The culture of fear, cowardice and terrorism

Hullabaloo:

"Islamic terrorists here, as always, are depicted as omnipotent villains with quite attainable dreams of world domination, genocide, and the obliteration of the United States. They are trying to take over the world and murder us all. And this is not merely a threat we face. It is much more than that. It is the predominant issue facing the United States -- more important than all others. Everything pales in comparison to fighting off this danger. We face not merely a danger, but, in Bush’s words, an 'unprecedented danger' -- the worst, scariest, most threatening danger ever.

And literally for four years, 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.

Several weeks ago, Digby wrote a widely-discussed post describing how Bush followers are driven by their all-consuming and pitifully child-like fears of terrorists, leading them to consent to any measures taken by George Bush as long as he promises to save them. And this weekend, Kos wrote a similar post, in which he contrasted the classic and previously defining American bravery of Patrick Henry with the frightened Bush followers who beg the Government to restrict their liberties in exchange for saving them from the terrorists.

If the blogospheric reaction of Bush supporters is any indication, this argument is as politically potent as it is self-evidently true. Kos’s post provoked shrieking seizures among the tough-guy, blindly loyal Bush followers -- the ones who revealingly give themselves play name like Rocket and Captain and who never tire of touting their own toughness. In response to Kos’s post, they squealed and they yelled and they called him all kinds of names – they did everything but refute the argument.

And notably, in their anger, there was none of that smug bravado or all-too-familiar attacks on the courage of Bush opponents, because with this plainly accurate depiction, they stand revealed as being driven by nothing other than limitless, irrational fear. They are scared and they want to continue to implant their extreme fear into our national policies and onto our national character."