Weapon of Choice

Senator Joe McCarthy rode the “Politics of Fear” to unmatched popularity a couple of years before I was born. In the sixties and seventies, McCarthy’s chapter in the American history books was viewed as a tale from our misguided and unenlightened past. Growing up, I was given the impression that McCarthyism was an example of an historic lesson well-learned. Never Again would our country fall so deeply into fear and paranoia that the abuses of the McCarthy era could once more be perpetrated upon the people of this great nation.

Fast forward fifty years, and it turns out that the Republican party learned a very different lesson from McCarthy’s meteoric rise. The GOP was attracted like a magnet to a tool that could produce such a huge power surge in so short a time. As the heat of the McCarthy furor cooled, the Republicans palmed that “Politics of Fear” weapon and laid it in the back of some old drawer. They never forgot about it, always knew where it could be found if the opportunity arose to take it out, dust it off and use it again. And on September 11, 2001, that opportunity came careening out of the skies over New York and Washington.

Masterfully, the administration has played card after card designed to extend and increase Americans’ fears. New nuances of the structure of their plan are uncovered daily. Now we hear that almost immediately after 9/11, the government began acquiring, without warrants, phone records of ordinary American citizens. Under the pretext of “protecting” those self-same, unsuspecting American citizens from terrorist attack.

Let me ask this: What deadly mischief could an administration drunk with power acquired through the manipulation of fear, possibly perpetrate upon an unsuspecting, trusting population? If the time came that we tired of being afraid of “the enemy,” could our government, with certain information at its command, then extend its control by manipulating that information to make us fear each other? Or the government itself? Could that be why it’s illegal to compile this sort of data without warrants?

The President says he’s done nothing illegal. If you believe that, I have just one thing to say. “Good night, and good luck.”

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