Reflection #10: Fear is Powerful

Franklin Roosevelt once said in his famous inauguration speech, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” If only the past administration had taken this approach when dealing with the country after 9/11. Instead I feel that the fear that was present in the country was used for the benefit of the administration. That is not to say that the Bush administration was encouraging the citizens of the United States to be scared, but simply that the administration did utilize the fear and then the cohesion in the country to further their own agenda. For example, I feel that it would have been far less likely for the Patriot Act to have been passed if the country didn’t feel so afraid and feel as though it had to close ranks.

Something that was brought up in class along the lines of looking like a unified country struck me. The comment was that the reason the United States government entered a phase of agreement and cohesion was because we didn’t want external groups (be they countries or terror cells) to see us as weak, divided or frantic. This to me is the truth, but a sad truth. It’s sad because the beauty of our government structure is that we get to disagree and then come together to produce something that hopefully pleases everyone. If people are afraid to disagree, it opens the door to very one-sided decisions because there is no questioning voice to look at the potential flaws. I think that this was a big reason why there seemed to be so few checks to the Bush administrations balancing act. People were afraid and wanted everyone else to think that we, the U.S., were all right. Of course we weren’t all right, but allowing the fear to take over is exactly what Roosevelt is warning against in his quote. We should be worried and cautious about what we do when the fear hits because it’s a slippery slope.