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CSotD: Fear itself

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Mike Peterson August 19, 2020 1 minute 7 comments

Bill Bramhall illustrates what FDR was talking about in his oft-quoted, rarely contextualized remark that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

It was in his first inaugural, as he took the reins from Herbert Hoover and began the task of rebuilding a shattered economy. Specifically, he was making a promise that honesty and transparency would be hallmarks of his administration:

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

I haven’t studied the period in depth, but I get the impression that, while Hoover failed to address the Depression effectively, it was more a case of ineptitude than deceit, that he was basically a good man and simply not up to the job.

But if I’m unsure of the particulars, I’m deeply convinced that FDR was correct in that distrust and negativity are more destructive than the specifics of a crisis, and that, while trying to put smiley-faces on everything isn’t productive, maintaining public trust is a critical element of the social contract.

Bramhall suggests that we’ve hit a point where fearmongering and division are losing their impact because people are already scared and desperate.

Which is a nice opening for this

Juxtaposition of the Day

(Adam Zyglis)

(Drew Sheneman)

Zyglis is right that parents are uncertain of how to handle the return to school and are getting some pretty vague and meaningless replies to their questions.

But Sheneman takes it to a more pragmatic and chilling level, because, whatever accommodations we make to keep our kids safe from the coronavirus, we’ve already been taking steps to keep them safe from random shooters, which poses the important question

What the hell have we become?

This isn’t the fear FDR warned against. Concern over Covid-19 is perfectly valid, while, given our refusal to enact the gun laws most other nations have, school shootings are also a valid concern.

The fear we need to fear is ginned up by that refusal to impose limits on gun purchases, more for the paranoid fear of government that underlies it that for the fear of scary people you might encounter and have to shoot.

And it’s ginned up by the insistence that kids have to be back in school, with the underlying, obviously false idea that coronavirus is some kind of hoax.

Which, in turn, is ginned up by the greatest fear we have to fear, a government in which a “hoax” is anything that questions policy.

The bright ray of hope in all this is that any madman who wants to shoot up a school is going to have to find one that hasn’t just sent all the kids home because of a Covid outbreak.

I remember going out in the hall so we could kneel down next to the walls in case the Russians decided to launch missiles during the school day, and I’ve heard people of my generation talk of how those drills frightened them, though I accepted them as just part of the world.

I suppose, kids in 1932 accepted the Depression as a given while their parents took it more seriously, such that FDR had some genuine fear to push back against.

Which he did, and successfully, though not without grasping the nettle firmly, which brings us to my oft-expressed theory that Joe Biden is simply the re-incarnation of Jerry Ford: Someone to sweep up the mess and set the stage for the next administration.

Which was Carter, and he didn’t please everyone, so we picked Reagan instead and got what we asked for, and doesn’t this Mike Marland cartoon strike a familiar chord?

I’m sure FDR would recognize it, disapprovingly.

Happy days are sure as hell not here again yet.

And I really liked Michelle Obama’s speech, which you can stream here if you missed it, but I feel Bruce Plante is reading things right and I wish he were wrong.

I recognize why Americans gave FDR a fourth term: We were in the midst of a major war and I’m guessing the state of his health was not widely known.

But an amendment to stop that from happening again was wise, and perhaps necessary to guard against our treating the government like Linus’s blanket.

I love Michelle Obama. I love the energy she brought to the White House as First Lady, particularly the enthusiasm she generated among school children for good health and exercise.

But she’s not America’s only good person or good woman or good woman of color, and it’s uncool to wish for her as president if all you’re really wishing for is a third-term Obama, because, hey, she’s herself, she’s not that guy.

With any luck, she’ll still be out there stirring things up and if Kamala Harris turns out to be our first female president, she’ll have gotten there without family ties.

(And, judging from the response from rightwing bigots, perhaps despite them.)

Which brings to mind the first politician I voted for, Pat Schroeder, whose husband Jim was a gracious second-fiddle.

While Schroeder was in Congress, he formed the Dennis Thatcher Society, named after the husband of Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. “To be in it, your wife had to have a more prominent job than you, and you had to be able to sign your wife’s name to a bill,” Jim explains. “Our motto was, ‘Yes, Dear.'”

For that matter, I liked Dennis Thatcher and hated his wife. All professional couples should enjoy that kind of autonomy.

Pat Schroeder — whom I adored — was one of 16 women in Congress. There are now 105.

It’s not enough. It’s not close.

But that ladder is getting easier to climb without a boost.

E.A. Bushnell, August 1920