Fear and Loathing in America
The only thing to fear is fear itself. FDR spoke that line nearly a century ago, but it holds up as key tenet of this American moment. Fear is scary because making opponents afraid is a core ingredient of authoritarian-leaning leadership. Are we seeing rising levels of fear across American institutions and businesses? I’m afraid so. We’ve seen law firms get cold feet. We’ve seen business leaders clam up. We’ve seen universities offer teachable moments about how to knuckle under. We’ve seen some media outlets change tone. Democracy dies in darkness is a nice slogan until someone scares the living daylights out of you. Fear is contagious, so if big institutions are buckling, how will smaller entities and individuals keep their spines stiff? Isaac Stanley-Becker in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The United States of Fear. “The pressures boil down to fear—fear of adverse executive action, fear of associations disfavored by a vengeful president, and fear of a government bent on retribution. Two months into Trump’s second term, fear is taking hold across broad cross sections of American society. Business executives are privately speculating that the U.S. president could be a foreign asset, his actions a ‘gift to China,’ but biting their tongues in public. University administrators and the lobbyists they’ve retained are quietly expressing relief that Columbia is the government’s ‘whipping boy,’ keeping their heads down to avoid a lashing of their own. Government scientists, apprehensive that their research will be scrapped, are scrubbing their work of anything that might smack of diversity efforts … The consequences are severe: hiring freezes, loss of clients, abandoned clinical trials. So fear of confronting the president spreads, quieting those who might otherwise be motivated to speak out.” (It’s worth remembering that courage can be as contagious as fear.)
+ If it makes you feel any better, the fear is pretty clearly bipartisan. Many Republican leaders know that things like threatening Canada, siding with Putin, issuing seesawing tariff proclamations, enabling unelected Elon’s chainsawing of government, and flouting laws and judicial rulings are wrong. They’re even more afraid to speak up than the opposition. And we’re seeing that once again when it comes to the Signal war plan sharing screw-up that literally every single person in office knows represents a terrible breach of trust, confidence, and security. But, as you’d expect, there were early signs Tuesday of Republicans coalescing around a defiant message. (Maybe they should share that defiant message on Signal. It might go as viral as the war plans.)
+ Want something to be afraid of? Be afraid that these guys are running our national defense. If you missed it yesterday, here’s my coverage of a security failure so embarrassing, one has to wonder whether our NatSec is already FUBAR.
