We’re gearing up for another presidential campaign, and we have some serious domestic issues on our hands. Large parts of New Orleans still look like a war zone two years after Hurricane Katrina, the Administration is dragging its collective feet on what if anything to do about global warming, the country’s infrastructure is crumbling, our children are being poisoned by lead-containing toys manufactured on the cheap in China, people around the country are getting sick from tainted food produced in an environment of voluntary regulation and quality control, six years after No Child Left Behind our children still lag in math and science knowledge compared to kids in countries like Latvia and Hungary, every other week we hear about yet another scientific report being rewritten or suppressed by political hacks at NASA or NIH, and the real estate market is in a state of imminent collapse.
In other words, there are plenty of urgent and weighty topics for the candidates to address - topics which affect the daily lives of ordinary Americans. But are we hearing the candidates talking passionately about education, health care, and rebuilding roads and bridges? We are not. Instead, we’re hearing the same relentless drum beat of scaremongering and tough-guy posturing that we heard last time. It didn’t lead us anywhere good then, and there’s no reason to believe that things will be different this time around.
In interviews and debates, the candidates are concentrating on issues calculated to appeal to people’s emotions, especially to their fears. The War on Terror. The horrors of gay marriage. Illegal immigration. All these issues focus on groups outside the American mainstream (Islamofacists, the gay community, brown-skinned foreigners who don’t speak English) and define their members as the amorphous and sinister “them,” as opposed to the good all-American “us” who, so we’re told, are under attack by “them.” The underlying message is that it’s a big scary world out there and there are bad guys who are out to get us, so we must trust Uncle (or Auntie) Candidate to keep us safe. This is no time, apparently, to worry about unimportant matters like health care access and educational standards because our very existence is at stake.
They’re falling over themselves to out-do each other on how tough they’d be on Osama bin Laden if they caught him, while not mentioning that he’s presently sheltering in a country (Pakistan) whose President is a friend of the US government. They’re parroting the slogan that “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here,” as if Middle Eastern terrorists are incapable of finding their way to the United States as long as there are US troops in Iraq. They’re debating constitutional amendments to outlaw gay marriage, as though the prospect of gay people getting married poses a greater threat to the livelihood of ordinary Americans than tainted food, polluted water, and the prospect of foreclosure. They’re foaming at the mouth about illegal immigrants while corporations shift jobs overseas and slash health care and pension benefits. They’re making fine speeches about freedom and accountability while letting the Administration get away with wiretapping, eavesdropping, and supporting repressive regimes which happen to be friendly. And if the American people raise their voices to object to this cynical manipulation, they invite the accusation of being unpatriotic in this time of war.
The candidates are insulting the intelligence of the American people by treating them like scared children. They seem to believe that if they play on people’s fears and prejudices, ordinary Americans won’t notice that the things which actually do affect their lives are falling apart. It worked last time, and we’ve had four years of steadily declining standards as a result. This time, we shouldn’t let them get away with it.
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