The Role of Fear

My friend Tim Paluch commented on Twitter about a month ago about Iowa's high school baseball and softball seasons which had just concluded their state tournaments. Tim's point was that he wished fans hadn't been allowed in the stands to prevent the spread of COVID and his comment received a number of pointed responses, including this one: "You’re entitled to your opinion-my grandson played, I attended a lot of games both basketball and baseball and I’m fine- not going to live in fear. My opinion" Forget the mistaken belief that adding "My opinion" inoculates any statement from criticism, it's the "live in fear" bit that I've been thinking about for weeks. 

I know, I know, it's Twitter, where nary a productive conversation can be had (and truly, the replies to the tweet Tim was originally responding to are even more unhelpful). This is a time where there are few obvious answers and almost every public course of action has some nuance which Twitter is simply not made for. However, I hear that refrain of "living in fear" applied to behavior during the pandemic quite a bit. Am I wearing a mask because I fear COVID-19? Am I avoiding large indoor gatherings for the same reason? Is it fear that keeps me at home? 

I suppose I'm not the one to say. No one wants to admit they're afraid. I respect the virus, or at least the science around it, and understand that currently we are a little helpless against it should we catch it. I wear a mask and avoid gatherings in the hope of not catching it, in the same way that I wear a seatbelt not because I'm afraid of crashing every time I climb into my car but because if I do crash and I'm not wearing a seatbelt, it would be very very bad. But I'm not afraid that I will die of this disease anymore than I am afraid of a headache when I take a Tylenol, I'm taking an action that will make the pain end sooner. I am, however, a little afraid that if I were that concerned, the safest countries to move to no longer accept Americans but that's not really the same thing. 

Furthermore, is going to a public gathering during a pandemic courageous? Or at least does it represent the absence of fear? Does boldly bathing with a toaster because only a coward would clean himself without a nice bagel represent courage? At what point does prudence give way to fear? Fear is having a moment in American politics with both sides fighting over what is more frightening. For some, fearing the virus is a sign of panicky, lily-livered liberalism—imagine being frightened of something that you can't see and kills about 1.5% of people who get it, is that worth wrecking the economy, suspending the youth's education and putting an end to the things that make life worth living? For these same people, masses of protestors are the height of terror, destroying the fabric of our society and upending everything decent about American life. Crime has fallen during President Trump's administration, an accomplishment (attributable to him or not) that any president might want to take credit for, especially one as greedy for credit as the one we've got. However, the president is warning of the opposite, that a spike in crime that doesn't exist will only get worse if he is not re-elected. There are no shortage of things to fear in the president's mind—mail-in voting (except in Florida, where it's fine), fake news, ascendant gangs. Despite its lack of efficacy during the 2018 midterm elections, we may be in for another caravan of Central or South American brown people heading towards the American border around late October. With these tactics, fear is the point. Take the president's posture towards the United States Postal Service. Certainly, he and his administration have indicated that funding will be suspended for political reasons. The president has frequently posed questions on his Twitter account about the fairness of mail-in voting. Sorting machines and mail boxes have been photographed being locked up. Democrats see a conspiracy, Republicans see routine maintenance of an inefficient service. The truth is irrelevant. One can have a nuanced argument about whether the White House is actively sabotaging the USPS but by suggesting it is, the damage is done—fear sets in about the process. The president doesn't have to actually do anything for some to be discouraged from voting from fear that their vote won't be counted and enrage others from fear that mail-in voting is rigged. For his part, Joe Biden, the president's Democratic challenger, is oscillating between a message of a return to normalcy represented by the Obama years and a fear-based argument that a Trump win means the end of democracy as we know it. None of this is good. Fear is effective at motivating people but it does long-term corrosive damage to our civil society.

Paranoia has always played a role in American politics—look no further than the 2nd Amendment and its zealous partisans—and when it couples with fear, as it did around the Civil War and Reconstruction, disaster often makes an unwelcome team. Since September 11, 2001, powered by 24-hour cable news, fear has played a more prominent role in our political discourse. In his song A Few Words In Defense of My Country, Randy Newman sings "You know, a president once said, 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.' Now it seems like we're supposed to be afraid. It's patriotic, in fact, color-coded. What we supposed to be afraid of? Why, of being afraid. That's what terror means, doesn't it?" Are we still the country that could rise up to the Nazi challenge, could navigate the Cold War minefield or be bold enough to race to the moon? The answer to that question gets decidedly more negative the more we fear each other. 

Keep in mind, if you took all the deaths caused by terrorism since 2001 and added all the people MS-13, the criminal gang and Republican bogeyman, have killed and then multiplied it by the number of deaths caused by the Black Lives Matter protests, you still wouldn't match the number of Floridians coronavirus killed in July but fear isn't rational, evidenced by the amount of strange phobias. These include nomophobia, the fear of being out of cellphone contact, lachanophobia, the fear of vegetables and deipnophobia, the fear of dinner party conversations, whose sufferers always get sat next to me. Some pigs suffer from mysophobia, the fear of mud. For those who like their fears meta, there's hydrophobophobia, which is the fear of hydrophobia. Then there's metrophobia, the fear of poetry. That one I understand, actually. Arnold Schoenberg, the brilliant Austrian composer, so suffered from triskaidekaphobia, the fear of the number 13, that he was certain he would die at 76, as 7 + 6 equals that number. Then he did, on Friday, July 13, at 11:47pm, 13 minutes to midnight. 

Fear makes us look inward, and not in a self-reflective way, it convinces us that the things beyond us are the problem. It's them that keep me from being happy and if you start out thinking that they are malevolent, they usually have a way of proving you right. Fortunately, the opposite is also true. It is not difficult to find the good in people, even now. We are told time and again that America is divided but consider when we truly were, during the Civil War. On July 3, 1863, the bloodiest day in American history, when brothers were commanded to kill each other, at Gettysburg, the epicenter of American-on-American carnage, 87% of the rifles found on the battlefield afterwards were loaded and unfired. Are we a violent species? Then why is it that of 700 cave paintings known to art historians, not a single one shows a human attacking another human, despite the obvious evidence of weapons? These are anecdotes that suggest we are gentler than we think we are but of course there's plenty of evidence of the opposite. The evidence is inconclusive, which would you rather believe. No Nick Renkoski newsletter would be complete without a reference to Hannah Arendt, the brilliant 20th century philosopher who studied the totalitarianism that created tragic disasters in the middle of the last century. She said that authoritarian rule required a number of ingredients, none more important than fear. "Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another," she wrote. Fortunately, this condition has an obvious remedy: assume your neighbor is on your side because he probably is. Is believing in human decency naive? Perhaps, but it's better than living in fear. My opinion.