American values and freedoms. In attempting to control the public through the use of fear, Bush and Cheney are copying the tactics of men whom Prescott Bush must have admired, the masterminds of the Third Reich, who used fear of the Jew to compel a nation to give up first its freedom, then its humanity. The Jew has been replaced by the Muslim, but the game is still the same. The problem for W. is that this is not Germany. This is America, the Home of the Brave, something the Bush family will never understand.