Lew Rockwell
"For as children tremble and fear everything in the
blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no
more to be feared than the things children in the dark hold
in terror and imagine will come true." ~ Lucretius
When I was a small child, I delighted in scaring my two
younger sisters with specters dreamed up by me with the help
of radio broadcasts. My mind was a bottomless well of
monsters, hobgoblins, and - scariest of all - those amorphous
demons whose lack of clarity in shape made them all the more
terrifying. I was a Ziegfeld of theatrical production, with
sound effects produced by my ghostly vocalizing, the pounding
on walls, or the scratching of my fingernails on a door; while
my special effects took the form of crawling beneath their
beds at night and kicking the bedsprings. The script was
nothing special, it being sufficient that the acting would
generate the desired screams.
I have been out of the fear-mongering business for many
decades now, the field having been taken over by well-financed
professionals with whom I am unable and unwilling to compete.
The stage props and special effects have become so massive and
expensive as to leave little room for a small-time operator to
succeed with nothing more than voice-over screeches. For the
enterprise to be worthwhile today, economies-of-scale demand
that the intended audience be expanded beyond one's immediate
family. The bogeyman has become a multinational operation,
leaving a budding young entrepreneur to content himself with
annoying the neighbors with a garage band.
Fear-peddling is very much in danger
of becoming monopolized by the state, which long ago realized
that keeping people perennially frightened was the most
effective method of maintaining them in a huddled and obedient
mass. From the primitive tribal chief who was able to
convince his neighbors of the threats posed by the "Nine
Bows" across the river, to today's political shakedown
artists with their terrorist phantoms, fear
has been the essential organizing principle of politics.
As my sisters and I learned at an
early age, fear objects are most terrifying when their
identities are vague and formless. Lions and tigers and
bears are dangerous, but never as frightening as shadowy
creatures who haunt darkened streets or hallways. I recall the
stark terror I experienced in listening to Lionel Barrymore's
radio presentation of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol,"
and imagining the ghost of Jacob Marley clanking his way up a
lonely staircase. I also recall the disappointment I felt in
seeing my first movie version of the story: I had, after all,
dreamed up a far scarier specter than Hollywood was able to
accomplish with special effects photography.
Like small children, we are now living in a society that
the institutional order - particularly the state - tries
vainly to hold together through fear. While
pointing to "others" as threats to our well-being -
one of the clearest symptoms of psychological projection - the
state unwittingly acknowledges its terrorist foundations.
We must be kept in constant terror of
faceless and formless men - or women - who might attack us in
some unexpected manner; we must learn to fear
unattended packages, or breast-feeding mothers on airliners,
or dark-skinned people who speak in languages we do not
understand. We have even been warned to feel unsafe at petting
zoos and roller-skating rinks, as government officials warn us
to be constantly alert to dangers from "suspicious"
others.
Lest we not accord world events
their "proper" potential for threats to our lives,
we have been provided with one of the most idiotic of
political gimmicks: a color-coded chart identifying the level
of fear we should feel. Like Pavlovian dogs, our operant
conditioning is apparently deigned to elicit from each of us
an expected rush of adrenalin as the colors move upwards from
yellow to orange to red.
It is rational for men and women to have an awareness of
potential dangers in their environments, and to make an
appropriate response when needed. Some
very dangerous and ill-motivated people did murder nearly
three thousand people on 9/11. It
is important that the identities and purposes of those
involved be revealed, even if doing so requires us to look in
directions we are uncomfortable considering. On
the other hand, it is quite irrational - to the point of being
pathological - to embrace the doctrine of a malevolent
universe; to live in constant fear of everything and everybody
at all times. I was in college, in the early 1950s,
when the shadowy hobgoblin of the "communist
infiltrator" became a useful tool to mobilize fear on
behalf of expanded governmental power. I recall one study in
which people were asked whether they suspected any of their
neighbors of being communists. Many
did, offering such "evidence" as a man having
National Geographic maps pinned to his walls, or a couple who
were accustomed to entertaining people at their home late at
night. I also recall a legislator in our state who was
convinced of the presence of a communist
"conspiracy" within the faculty of the state
university. When informed that there
was no evidence to support such a charge, the solon responded
that the lack of evidence only confirmed the effectiveness of
the conspiracy! Again, fear-objects are rendered more
terrifying when we imagine them operating in shadows, where
our imaginations must be employed to fill in the details.
Today's "terrorist" or "jihadist" would
doubtless be defined in the same murky fashion. Of course,
"jihad" is a word very few people understand, it
only being sufficient that everyone fear it. Our fears of such
persons are hastened because we do not understand the causal
explanations for their actions. Nor are most of us desirous of
learning such causes because, to do so, would give rise to an
even greater fear: that of discovering
the nature of the political games being played at our expense.
It is far better that we simply accept
the bogeyman du jour as our fear object, and recite all the
appropriate mantras on behalf of our attachment to patriotic
causes that only lead to our destruction.
We are told, on a daily basis, that our lives are under
constant threat of attack from terrorists. But if this is so,
where are these supposed terrorists? President Bush and his
defenders have been bleating that their expanded police and
surveillance powers are keeping terrorists out of the country,
a proposition that is rendered laughable by the daily influx
of immigrants from Central America! If it has been so easy for
millions of people to enter this country in spite of
determined government efforts to prevent it, what efficacious
mechanisms has the Bush administration put in place to keep
out terrorists? Nor does the government's performance in New
Orleans suggest to any thoughtful person that it is capable of
making an effective response to any alleged danger.
The so-called "war on
terror" is just another of the many state-run rackets
designed to benefit governmental, media, and various business
interests, all of whom profit from state-induced fears of
others. Greater power and more tax dollars flow to
political systems; the media enjoys an increase in viewers and
readers; while untold numbers of government contractors, along
with suppliers of goods and services for a market of
frightened people, profit from this protection racket. In
threatening to expand the war to other countries, the state
increases hostilities from its targeted enemies, thus
engendering more fears from Americans who demand
"protection."
If physicians could figure out ways
to inject people with deadly viruses that they could then
treat with expensive tests, drugs, and medical advice, their
profession would precisely correlate with the methods of the
state!
President Bush and other politicians - along with the
agents of disinformation in the media - spent many hours
exploiting the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush
went to the World Trade Center site ostensibly to honor the
victims of that atrocity, but in fact his purpose was to take
advantage of that event in order to reinforce the mindset of
fear upon which the state depends for the continuing expansion
of its power over our lives. Fear is a
condition the state cannot allow to enervate; it must be
constantly revitalized. Like a morsel of food to Pavlov's
dogs, Mr. Bush's memorial wreath served - like Memorial Day
ceremonies - to reinforce the conditioning that is the state's
power source.
On the same day that Mr. Bush gave his performance in New
York City, Faux News had a feature asking: "Is Iraq war a
'sideshow' in the war on terror?" Intelligent minds would
do better to ask: is the war on terror a
sideshow in the war on the American people?
Butler Shaffer [send him e-mail] teaches at the Southwestern University School
of Law. He is the author of Calculated
Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival
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