The President's New Scare

the most fun i have ever had writing an essay. we were assigned to watch the new george clooney documentary, Good Night, Good Luck, and write an essay comparing mccarthy's red scare to the way bush is handling the nation these days. it was supposed to be 200-300 words, i think mine is north of 700. oh well, i dont think he will mind ;)

There are many comparisons to be drawn between Senator Joe McCarthy’s rampage through the ranks of supposed closet communists in the 1950’s and President Bush’s treatment of “terrorism” and the “Global Struggle Against Extremism” going on today. The similarities are eerie. While McCarthy was a bona fide nut and Bush is simply not the brightest crayon in the box, they both used similar scare tactics to instill fear and loyalty into the nation.

McCarthy is probably greatest known for holding up a sheet of paper containing the names of so many “card-carrying communists” in the government. Such an act is sure to stir up emotions and imbue wariness in the public as to just who, exactly, are these people in our midst and what are they hiding? This instills McCarthy with some credibility because people see him as an activist, a protector, someone doing something about the “problem” he created. That there was nothing on the paper was inconsequential; what mattered was that it scared people and McCarthy was seen as the hero. In the same way, Bush’s administration is exploiting “terror” to keep the country under the President’s thumb.

Foreign policy and the illegitimate former “War on Terror” aside, what really draws McCarthy and Bush together are the treatment of the fear at home. With all due respect to the families and friends of those killed in the attacks on 9/11 or the bombings in London, these attacks have allowed the administration to implement the image that the world is a dangerous place and that President Bush is our knight in shining armor here to save us. The most blatant example of this is the relatively new Homeland Security “Threat Advisory System”. It is a simple system of colors and tags describing the “threat level” the country is experiencing. As of today, the threat level is Yellow or “Elevated”, which indicates a “Significant Risk of Terror Attack”.

Ok, so what? So, watch your back. The Department of Homeland Security website recommends that all Americans “continue to be vigilant, take notice of their surroundings, and report suspicious items or activities to local authorities immediately.” Just as Americans during McCarthy’s Red Scare would see communists hiding in the bushes, America’s children have terrorists hiding under their beds at night.

But what does it mean? I couldn't tell you. As far as anyone knows, the CIA is spying on provocative phone conversations in Reynolda and James Bond is fighting S.P.E.C.T.R.E. goons in the chapel. Assuming the affect of people “continuing to be vigilant” is negligible, the only other use of the “Threat Advisory System” is propaganda. For one, people feel like they are helping out by “taking notice of their surroundings”. More importantly, though, the administration could arbitrarily raise the treat level and allow the public to see that the fright is back, the risk is higher than ever before, and that we owe our unchanging existence to the man who is fighting for us, our President. Never mind that it is inexplicable, that we are assuming that the threat is due to information the government knows that we don't, even though this administration is currently under review by Congressional Special Committees for misusing intel that could have prevented this whole mess.

Keeping in mind that communists are real, that terrorists are real, and that people have died in these attacks, it doesn't change the fact that Bush is the new McCarthy. Both used scare tactics to stir up a national fervor and gain trust over mostly baseless assertions. I have no doubt that there are efforts being made to intercept and prevent these attacks from happening, that vague things like “varying security measures” for individual transit systems makes it more difficult to predict the security regimes at certain locations. What I doubt is that propaganda like the “Threat Advisory System” is anything more than a blank sheet of paper, a means to make the general, inattentive public associate Bush with their protector, and to drive little children to fear the terrorists under their beds.