Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Fear Monger in Chief

“Fear is the foundation of most governments; but it is so sordid and brutal a passion, and renders men in whose breasts it predominates so stupid and miserable, that Americans will not be likely to approve of any political institution which is founded on it.”

John Adams - 2nd President of the United States


Dick Cheney wants you to be as scared as he is…

I’ve been looking through high resolution photographs of former Vice-President Dick Cheney and I have come to a realization which is this: when I look into Dick Cheney’s eyes I see fear. His face is generally a scowl, a look of scorn and utter contempt. Cheney has a complete inability to crack a genuine looking smile. He has the appearance of an impatient, annoyed, and angry man. But his eyes are intriguing. It is said that the eyes are the window into the soul, and if true, Cheney’s soul is a tormented, scared, cowering one. His world-view is constructed on a foundation of fear.

I came away from my impromptu study of the former VP, the head cheerleader for the most grotesque and gruesome practices being employed by the fringe elements of the U.S. military and intelligence services in the ubiquitous and ambiguous “War on Terror”, feeling a greater sympathy for this man. I am mad at myself for feeling this way, because it is my opinion that Cheney, specifically, has taken the U.S., with the world in tow, in such a dramatically skewed moral and ethical direction that it will take generations to recover from his paranoid, gun-barrel approach to leadership and foreign policy. Even George W. Bush eventually turned away from the ominous, doomsayer advice that Cheney was giving him.

Every decision Cheney makes comes from a position of fear. He sees danger lurking around every corner, behind every closed doorway. The assumption that everyone is out to get him fuels every action, and unfortunately for all of us, Cheney was in a position to do something about it. One of the basic tenets of negotiation is that you should never make your decisions based on fear – but we did just that for eight years, and Cheney is still at it, advocating for more fear-based policy, working double-time to instill in the rest of us Americans the very real terror he feels each and every minute of every day and night. From this point of view, any action is acceptable. It would be foolish not to act in whatever mode necessary, because we are all in eminent peril of losing our lives. This is Cheney’s opinion, or rather my opinion of Cheney’s opinion.

I understand that there are reasons to be afraid – the world is based on a cycle of life and death, and death is a frightening concept. The idea that, someday not that far in the future, we will cease to exist as a living, breathing entity is a daunting one – one that humans have wrestled with since the genesis of consciousness, since we ate of the forbidden fruit and realized that we were naked; since we understood the fact of our own mortality. But death is also the inevitable conclusion to our brief time being alive, and death is all around us, all the time. 40,000 people die on America’s roads, highways, and freeways every year. That is nearly 15 times the amount of people killed in the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers. On this note, I am approximately one million times more afraid of driving down highway 99 than I am afraid of being attacked and killed by a terrorist.

“Accentuate the Positive – Eliminate the Negative”

-Frankie Manning



I’m not trying to scare you or get too morbid here – the point of this rambling diatribe is to emphasize that we, as individuals, need to steer our attention away from the fear; there will be time enough to deal with that when it comes. In the mean-time, focus our energies and attentions on the positive energy and life that also surrounds us.

Things are Tough All Over

Well whatever, the world is a mess. There’s blood running through the streets of half the countries in the Middle East, Cabo San Lucas was just blasted by Hurricane Jimena, Indonesia is buried under landslides triggered by a massive earthquake, the Mid-Western United States are either out of water or under it, Southern California is burning away, and we live in a virtual paradise on Earth. Here in Chico we are just emerging from the oppressive heat of summer and gliding into the temperate beauty of fall. The leaves will start changing as the days grow shorter. Soon enough the rain will come and we’ll be having backyard fires again and drinking warmed drinks by the wood stove. We could be doing a whole lot worse.


madbob@madbob.com