Religion, The
Election,
And The Politics Of Fear
By Todd May
19 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
The
pundits are already at it. The re-election to the presidency of a man
universally despised by those who do not live here, and by many who
do, is the result of moral values. The majority of Americans resonate
with President Bush's particular moral sensibility. That is why he will
be with us for another four years.
One might be tempted
to ponder the ironies of this particular moral sensibility, a sensibility
that has more to do with exclusion than inclusion, with violence than
with empathy, more to do with domination than cooperation. However,
we should leave this temptation aside. There is something important
to be grappled with here. We will never grasp what happened on Tuesday
until we understand the character of this moral sensibility.
The fundamentalists
and evangelicals who came out in such great numbers this election are
driven, and have always been driven, by fear. As a philosopher, I take
pride in noting that it was Nietzsche who analyzed this fear most trenchantly.
The religious orientation of these people is characterized by a constant
fear of the Other that is perpetually seeking to infiltrate, seduce,
and ultimately destroy the minds and lives of good Christians. The Other
is, of course, Satan. In our world, that Other takes many forms, homosexuality
and feminism perhaps chief among them.
Until 9/11.
On that day a new
form of the Other was introduced, one that does not displace the other
Others, but stands above and reinforces them. For many of us, the term
for that Other is terrorism, but evangelicals and fundamentalists know
who the real Other behind terrorism is.
Terrorism is not
a shock to evangelical consciousness. It is woven seamlessly into it.
Karl Rove and those
who produce the image of the President understand this, better than
us left-leaning types. We tend to live in small liberal enclaves in
urban areas. That is not where most of America lives. While we fought
for peace and justice, the President's handlers were busy harnessing
terrorism to the vision of a decadent America, an America too tolerant
of the Other. Note, among other shifts, how the term liberalism has
migrated from being a insult that has primarily to do with spending
to becoming one that has more to do with being soft on the Other.
Those who argue
about whether it is terrorism or gay marriage that sunk the Kerry campaign
miss the point. They are two aspects of the same consciousness. And
they are at the heart of the Bush administration's politics of fear.
As many have pointed
out, the appeal to fear dominates the Bush presidency. From capriciously
raised and lowered terror alerts to invasions of individual privacy
to the suppression of dissent to the stoking of racism against Arabs
and Muslims, the administration's strategy for consent is driven by
periodic infusions of fear. What has been missed, however, is how cleanly
that appeal fits into the religious framework of the population that
has just put him in office a second time.
Not everyone in
the United States who has been harnessed by this fear is an evangelical
or a fundamentalist. Far from it. However, the appeal to fear, in its
convergence with the deepest motivations of many Americans, has helped
to create an unmistakable atmosphere of anxiety. Foreigners are often
puzzled by this, as well they should be. What I am describing here is
a peculiarly
American phenomenon.
Since 9/11 the politics
of fear has become the point of intersection between the political/corporate
elites who run this country and the religious elites and their flock
who offer them the mandate to do so. It has been the great strength
of the Bush administration. As such, it is also its great weakness.
While those driven
by a religious zealotry against the Other are nourished by fear, most
Americans are debilitated by it. They are weary of the anxiety they
are asked daily to sustain. A politics that counters fear with something
other than fear would, if not immediately then certainly soon, be embraced
by many Americans who were frightened into offering the President his
renewed "mandate." What is that other something?
It is hope.
What the left must
articulate now is what it is least able to find in itself at this moment:
hope for a better future. The Kerry campaigned discovered hope, but
it did so late in the campaign and, because of the constraints of mainstream
politics, could never use it to shake loose of the politics of fear.
In the wake of the election, liberals and leftists are no longer so
constrained.
The content of that
hope is more than can be provided here. But hope is more than a set
of principles or outcomes. It is an orientation toward the future. Hope
opens the very future that fear closes off. Americans can be motivated
by hope as easily, perhaps more easily, than by fear. In fact, in American
ideology, hope lies deeper than fear. Hope had to be driven out of us
by people with other concerns.
We have been trained
in fear for the past several years. But most of us would rather live
otherwise. Let it be the left, then, that recovers the America of hope
and places it before our eyes. After all, we were only a couple of percentage
points away from replacing one of the most onerous and tyrannical of
recent U.S. governments with something that, while not what we would
choose in an ideal world, would certainly have changed the world we
actually live in for the better.
And that alone should
be reason for hope.
Todd May is
Professor of Philosophy Clemson University (Affiliation given for identification
purposes only) He can be reached [email protected]
(permission granted
to reprint)