“You’re going to turn into a raisin.” This was my father’s repeated warning to me after I spent too much time in the bathtub as a five year old. His warning became more dire and descriptive as we drove to his friend’s house, until I began crying, convinced I would wake up the next morning a 60 pound dried fruit. One day, while at a picnic, I asked him how my uncle Stan lost his pinky finger. “A fly bit it off. Yeah it was like that fly there.” He said as he pointed at the insect circling around me. And then he sat back and enjoyed the fun while I tried to escape the carnivorous fly.
Lately I’ve seen adults reenacting my panicked flight from the fly. Their fear? The threat that drives them to hysterics? Blue Bell ice creams trucks turned into carriers of the dead, Walmarts repurposed into staging points for Chinese troops. Yes, 2015’s version of the scary campfire story is that the government is going to take over Texas. Our government. I’ve tried, but failed to explain to friends from around the world how citizens of our nation can fear being overrun by a government that is already in power.
Just the rantings of a few crackpots artificially amplified by the echo chamber that is the Internet? Intelligent people don’t pay attention to these fantastical theories, right? Not worth writing, or reading about. But the conversation is being affected, at times even driven by these fringe imaginings. Watch any of the nightly news shown in the Alamo City these days and you will see stories on Jade Helm ’15. I do not blame the media. It is their mission to report on events and the public’s response to those same events. I am, however, saddened by our very grown up selves’ fascination with boogeymen we’ve fashioned with our own hands.
I don’t fret or wonder about professionals who spend their money at haunted houses, amusement parks or movie theaters, seeking to revisit those thrilling moments of fright from their childhood. These pursuits are advertised and understood to be entertainment. But when news and pseudo-news outlets, and, most concerning of all, personal conversations are filled with wide-eyed warnings of impending calamity, all built on logic more flimsy than the ability of a lengthy bath to turn a little boy into dried fruit, I become concerned. When I see a campaign ad for a politician running for State office that features truckloads of armed ISIS terrorists, with the explicit warning that a vote for his opponent is a red carpet for the purveyors of violence, I become frightened. Frightened by the state of our civic and political dialogue. Fearful of our inability to separate fact from fiction. Disturbed by the reality that those messages must work, because they continue to be replicated.
Ours is not the first generation to emphasize the distant threat while ignoring the present, yet less sexy peril. But that shouldn’t provide us much comfort. We should, as a society, be more mature by now. There comes a time to put childish things, and ways of communicating behind us. If we continue to show our political leaders that we can be so easily distracted by hastily constructed straw men, then we cannot complain when that is the very thing they spend their time doing. It is foolish to believe that we can reward Joseph McCarthy-like campaigns and then expect those newly elected officials to rule with sobriety. Given the perpetual campaign cycle we now live in, why would they change? And can they? Once they’ve proven their skill at creating and manipulating the phantom fears of the populace, should we be surprised when their muscle memory propels them to do more of the same?
To be clear, this article is not about Jade Helm ’15, neither is it about the bad habits of one political party. These habits are ours. We all participate in the conversation. We clearly communicate our preferences to the decision makers with our clicks, viewing and purchasing choices. We have the opportunity to use our great freedoms to support and nurture logic, reason and responsibility in our city, state and nation. It’s not sexy, but it was the hope of those men who birthed this nation.
*Featured/top image: A man holds a Texas flag and joins protesters of the UNESCO World Heritage designation of the Alamo. Photo by Scott Ball.
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“I do not blame the media. It is their mission to report on events and the public’s response to those same events. ”
You should. Not for reporting the events per se; but rather for manner in which events are typically reported these days.
The playbook is old hat at this point: “republicans say X is followed by an equally weighted retort of democrats say Y.” Rarely is the truth or the probability that the truth lies closers to, say Y than X, ever mentioned.
Why does this happen? Fear of perceptions of bias? Sure. Because it’s hard? Sure.
But at the end of the media’s isn’t merely to report on events, it’s to seek the truth.
Just my two cents.
Add the fear of melting polar ice caps to the list. And that fear is far more scary because people actually want to legislate how I can live my life based on that fear.
As far as I am aware, no Jade Helm conspiracy theorists are proposing legislation to address their fear.
Excellent article.
Fear is a political tool of control. This isn’t a fear based on pointless hearsay, but it’s a fear propagated by some agency in the public or private sector that means to use it to serve their ends and ideology. It’s a means for someone to profit. It’s also exploiting preexisting distrust between a continuously polarized political climate that has seen a stark rise in strong third party contenders entering the two party debate. There’s naivety in this article in regards to mainstream media, as studios will be biased to their sponsors and shareholders. Fox News has been more blatant about supporting the GOP, as it follows their business model. Other agencies are less obvious, but the money typically stems from big industries.
I do blame the local media for trying to make a cheap advertising buck by pandering to the lunatic fringe like Fox News does. It’s a tried and true formula for fast money, as unethical as it may be. But then why care about journalistic ethics when the most important thing is increasing shareholder wealth? And there never have been bigger suckers to be separated from their money than the lunatic fringe right wing. Just send them a fundraising letter Bd mention Jade Helm or any of the other lunatic notions and the money rolls in.
Its like they pride themselves on willful ignorance and panic. If you want to get really scared, read the Texas GOP platform. Among all the things that you can chalk up to differences in focus and priorities they actually want to stop ANY teaching of critical thinking in schools. that’s scarier to me than all they’re misguided disproven economic fever dreams and hypocritical moralizing.