The Age of Fear

There is plenty of fear going around these days. If a slogan is to be conjured up for the post 9/11 world, it should be called the Age of Fear as opposed to that classic American novel: The Age of Innocence.

Terrorists, real and/or perceived are everywhere, yet cannot be seen unless they blow themselves and others up. Politicians from the USA to our less than convincing ones, play on this theme to get away with what they want.

It is silly and unreal to dismiss the threat of terror as nonexistent or unimportant. Terrorism is out there and very real indeed. And the primary goal of terror is to strike fear into the populace and browbeat it into submission. They have managed to install the fear into the world, but I sure hope the world resists the submission.

Reality, however, tells its own story. Terror has managed to influence the world, if not make it totally submit. The Spanish and Philippine episodes are proof enough. President Bush is running on this issue alone. He is citing absence of terror in the US as proof of his success. That may be true, but common sense says otherwise.

If terrorists can kill Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, why bother with the Americans at home? This logic might sound reductive, but the terrorists are the practitioners of the reductive process par excellence. They see black and white; them vs. the world.

There is an antidote to this climate of fear. It is nothing new, and Spinoza was one who articulated it best. He said that the only kind of freedom or liberation possible in the realm of necessity is the absence of irrational fear. To Spinoza freedom is nothing more than rational understanding.

Sure enough, ‘rational understanding’ under someone like Saddam is like saying a volcanic eruption is similar to the spinning of the earth — natural and unfelt. But Saddam is history, and, as I said before, regardless of motives, President Bush will be thanked for this in historical annals.

I simply wish he’d turn his attention to the others, who are as vile yet more discreet, instead of yapping about the ‘necessity of removing Saddam.’

The ‘irrational fear’ we suffer from these days, however, seems to outweigh the ‘realm of terrorist necessity.’ The best service politicians can give their people is security.

It is a must if life is to function at any level of normalcy. In a climate of fear people can’t function. Putting up roadblocks, extra screening at airports, and long lines at visa counters might seem to work, but in the end they do nothing but increase the level of fear among the population.

Politicians should be more discreet in their pursuit of security. If a terrorist can find it in him or herself to sit tight and plan for ages how to blow people up, then it behooves authority to do likewise in attempting to foil such plots in less visible terms.

This means potent and intelligent intelligence services. With the recent track record of the CIA, the world’s premier agency, the promise for the future looks dim. Yet, we can’t not believe that it will work; it must work. That, in my book and Spinoza’s, is very rational fear and cause for alarm.

— (Comments@d-corner.com)