Fear-Monguering
by Jorge Vargas
Fear is a powerful force. It is perhaps even stronger than hope.
Mr. Obama knows and understands this.
Hope was enough to make him popular for a the few months before his election the office of presidency of the United States.
But what will make him popular for four years in office?
The same thing that made Mr. Bush popular for his first four years in office. The same thing that made most U.S. presidents popular during the cold war: Fear.
On 9 February 2009, in his first major press conference as president of the United States, Mr. Obama made his priorities clear.
We are not talking about his economic stimulus package. That is only of secondary concern. After all, what is important about a governor is how the person plans on governing.
Mr. Obama spoke of great debates and of intellectual leadership. Where is it?
Mr. Obama came out and proposed his plan and gave an exaggerated version of the results it would bring about (anyone with even the most basic knowledge of economics would guarantee that economic results are never predictable - if they were predictable, would not the whole world be "developed" by now?). Sure, you can predict them to a point. You can know that inflation is bad. You can figure out that putting out a lot of job offers will increase employment. But you can never know how much. You can never be specific.
Economics is a social science. Social sciences are defined by uncertainty. If they weren't, they'd just be sciences. The social changes the equation.
So, imagine the incredulity when Mr. Obama predicts 4 million new jobs with his stimulus package. Not "anywhere between 1 to 4 million." Just: 4 million. His advisors say: 1 to 4 million.
The man must obviously have an economic team never before seen.
Wait. Wait.
Let's not get carried away with Mr. Obama's economic team.
They have made it known that their figures are susceptible to a "significantly high" margin of error.
Good to know that they, at least, are not liars.
But, then, you can not blame Mr. Obama for his manipulation of facts. The media has already turned against him - which would be a first for the young, inexperienced politician - and popular opinion, outside of the college campuses, is also starting to grow weary of a Mr. Obama who says that there are no double standards in his cabinet when one of his top officials owes taxes to the IRS - that man paid off his taxes only very recently and now he administers the IRS.
So much for double-standards.
So, what does an inexperienced politician do when public opinion is, to use a colorful U.S. saying, "heading south?"
First, you create a monster. How do you create a monster?
You blow something out of proportion. Mr. Bush chose al-Qaeda. It worked for him, for a while. Mr. Obama just chose the economy. Mr. Obama says that this is the worst economic crisis since the "Great Depression" of the late 1920s and 1930s.
How does he figure?
Don't ask. Every fact points to this being the worst crisis in 20 years or so. Maybe Mr. Obama has super-confidential, presidential files somewhere with information that no one else has.
Doubtful, however, since the world of economics is, by definition, a public world, and the government can not obscure such data - it can lie about it, though. Just ask the Chinese. Or, without going as far as Beijing, ask Mr. Obama - he apparently knows all about lying about economic figures.
Unemployment is high in the United States right now. But is it 25%? 20%? 15%?
No. It was that high in the 1930s.
Not today.
Banks are falling. Auto companies are about to fall.
But that was bound to happen: Bad, arrogant business decisions lead to failure. The U.S. automakers never thought to learn from the Japanese and the Germans, and they produced bad cars. No one bought their cars. They are going out of business.
It's not the end of the world. Just the end of Detroit (but then, everyone knew Detroit was ending, so why the surprise?).
Well, people are now concerned because the U.S. has a president dedicated to blowing things out of proportion. Now, Detroit has become the world. To say nothing of New York City's Wall Street. That's become the universe, to Mr. Obama.
Economies produce their core competencies. The Japanese have cars and VCRs. The Chinese have cheap manual labour products. The Peruvians have mining. The Spanish have fishing. The English... What do the English have?
The United States used to have cars and big banks. The U.S. might still have big banks. But the U.S. does not have cars anymore. Those days are gone (and it's about time, because U.S. car models were just not good for the environment).
But Mr. Obama, who probably knows all about core competencies, claims that the downfall of the U.S. auto industry and of U.S. banks constitute the end of the world.
He, like any talented populist, knows his audience. For the most part: People out of work. People who think they know economics because they once heard some talk about supply and demand. People who see absolutely nothing wrong with "buy American." People who don't even think that the environment is a problem.
For the most part: People mired in ignorance.
That is not meant to insult them. They can not help it. They live in a "first world" nation with a "third world" educational system.
(Ever wonder why schools need bake sales to raise revenue whereas the U.S. Armed Forces seem to be swimming in cash?)
So, what works most efficiently on ignorance?
Common sense? Intellectual debate? Reason?
None of those things. Don't be ignorant.
Fear is what works most efficiently on ignorance.
You scare people. You tell them that there's a big, bad boogeyman on his way, out to get them.
What do you do when you create this monster and scare people?
The most logical thing!
You propose a plan to defeat the monster. In Mr. Obama's case, you tell them that you have an economic stimulus plan that will create four million jobs - that's more jobs than there are people in nearly every U.S. city, to put that into perspective (or, to put it another way, that's like opening up new jobs for half of New York City).
Not an easy thing to do.
But then, it can never be measured. Jobs appear. People take jobs. No one knows where the jobs come from. No one can measure it. Four years from now, there might be 4 million new jobs. Maybe Mr. Obama's plan will help. Or, maybe, without Mr. Obama's plan there might have been 8 million new jobs.
Economics is extremely imprecise.
But Mr. Obama knows that, and he does not care.
Why not?
Remember how this monster was just a figment of the imagination?
Mr. Obama knows that this "crisis" is not as serious as the crisis of the 1930s. The world economic system is fundamentally (and beneficially) different. Mr. Obama knows this. He is not stupid - he's just a blatant liar.
He knows, therefore, that jobs will come back, and 4 million sounds good to voters.
He gets all of the credit for killing off the monster. He gets to go on talking about hope and half a dozen other wishy, washy subjects with little relevance while ignoring Israel's abuses in Palestine and while ignoring a worsening situation in Afghanistan and while lying about Iran's presumed nuclear intentions.
And the public thinks he's a big hero.
That is the politics of fear-monguering.
Make up a monster.
Kill the monster with a vague plan.
Reap all of the credit and the benefits.
Well played, Mr. Obama. Well played.
Your public might actually believe you.
A pity on them.
