The Republicans Resurrect 9/11 To Unify The Party Of Fear & The Country

republicanWolf Blitzer hosted Tuesday night’s CNN debate in Las Vegas

Fear united the final Republican presidential debate of the year on CNN last night, as candidates for the White House articulated on stage the mass phobia that has gripped the GOP since the attacks of 9/11.

Candidate after candidate pleaded with the voters to allow them to act as their commander in chief and give them the opportunity to prove themselves in the gladiatorial world stage in their fight with evil Islamist jihadis, Russia, Iran and other threats lurking in the frightening world beyond the oceans. They all traced their phobias back to the day of September 11, 2001 and the Islamic radicals who plan to carry out more atrocities at some point in the future on the home soil. One candidate was adamant that another 9/11 attack was somehow imminent.

Another said we should carpet bomb the Islamic radicals, while another was happy to start Armageddon by exchanging fire with the Russians. Others complained about not being able to use mass surveillance and the annoyance of encryption, while some wanted to shut down the internet.

All the candidates for the presidency of the United States were referring their phobias back to the time of the 9/11 attacks and the resulting sense of insecurity that ensued. The latest terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino were also referenced, as well as the closing down of all schools in Los Angeles the day before the debate, which was proved to have been a hoax.

It was as if all the terror events since 9/11 including the most recent ones, were only a prelude for last nights Republican debate on insecurity.republican

 

New Republic reports:

How did fear come to loom so large as a part of Republican rhetoric? The crucial turning point surely was 9/11, which gave birth to a culture of fear in America—about which a small but vital literature has emerged, such as Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream (2007), Corey Robin’s Fear: The History of a Political Idea (2006), Peter N. Stearns’s American Fears (2006). Using historical evidence, Stearns argued “that there either more fearful Americans than there once were, or that their voices are louder or more sought after and publicly authorized—or both.”

The best articulation of this culture of fear—and the concomitant willingness to do almost anything to secure an impregnable level of safety or security—can be seen in the 1 percent doctrine as articulated by Vice President Dick Cheney: “If there’s a 1 percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response.” In effect, Cheney was calling for the United States to become one giant safe space, even if it meant massively overreacting to threats abroad.

Sanctioned by Washington, a language giving priority to safety has increasingly shaped other parts of society, including academia. Last September, Nicholas Dirks, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, argued that freedom of speech has to be tempered by an acknowledgement of the demands of safety and civility: “[W]e can only exercise our right to free speech insofar as we feel safe and respected in doing so, and this in turn requires that people treat each other with civility.”

The culture of fear that grew up after 9/11 inevitably stifled free speech. “As a writer and editor,” Michael Kinsley wrote in The Washington Post in 2002, “I have been censoring myself and others quite a bit since Sept. 11. By ‘censoring’ I mean deciding not to write or publish things for reasons other than my own judgment of their merits. What reasons? Sometimes it has been a sincere feeling that an ordinarily appropriate remark is inappropriate at this extraordinary moment. Sometimes it is a genuine respect for readers who might feel that way even if I don’t. But sometimes it is simple cowardice.”

With both academia and journalism cowed, the years after 9/11 were a golden age for Republicans, when they were able to push a large part of their agenda, not just in foreign policy but often domestically as well. So it’s no surprise that Republicans keep returning to the well: Stirring up anxiety in the electorate has been so profitable for them. In his closing statement in the debate, Christie cagily evoked the memories of 9/ll:

On September 10th, 2001, I was named chief federal prosecutor in New Jersey and on September 11th, 2001, my wife and my brother who are in the audience tonight went through the World Trade Center and to their offices just blocks away from the Trade Center.

I lost touch with them for six hours that day and prayed that they were alive

Reviving 9/11 level fears is now a campaign strategy. Consider the midterm elections of 2014, when alarmist accounts of Ebola patients, “anchor babies,” and ISIS assassins all flooding the United States became a staple of Republican discourse. This fear-mongering paid handsome dividends at the ballot, with the Republicans winning the Senate and strengthening their hold on the House and in state legislatures. Scaring the voters works. There’s no reason for the Republicans to stop.

Read the full story: The GOP Is the Party of Fearrepublican

 

 

Source Article from http://yournewswire.com/the-republicans-resurrect-911-to-unify-the-party-of-fear-the-country/

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