Tuesday, November 6, 2018

"Fear itself" is to Be Feared

SUNDAY NIGHT I FELT FEAR - REAL FEAR. I was winding down on my recliner, channel surfing, and stopped at a Pen America panel discussion, “On Fascism,” moderated by Jelani Cobb, a writer for The New Yorker. I was tired after a busy day celebrating my wife’s birthday, and the last thing I needed was to inhale the stench wafting out of the White House or to flash on the unconscionable goings-on there. Despite the powerful impulse to change the channel, I watched the end of the program.
The speakers were warning of the very real threat that fascism poses to our democratic way of life. Cobb concluded that this is “primarily a crisis of education. We’ve defunded education to such an extent that people don’t recognize the threat to democracy when they see it.” As a college instructor I know that he is absolutely correct. Many, if not most, Americans have no real understanding of democracy, how it works, and why it needs vigilant safeguarding. For the first time in the many months of continual atrocities emanating from the Oval Office, I FELT FEAR.
Not the in-your-head concern and trepidation that comes from an academic realization that Trump could very well rip this country apart. What I experienced was physical. My legs were tremulous and weak, akin to the sensation one gets standing too close to a picture window in a high-rise building. I became aware of a budding nausea. It may have been a mild panic attack or the “fight or flight” impulse. Who knows, but whatever it was, I was alarmed that I was reacting to hitherto unimaginable events not only intellectually but physically. In short, I became aware that I am scared. Scared of where Trump, unfettered, may take us ... to a fascist nation with a president for life?
Anyone who’s buried his or her head, taking counterfeit comfort in the unsustainable belief that “it can’t happen here,” better pull his head out of the sand and get mobilized ... before it’s too late ... if it isn’t already.

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