Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid!

These are scary times. The current administration wants you scared. They want you terrified in fact. They build whole political campaigns designed to keep you up at night, quaking with fear, worried that even as I write this there’s a terrorist somewhere in the U.S. planning an attack. They want you to believe, not only that he’s out there, but that only they can stop him, that if, God forbid, you vote for a Democrat-BOOM-you’ll be toast, probably before you leave your voting booth. Obviously, they want you too terrified to vote against them so that their party can remain in power, but they want you quivering in fear for one other reason and it’s this underlying motive that should scare the hell out of you and all Americans.

Put simply, the President and his administration want you scared so they can do whatever they want and no one will object. They’ve discovered that if they play the fear card well enough and often enough, not only will the American people and most of our representatives roll over and allow the executive branch to flout the laws of this land, we’ll even applaud as they trash our constitution and bill of rights.

Does anyone mind if the government breaks the law and listens in on Americans phone calls without a wire-tapping warrant? “Nah, as long as it keeps us safe from the terrorists”. Does anyone mind if we ignore the constitution, suspend habeas corpus and can therefore pick up any American citizen we want, hold them indefinitely (forever!), in an undisclosed location without allowing them to ever speak with an attorney (or anyone else) or appear before any court. Oh and of course torture them in stress positions and simulated drowning, if we deem it necessary. “Nope, that’s just fine, as long as we’re safe from the terrorists”. Does anyone mind if we ignore the law again and read your e-mail, pour over your bank accounts and all your financial records? “No, heck sounds good as long as it keeps us safe”.

Now, I have a question for you, when we allow the executive branch of this country to assume an unprecedented amount of power and ignore the very foundations this nation was built upon, who keeps us safe from them? Who or what keeps us safe from this President or the next or maybe the one after that deciding to rule as a tyrannical dictator? Most people probably think that could never happen in America, but the only thing that prevents this democracy from possibly becoming a dictatorship is its constitution. The same constitution we’re allowing to be ignored and trampled upon. It established the set of checks and balances designed to keep any government branch from holding too much power. (The founding fathers we’re especially fearful of an overly powerful executive branch.) So I say again, these are scary times and this administration’s giving sound advice when it tells us to, “Be afraid, be very afraid”.