Last week, I offered up an incendiary and provocative sentence as a discussion topic. I must admit now that the sentence is unfair to the Republican Party, and also unfair to evil. Most Republicans are not evil, nor are their policies. On the other hand, evil is far too large and dangerous a force to be limited to a few powerful members of one political part in one country, even if that country happens to be the most powerful country in the world. So, let us for the sake of comity, assume that I am apologizing for vastly oversimplifying an issue I am now exploring with what I hope is far more seriousness, depth, and honesty.
Having said that, however, I do think that it is necessary to explore the way the current leadership of the Republican Party, and some of its supporters in the media, exploit our quite natural fears for narrow, partisan political gain, and in the process overturn various rocks in our national psyche that reveal some of the more unpleasant creatures in our national life. I am not retracting my apology; I am only stating what should be obvious - the current Administration, and pundits and journalists who support it, use fear and division as tools for gaining and maintaining power at the expense of the institutions of government. In the process, we are exposed to various levels of personal and social evil and deviance that all Americans should feel ashamed are part of our national life.
For the moment, however, I think it is necessary to take a step back and talk for just a moment (I hope) about the relationship between evil as a descriptor of events and acts committed by individuals and institutions, and the emotion of fear. Fear is a necessary emotion. It helps keep us alive. If human beings did not feel fear, we never would have survived as a species. Fear in the face of the threat of evil acts and intentions is not only natural in the most basic sense, it is rational. Yet, what do we do with fear, both as individuals and as a society?
Most often considered the opposite of fear, courage is more the incorporation of fear through a process of rational consideration of alternatives. Most combat veterans readily admit that fear is a constant of their experiences, yet they do their duty even in the midst of that most pressing of fears, imminent violent death because others are counting on them. This is the most basic, yet most profound, example of what courage entails - the recognition of the reality of a very real threat, the acceptance of fear, and overcoming that fear through the recognition that to surrender to fear is a failure of support for others.
This is as good a metaphor for a broader understanding of fear and a response to it as one will ever find. What applies to soldiers in combat applies, in a less intense, less clear way to our individual and social lives. The attacks upon the United States on September 11, 2001 produced among many other responses, a fear that such an attack could, and would, occur, perhaps at any moment. This fear was exploited specifically with regard to the supposed existence of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) in Iraq, and the even-remote possibility that Iraqi weapons would be used by a terrorist organization against the United States. While evidence was never strong, and even as it was marched out by the Bush Administration as it made its case for war with Iraq it was refuted, it continued and continues to influence our thinking on the issue (thus the on-going sad fact that many Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had an operative role in the attacks). Our quite natural, quite rational fear-response was exploited by those who wished to wage war on an innocent (at least in this particular case) nation-state.
At the same time, supporters of the Bush Administration use fear on a variety of various issues to attempt to frame debates. We are told to fear the "illegal immigrant". We are told to fear for "the family" from "the homosexual agenda" and the "holocaust" of abortion. We are told to fear the traitorous liberal in our midst. We are told to fear for our capitalist system from these self-same liberals. We are told to fear for our very national survival from the on-going threat of Islam. We are told to fear for our jobs from the threat of undeserving minorities through the evil machinations of Affirmative Action. We are told to fear atheists who want to remove God from the classroom.
None of these fears are real. None of the alleged threats exist except in the minds of those who espouse them; perhaps not even then. Yet, in the name of these and other various threats to our national life, we are called upon to surrender our hard-won Constitutional rights and liberties. In the name of these fears we are called upon to accept a New Gilded Age, a new Social Darwinism, and a shredded social safety net for the most vulnerable members of society. In the name of these fears we are called upon to accept War Without End; indeed, for more and more wars as the threat morphs, changes place and name for a moment.
In this sense, fear becomes an evil, a force destructive of the the glue that holds us together as a nation. We become overstressed, worrying about the possible repercussions of not yielding our freedoms for an ever-elusive security. We fear for the safety of our homes and livelihoods from the threat of the Other in our midst illegitimately. The entire country becomes weak of will and spirit, ripe for the plucking by those who are eager to maintain their control of our national life to protect us from all these various threats. The politics of fear is an evil that threatens our national life so deeply, we wonder how it can be excised.
In this sense I believe that we face an easily named evil. It is certainly embodied by policies and practices of our current Administration and its supporters, but does not make up what the Republican Party is, at its best. The politics of fear is evil because, like all evil - it lies. It presents us with false alternatives, false security, and even false information to bolster its own sordid appearance in our national life.
It is correct that the organization which planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks did so in the name of Islam. It is incorrect that Islam, therefore, is an existential threat to something called "the American way of life" or "western civilization". It is correct that there are those in the United States who have not gone through the lengthy legal process required to enter the country. It is incorrect that such persons, therefore, are a threat to our culture, our jobs, and our national integrity. It is correct that there are those who love differently than do the majority of the population. It is incorrect that gays and lesbians and bisexuals, therefore, have a lifestyle that threatens the nuclear family. One cannot draw a general conclusion from a specific instance. Logic doesn't work like that. It sounds good precisely because it confirms our fears. Yet, at its best, politics should not confirm our fears, but confirm our hopes.
In other words, in words that need to be repeated again and again, FDR's mantra that we have only nameless, mindless fear as an object of fear should be the motto that helps us begin the long slog out of our current malaise and evil ways. I call them evil because of the corrosive effects upon our national life, and the dregs of our society - from Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin, to James Inhofe, Rudy Giuliani, and Mitch McConnell - that thrive in this environment.
There is an element of evil in the politics of some members of the Republican Party. It isn't the end and summary of evil in our national life, or in the world at large. It is, however, present and needs to be named in order to exorcise it.
Virtual Tin Cup
