The Politics of Fear and Ignorance
Aug 20th, 2009 by nick
Although I support a single-payer system, or at least a public option, in health care reform, I admit that there are probably reasonable arguments against them. So why aren’t we hearing any? Instead, we’re inundated by ludicrous claims that Obama will institute “death panels” and so on. Sharon Begley at Newsweek provides some interesting analysis about why this kind of fear mongering is working. Some key quotes from her article:
The power of “death panels” as a phrase and a scare tactic also works because Americans are deeply uncomfortable with death… As a result of that discomfort, reminding people of death sends them off the deep end, into the part of the neuronal pool where reason cowers behind existential terror. And we’re particularly vulnerable to scaremongering in the atmosphere of dread created by the economic meltdown. When people are already scared about losing their jobs and their homes and paying for health care, it doesn’t take a lot to make them afraid of one more thing. We’re living with “free-floating anxiety” every day, says psychiatrist Louann Brizendine of the University of California, San Francisco. “The brain is signaling ‘danger’ right now. Whenever that happens, the brain typically loses its logical reasoning power.”…
Health care stirs powerful emotions, and because the subject is so complicated, people are unable to balance their emotional reactions with rational ones. Moreover, appeals to fear, anger, and hate really gain traction when ignorance is wide and deep.
What kind of ignorance does she mean? This kind:
At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.”
As Daniel Gross points out:
This is a something of a Churchillian moment. Never before have so many known so little about so much. The meme… about Medicare not being a government program has two sources: ignorance and mendacity. Some people may really not know that Medicare is taxpayer-funded health care. That’s ignorance. Many more people know it—and know the degree to which taxpayers are already funding lots of health care for them and their loved ones—and argue otherwise. That’s mendacity.
There are two ways to counter this ignorance and fear mongering. First, with facts such as those found here and here. Second, and perhaps more important, supporters of health care reform need better rhetoric. To this end, I was happy to hear the following quote from Obama this morning:
“These are fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation and that is that we look out for one another,” he said. “That I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper and in the wealthiest nation on Earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.”
What a great quote from Obama. How amazing to have a president who actually believes that we are morally obligated to look out for each other.
Nick:
Nice review but going to one of the meetings was even more educational, at least on an anecdotal basis. My Daily Kos post reviewed the experience [http://www.dailykos.com/user/RWN] which I can sum up more simply. The idea that America doesn’t deal with the concept of death is too cerebral this is about the RIGHT-Wing’s entire mythological view being challenged. They will latch onto any distorted myth to oppose this for it goes to the heart of their mythology that all things can be solved my the “invisible hand of the free marketplace”. This is a religious belief, an emotional belief and coincides with what Lakoff pointed to in his book “The Conservative Mind”.
Conservatives be those who possess a conscience or not, don’t hold to concept of the “commons” or the “common good”. Everything in their viewpoint is a matter of “class” or inequality and therefore those who have good health or good access to healthcare is because they are moral and being “rewarded” by the social class system. Those who don’t are immoral and don’t deserve it.
The anger you see is the same as when a myth is being challenged, whether it is a 2nd grader being told that there is no Santa Claus or a lover who finds infidelity exists with their mate. the anger is real, the justification is not.
There is no middle ground here. No reaching them, they have this fixed worldview no different than how a Roman Catholic has that the Pope is a direct decedent of Peter or evangelicals believe in personal divine intervention.
Logical, rational discussion can only be made with those willing to submit to facts and an empirical review. Death panels are real for them for they “project” that given the power and inclination to pay or not pay they would have to install “death panels” for them the sick are this way because somehow or someway the person is immoral. It makes no sense except that is their pathology.
Forget trying to understand it, realize it is a force in society that must be overcome—ethically but with the full measure of what is moral for the commons and the common good.