Sunday, December 02, 2007

Fear vs. Hope and the Renewal of America

Umberto Ecco once said, "the Devil is faith without a smile. The true lover of mankind endeavors to make the Truth laugh." Ecco’s thought, the more I think about it, is an antidote to our increasingly dour political times. Fear mongers dominate the political landscape, pandering to the irrationality of the lowest common denominator in ways that threaten to take the United States back to the dark ages. Fear of immigrants, fear of terrorists, and fear the Other are easily exploited in an insecure and therefore angry age.

The fulminators are not just political figures. Lou Dobbs has revived his flailing career by flogging "illegal" immigrants 24/7. Bill O’Reilly scapegoats secularists, leftists, academics, media elites, and Hollywood celebrities. Broadcasters and guests ranting against what they dislike dominate much of our airwaves.

There has always been a paranoid streak in the American psyche. The Salem witch trials, McCarthyism, and more recently the Bush administration’s largely irrational response to 9/11.

A rational response to the 9/11 attacks would have included the implementation of a comprehensive national energy strategy aimed at reducing America’s dangerous reliance on Middle Eastern oil. Presently, with oil hovering at the $100 mark, the Bush administration is presiding over the largest transfer of wealth in history as Western consumers fill the coffers of autocratic petro states (like Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela) every time they fill their tanks. In a perverse way, U.S. consumers are fueling Anti-American forces, jihadist causes, and global warming all at the same time.

The high price of oil hurts America’s economy and it even hampers the Bush administration’s dubious democratization efforts in the Middle East. For instance, hard-liners in Iran would have a much harder time extending their influence through militias in Iraq (or terror organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah) if the price of petroleum were significantly lower. And clearly, the failure of U.S. automakers to adopt higher fuel efficiency standards has deleterious effect on their competitiveness.

Tapping American ingenuity to develop the alternative fuels and energy efficiency technologies of the future could revitalize America’s manufacturing sector, strike a blow against Islamic extremism, and reduce global warming. This kind of imaginative thinking would shift the focus away from the bogeymen demagogues like to dangle before the public in order to enhance their ratings and/or political prospects. Instead, America’s energies could be directed towards creating the new industries, technologies, and ecological practices that could renew America’s spirit.

For the last seven years the United States has been governed by fear. It is simply a travesty that America is now identified with water boarding, indefinite detentions, and a crusade (including an army of private mercenaries) to convert the Middle East. In many respects, it seems the United States has reverted to the Middle Ages.

Fear and anger corrode the soul because they tend to exclude hope and courage. The Bush administration has undeniably exploited fear for political gain, but its policies are actually eroding America’s economic and national security. The truth is that people rarely thrive where fear reigns.

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