Why a Democratic Majority Is Not Demographic Inevitability (Part Three: The Fungibility of Fears)

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http://www.thenation.com/blog/173505/why-democratic-majority-not-demographic-inevitability-part-three-fungibility-fears

***SNIP

The Summer of the Shark illustrates something else: American culture is largely an ecology of fears, political culture included. And though it may flatter our liberal amour propre, conservatives don’t have a monopoly on exploiting fear for political advantage. Fear can be progressive—when Democratic politicians speak constructively to ordinary people’s fear of being manipulated and exploited by their bosses, of losing their way in a winner-take-all economy, of the consequences of a state without a safety net. It’s almost a very rough rule of thumb: when Democrats are able to successfully frame the meaning of an election season around middle-class fears, Democrats win the election; when Republicans are able to successfully frame the meaning of an election season around cultural fears, Republicans win the election.

Alas, many of Democrats’ political problems come when they forget that rule of thumb. And given that, it has to be said: when conservatives do fear—when they work to make elections referenda on cultural fears—they really do leave it all out on the floor.

Recent research supports it: “Using a large sample of related individuals, including twins, siblings, and parents and children,” according to a summary from the Associated Press, researchers led by Rose McDermott of Brown “first assessed individuals for their propensity for fear using standardized clinically administered interviews.” They then “surveyed the sample for their attitudes toward out-groups—immigrants in this case—as well as toward segregation. Participants were also ranked on a liberal-conservative partisanship scale depending on how they self-reported their political attitudes.” They found “a strong correlation between social fear and anti-immigration, pro-segregation attitudes. While those individuals with higher levels of social fear exhibited the strongest negative out-group attitudes, even the lowest amount of social phobia was related to substantially less positive out-group attitudes.”

The AP then quoted the scholars’ useful conclusion: “It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative.” 9/11 showed that was so. Fear of “the Other” became endemic, epidemic, among people who at other times and in other circumstances have shown evidence of a healthy pluralism, tolerance for complexity and salutary fellow feeling. Andrew Sullivan, for example, the sometimes-conservative pundit, has never been my favorite political writer (his specialty seems to be serially getting things wrong, then narcissistically claiming moral credit for the courage to change his mind, long after it really matters), but he doesn’t seem all that bad a guy. After 9/11, however, he lost it, calling you, me, and everyone else skeptical of the rush to war in Afghanistan, “[t]he decadent Left,” who “[m]ay well mount what amounts to a fifth column.” Now (too late!) he diagnoses what drove his own hysteria: “crippling fear.”

[tk2kewl]

1. this is why we need to break up mega corporations, especially in the media, and promote

strong public education based on facts and critical thinking