The GOP’s message of fear and subjugation

The GOP’s message of fear and subjugation

By Mary MacElveen

October 23, 2006

In reading this Washington Post article: GOP aims to scare up big voter turn out, I zeroed in on this, “GOP officials plan to spend the final days of the 2006 campaign attempting to rally partisans and limit conservative defections with dire warnings about the consequences of a Democratic Congress.” They are warning the base that “Democrats will raise taxes, weaken national security and liberalize social policies.” In these warnings, I see the gift of fear that keeps on giving. Instead of uplifting the voters, they instill fear.

In the movie “The American President”, President Andrew Shepherd states “I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.” Wouldn’t you call that the GOP theme and campaign in a nutshell?

What exactly is their plan to uplift the American people and give the some semblance of hope? When one reads of endless wars in which Donald Rumsfeld has stated in the past we will be engaged in for the next twenty years, what hopeful message can any voter take away from that? If anything, it wears down the citizenry. I will speak of that in a bit.

With ‘The Military Commissions Act of 2006’ recently signed into law by Bush, again, the fictional president, Andrew Shepherd states, “The roots of freedom are of little or no interest to them at the moment.” What freedom is to be gained that strips our nation of Habeas Corpus? The very bedrock that did make us uniquely American was our United States Constitution along with the Bill of Rights. Through fear and intimidation, that is now gone.

They (The GOP along with Bush) told our congress as well as the American people the only way to win this war on terror was to undermine due process of law when it came to ‘enemy combatants’ or terrorists. Well, due process did serve us well during the Clinton administration when those responsible for the first Twin Towers bombing were brought to justice. Due process served us well when it came to prosecuting both Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Due process served the D.C. community and surrounding communities when the D.C. snipers were terrorizing those citizens. They have since been captured, tried and convicted.

In the past, serial killers have been known to terrorize entire communities and once captured, they too received due process. With their capture, they were tried and in many cases convicted and punished. Their rights to due process even included facing their accusers meaning the victim’s families and in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, the victim’s family spoke back to him and angrily so. One even exploded in court saying “I hate you, Jeffrey Dahmer” and that was a sense of closure for that family. They were then able to move on.

Through our business practices and subjugation of those around the world, that is how said terrorists gain a foothold in any country including ours. We really need to instill this message to the American people that as long as we act as if we own the world, terrorism will continue to exist. The reason I included our country is that the government can only subjugate its citizens for so long before they too can strike back. It has happened in many countries around the world such as Kosovo and let that be our lesson as we move into the future. In that country, the citizens could no longer take being dictated to, stormed governmental buildings and handed Slobodan Milosevic over to The Hague. I remember watching that expression of freedom and liberty on the news and admired those citizens for doing so.

Through the use of immense power, pressure and fear, is the GOP lighting a fuse that will at one point blow up and turn our country into an anarchist state? Time will only tell.

In a previous column, I wrote “Bush created this aura of fear and as we all know, fear is debilitating, it wears us down and at some point, and we just want to move on.” As one walks around living or existing in this case on a day-to-day basis, one can almost feel and taste the oppression that weighs down upon all of our shoulders. I would ask all that read this, how is your body feeling right now? Do you tend to feel achy, tired, and strained with headaches? Are you quick to snap and feel irritable? Are you less likely to smile and enjoy the simple joys in life? By instilling this brand of fear in all of us, we are all bound to feel it physically.

The human spirit needs some semblance of hope in order to move forward in a positive light. The late President John F. Kennedy said “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” He rallied us all and challenged us to believe in something positive. Even his brother the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy stated, “Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say, why not?” Incidentally, as I was searching for that quote, I found it in Bush’s 2004 inaugural address. Mr. Bush, you are no Robert F. Kennedy. Do you see the hope coming from Robert F. Kennedy? Even the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I have a dream speech” said “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.” Are we hearing these messages today?

Recently, Sean Hannity said to his viewers if the GOP fails to retain control of congress that they were to blame. Do not blame the audience, Hannity. Blame the message coming from Bush, Cheney, and the GOP.

The GOP and Bush tend to place us all in a state of unwarranted fear as evident in the Washington Post article and by raising or lowering the security alert arbitrarily. I wonder if anyone truly pays attention to what color alert we are in on a day-to-day basis.

This is what Gavin DeBecker had to say of using unwarranted fear in his book “The Gift of Fear” and I want you to pay close attention to it, “We all know there are plenty of reasons to fear people from time to time. The question is what are those times? Far too many people are walking around in a constant state of vigilance, their intuition misinformed about what really poses a danger. It needn’t be so. When you honor accurate intuitive signals and evaluate them without denial (believing that either the favorable or the unfavorable outcome is possible), you need not be wary, for you will come to trust that you’ll be notified if there is something worthy of your attention. Fear will gain credibility because it won’t be applied wastefully.”

In the past, we have heard from Osama bin Laden (that is if it is him) in close proximity to our elections as evident during the 2004 presidential campaign and I feel that this was fear being applied in a wasteful manner. What we should have been doing was asking Bush, no demanding of him, “Why the failure to capture him as promised?”

Gavin DeBecker has also stated, “Real fear is a signal intended to be very brief, a mere servant of intuition. But though few would argue that extended, unanswered fear is destructive, millions choose to stay there.” Everyone does remember the story of the “Little boy that cried wolf”, with the fear factor extended, when a real threat of terrorism that we should all be paying attention to comes from the government, will it be paid attention to?

In keeping us all in a constant state of fear in which we are vigilant of it daily, that in itself is destructive. We all need to decompress if we are to remain healthy. I wonder just how many for the first time during these past six years have seen a therapist for the first time in their life? How many have felt the need for medications such as Xanax which is used in treating anxiety? I wonder if people that are normally healthy have seen an increase of diseases that affect both body and mind? I often wonder how the images of Iraq that coming from the mainstream news, how that in itself is affecting our children. Are they seeing a hopeless world? If so, how many have taken to drugs to escape this constant state of fear?

In closing, being an American and a patriotic one at that, means pushing past that fear real or imagined. It means telling the Bush, Cheney, the GOP and Karl Rove we are tired of all of you playing the fear factor. We need to tell them at the polls that we are taking our own destiny back and that they have subjugated us all for far too long.

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