Fear is Courage, Ignorance is Strength, War is Peace

Glenn Greenwald has been on a roll at Digby's blog. His latest post is absolutely dead-on: No matter how much evidence comes out that Bush & Co are crippling the government, destroying our alliances, looting the treasury, and breaking our laws as fast as they can find them, nothing will happen--they'll never be called to account--as long as Americans are more driven by their fear of a whooped-up terrorism threat than their outrage at Bush's trampling of the Constitution.

"And literally for four years," writes Greenwald,

this is what Americans have heard over and over and over from their Government – that we face a mortal and incomparably powerful enemy on the precipice of destroying us, and only the most extreme measures taken by our Government can save us. We are a nation engaged in a War of Civilizations whose very existence is in imminent jeopardy. All of those plans for the future, dreams for your children, career aspirations, life goals – it’s all subordinate, it’s all for naught, unless, first and foremost, we stand loyally behind George Bush as he invokes extreme and unprecedented measures necessary to protect us from this extreme and unprecedented threat.

It is that deeply irrational, fear-driven view of the world which has to be undermined in order to make headway in convincing Americans that this Administration is engaged in intolerable excesses and abuses of its power. The argument which needs to be made is the one that we have seen starting to arise in the blogosphere and elsewhere: that living in irrational fear of terrorists and sacrificing our liberties and all of our other national goals in their name is the approach of hysterics and cowards, not of a strong, courageous and resolute nation. [ . . . ]

There is no more important goal than exposing and undermining the cowardly and exaggerated fear which lies at the core of the Bush agenda. If, as has been the case, we are bullied into starting from the tacit premise that Islamic terrorism is a unique and unprecedented evil which threatens our very existence -- rather than one of many challenges which we must calmly face and overcome -- then it is a foregone conclusion that whoever advocates the most extreme "anti-terrorist" measures, no matter how excessive and regardless of whether they comport with legal niceties, will prevail. [ . . . ]

What must be emphasized is that one can protect against the threat of terrorism with courage, calm and resolve – the attributes which have always defined our nation as it has confronted other threats. Hysteria and fear-mongering are the opposite of strength. The strong remain rational and unafraid.

One of interesting-but-ultimately-unproductive intellectual games going around lately is a comparison of Bush and Nixon: Who was worse? (You can find lots of blog and op-ed floor space devoted to it, but I think Tom Tomorrow has pretty well reduced it to its essence.) I do remember reading a comment following Nixon's funeral, though, that seems to apply a decade later to our current president. (If anyone can tell me the source/exact quote, I'd be obliged. This has bugged me for some time.) Watching political leader after political leader mount the podium and deliver an encomium on their fallen political enemy of old--all while lying through their teeth, celebrating his "statesmanship," his "vision," and so on--the observer noted sadly: Even in death, Richard Nixon continues to bring out the worst in Americans.

If there's a Bush-Nixon link, for me that's it: Both men successfully tapped what was worst in us. With Bush, its our not-so-secret willingness to recklessly barter away our freedoms and economic well-being for the illusion of safety and simplicity, combined with our congenital lack of historical perspective.

Greenwald's piece is in the Readings list on the sidebar.