Fear

Last night I watched the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” on CSPAN. This was essentially a comedy show at the National Plaza attended by about 200,000 and hosted by John Stewart with heavy involvement from Steven Colbert. The central theme was a spoof contest between fear and sanity, and it made me think about something I either heard or read from an ancient Hindu writing about the role of a leader. It basically said that the role of leadership is to make the polity fearless. With so much fear mongering going on today particularly on the right, wouldn’t it be nice if in the next presidential election someone come forward on a platform of eliminating fear.

Many fears are real. In some neighborhoods people are afraid to walk the streets at night while in others kids have to be escorted or take long, roundabout routes to get to school and then be afraid of either being beaten up or shot even there. Fear of being mugged, your home invaded, your identity stolen. There is fear of becoming sick and loosing ones home and having to declare bankruptcy. Fear among all who work for a wage, however large or small, that they will lose their job and, not only the income but also the respect of their family and friends. People running a business are afraid of loosing customers and not being able to pay the bills and the wealthy fear the markets collapsing and loosing their fortunes while the homeless fear not having a place to bed down for the night and an empty stomach. There is fear of racial, gender, ethnic and religious discrimination.

We are afraid of being attacked by terrorists from outside or political extremists from the inside. There is the fear that the thousands of nuclear warheads that were once pointed at us by the Soviet Union will once again return to the same direction and the growing power, both economical and military of China with its billion plus population. Many are afraid of getting embroiled in another war started by North Korea, Iran or Israel. The world will run out of fossil fuel. The climate is changing and the seas will rise and the growing zone will shrink bringing on hunger, war and many other calamities. And there is the fear (or maybe joy) among some Christian fundamentalist that we are in the era of Armageddon.

Then there are more socio-political fears. There is the fear that at some point in time, the majority of the population in the US will no longer be white, that we may lose the right to bear arms, be able to go to the church of our choice and there is the fear of becoming a fundamentalist Christian theocracy, be overrun by Muslims or become a nation of atheists. There is fear that our judiciary will fall under Sharia law and that, Jews will take over the economy and poor African Americans will invade their white neighbors. Many fear too much regulation while others fear liaises-fair Capitalism. Some people are afraid that we are heading toward Socialism or even Communism while others are convinced we are on a dangerous path to becoming a Hitler like fascist state. There are fears that we are too soft in our foreign policy while others fear that Neocon imperialism will strangle us. The middle class fears not being able to providing a better life for children and the homeless not having a place to bed down for the night. Many fear that we are drifting away from the “real” America and others that we are not changing fast enough to keep up with the technological, political and economic changes in the world.

Though I have listed many fears, I could go on for several more pages and still only scratch the surface. Among the fears are well though out and also the totally irrational ones. There are fears that have a high probability of coming to fruition while others, though maybe real and theoretically possible, don’t stand a “snowball’s chance in hell” of being realized. The fears originate from both ends of the political spectrum and many transcend politics, with the underlying causes often understood and sometimes even the solutions. The challenge is to find a leader who can alleviate these fears by promoting policies in the case where the fears are real and of consequence to our society, communicate their absurdity in the case where they are only imagined and putting them in the proper perspective in terms of probability in the case where they are real but insignificant.

Unfortunately fear has become an effective political weapon. The “fear mitigating” leader cannot be an ideolog. Solutions to different problems will most likely be based on different ideological principles. Solutions to how to make the streets safer will be different from how to make us more competitive in the Global Marketplace. Answers to improving the life, realizing dreams and protecting property probably require a touch of Libertarianism, Socialism and bits from everything in between. The “sacred cows” should be the elimination of the fear, the constitution and not the ideology behind the method. If such a leader can rise (I doubt they can by the 2012 election if ever given the complexity of our society and our current political system) not only the country but the world, given our leadership position in it, would be a better place for everyone to live.