September 11th.
Representative John Boehner, House Republican leader (Washington Post, 9/11/09)
Last year on September 11, just weeks before the US Presidential election, I asked whether this year's commemorations would see "fear up" or "fears overcome." Thankfully, President Barack Obama has tried to calm the nerves of peoples across the world, most especially in the Muslim world. We are far from the early days after 9/11/01, when George W. Bush let loose the "C" word - Crusade, the born-again Christian answer to Jihad.
But on the US domestic front, fear-mongering is thriving, as if a certain type of politician cannot appeal to any other emotion but people's fears. If, as Rep. Boehner asserts, Americans are "scared to death," then maybe it's because he and his colleagues have done little else than rant on about "death panels" and urge on the kind of person who brandishes a sign "Obama Lies While Grandma Dies."
A certain breed of politician appeals to gut fears - fears of "the Other," the foreigner, the outsider - when things are going badly at home. By "home," I mean the Republican party, which appears to have run out of ideas. Except bad ideas, negative ones. And it was a Republican - Spiro Agnew, who was forced to resign the Vice Presidency even before his boss Richard Nixon had to leave the White House - who used to rant about the "nattering nabobs of negativity." He should check out his own party now.
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney ran their administration based on fear for eight long years. Fear is what the GOP has to offer. And the Know-Nothings are back. This is not what I had hoped for on September 11, 2009.