fear mongering

Even though the Bush administration is now history, its fear-mongering tactics are alive and well. Pushed by none other than Mr. Cheney himself, who takes every opportunity to remind Americans how well the Republicans really did before the Obama landslide rolled over them. Not surprisingly, Mr. Cheney's fear-mongering works as well as it did before. It seems people never learn.

Mr. Cheney is not alone. The health care industry is also reviving their old fear-mongering tactics. Harry and Louise are back to let us know how the government is going to prevent us from accessing our preferred doctor, how we are going to be added to endless waiting lists, and how the bureaucrats are going to make health care decisions for us. Wait a minute? Isn't that already happening? Isn't that what every respectable HMO excels at?

Of course, no amount of reality can remove irrational fears. We all think there were no major terrorist attacks after 9/11. So we are eager to believe that whatever the Bush administration did must be responsible for that. It never occurred to us that terrorists do not have the resources to mount repeated frontal attacks of this magnitude on the same target. Especially not when the element of surprise is lacking. Terrorists did attack the West after 9/11, both in London and Madrid, but in our book, that does not really count.

One cannot help but noticing that fear works very well in America. During the cold war, Americans were more on edge about the Russians invading Western Europe than Western Europeans were. And there are plenty of other examples too.

One reason fear works so well in America is because people are very isolated. They are often displaced, i.e. far removed from the friends and family they grew up with. They are living among strangers, people they hardly know, and people they cannot really count on. Furthermore, they are exposed to a constant barrage of commercials and "breaking news" stories that remove all context, all critical thinking and all common-sense averaging.

Americans are also kept on edge by uncertainty. Most of us have no job security, no health security, none of the basic securities that people in other advanced societies enjoy and that make them less vulnerable to turmoil and less likely to be swayed by ads.

All that is not good, but I suspect some people think it is just the way they like it. It is good for business. People who are on edge spend more and they spend more often. They use more resources, they pursue more paths. They make better consumers.