And in fact, Beck founded an organization bent on stopping this plot, dubbed the 912 Project , which he hopes will "get everyone thinking like it is September 12th, 2001 again." Through this organization, he wants his members to know that they no longer need be trapped by the lies fabricated by the Wizard of Marxist Oz, that "once you pull back the curtain, you realize that there are only a few people pressing the buttons, and their voices are weak. The truth is that they don't surround us at all. We surround them."
Beck's ascendance, like McCarthy's, is no accident. He is surrounded by millions of supporters because he zestfully channels their free-floating paranoia produced on 9/11, exacerbated by years of pre-emptive panic, and ultimately, financial meltdown.
Beck has his finger soldered onto the panic button.
As Beck sees tyranny from the left, columnist Chris Hedges sees it from the right in "How Democracy Dies: Lessons from a Master" . Hedges sees us "slouching towards Bethlehem," marching blindly towards the breakdown of our democracy, with gulags and fascism at the end of this road:
"There will be no swastikas this time but seas of red, white and blue flags and Christian crosses. There will be no stiff-armed salutes, but recitations of the Pledge of Allegiance. There will be no brown shirts but nocturnal visits from Homeland Security"[and] unless we begin to hinder the functioning of the corporate state through acts of civil disobedience, we are finished."
In Hedge's call to action, we feel the panic button pressed yet again, the feeling of immediate disaster crouching at the fringe of our consciousness, ready to overtake us, to destroy us totally.
As a grandson of a blacklisted screenwriter and member of the Hollywood Ten , who has thrown into federal prison for a year by McCarthy and other true "patriots", I tend to be sympathetic to Hedges' fears. I fear, however, that it is our fear that poses the gravest danger to us. This fear unseats our good sense, it makes us prone to irrational ideas, and to fearmongers like Beck and McCarthy that wield paranoia as a weapon to pit us against each other. In the midst of the Great Depression, in a country full of fear and angst, FDR reminds us to not give into this fear, which is the greatest enemy of stability:
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
What FDR tells us is that the only way we can overcome our struggles is not in overcoming each other, but in overcoming our paralyzing hypochondria in winning the War on our personal Terror.
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