Fear Itself
Objectively, the United States is one of the safest and most secure places on earth. Our only shared borders are with peaceful neighbors who present no threat and there are wide oceans to provide insulation from military rivals. Yet Americans have a level of anxiety and fear of being invaded and conquered that are completely out of proportion to any plausible assault.
In this class we will explore this mismatch between threat level and fear. We will find that our exaggerated fears have produced serious distortions in how we see others and ourselves. We will see how Americans in the early 1950s tittilated themselves watching movies and television programs depicting Soviet armies occupying our cities. Every stranger or new neighbor might be a Russian agent intent upon subversion and espionage.
In the 21st century al Qaeda and ISIS have replaced Nazis and Soviets as our locus of fears. No evening of network television passes without a narrowly-averted Islamic plot being thwarted at the last possible moment. But the question remains: if we are so special and so strong, why are we so afraid and so easily intimidated?
This class marks the midpoint of a three-class sequence on American self image. In the previous class we looked at the concept of American Exceptionalism. This week we examine how our outsized self-importance is offset by similarly outsized anxieties. Next week we see how these two factors lead to an inevitable desire to have a military of unprecedented size and potency.
