How about the following as a statement of fearmongering running rampant today in the US and elsewhere?
“…I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. 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 vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.”
While accurately describing today’s malaise, these were actually comments from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first presidential inaugural speech nearly a century ago.
The fearmongering of which he speaks is evident in full force today across the country. Untruths, baseless claims, and threats are the primary weapons of fearmongers. Their aim is to make people afraid so they will act out of anger and anxiety—targeting particular groups or belief systems as “evil”—instead of using critical thinking and logic to assess the situation.
While we’re lamenting current waves of “Kool-Aid Drinking vs. Critical Thinking,” where emotional pitches focus on “evildoers” across political, social, and economic strata, this fearmongering phenomenon has reared its ugly head throughout history.
For example, Hitler was a fearmonger, who made Jews his primary “evil target” to advance his own agenda. Following World War II in 1950, US Senator Joe McCarthy began a campaign targeting communist subversion that he said had “infected” the federal government, universities, film industry, and elsewhere, notes a report in Wikipedia.
The Wikipedia report adds, “The term McCarthyism, coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy’s practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist activities. Today, the term is used more broadly to mean demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents.”
A report on Eisenhower.gov, elaborates, “Senator McCarthy conducted hearings on communist subversion in America and investigated alleged communist infiltration of the Armed Forces. His subsequent exile from politics coincided with a conversion of his name into a modern English noun ‘McCarthyism,’ or adjective, ‘McCarthy tactics,’ when describing similar witch hunts in recent American history. [The American Heritage Dictionary gives the definition of McCarthyism as: 1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; and 2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.] Senator McCarthy was censured by the U.S. Senate on December 2, 1954 and died May 2, 1957.”
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the parallels in place today. It also doesn’t require extraordinary IQ to utilize critical thinking skills to form an objective assessment of today’s malaise, and see that the best thing to do is not to drink anyone’s “Kool-Aid.” That simply means not to swallow anyone’s spiel hook, line, and sinker totally. Objectively examine the facts—which requires investigating a variety of sources to get at the truth—then develop your own informed opinion. In most cases, the truth will clearly show that extremist views and rhetoric—while drumming up sensationalism and support for a particular cause—aren’t the answer to what ails us.
Remember, when the adherents of cultist Jim Jones literally drank his Kool-Aid, they died from poisoning. That horrendous event is captured in a Rolling Stone report: “Until the September 11th attacks, the tragedy in Jonestown on November 18th, 1978 represented the largest number of American civilian casualties in a single non-natural event. It is unfathomable now, as it was then, that more than 900 Americans – members of a San Francisco-based religious group called the Peoples Temple – died after drinking poison at the urging of their leader, the Reverend Jim Jones, in a secluded South American jungle settlement. Photographs taken after the carnage forever document the sheer enormity of the event: the bodies of hundreds of people, including children, lying face down in the grass.”
In too many ways and places, people’s hearts and minds are dying from drinking today’s poisonous Kool-Aid with fearmongering as its main ingredient.
Finding common ground and compromise is where the answers lie. That requires collaboration, cooperation, and a willingness to develop win-win solutions. The sooner we get to it, the faster this country—and indeed the world—can heal.
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Gray Flannel Head 