One form of borderline child abuse that has been fine tuned for adult populations by national leaders is the use of the dreaded “bogeyman”. Many cultures have employed their own version of this amorphous monster to terrorize their children into acceptable behavior. It should come as no surprise that politicians who view their constituents as childlike would employ the same tactic.
In the past, such fear-mongering was reserved for the most serious policy initiatives, and of course to the campaign season. In today’s world the campaign season is perpetual, and the threat of the bogeyman has become a constant hum in our national psyche. Gone are the days of great leaders telling us that we have nothing to fear but fear itself; today’s leaders remind us that fear springs eternal, it is new and more deadly every day. If we can’t see the crisis, they will paint it vividly for us in apocalyptic colors.
The latest iteration of the bogeyman technique is playing out this week with the impending possibility of the sequester. Sequestration was originally a legal term that referred the act of a valuable property being locked away by the court for safekeeping until disputes over ownership can be resolved. Politically, the term has been hijacked to refer to across the board spending cuts in lieu of agreement on a more targeted approach. To be clear, sequestration doesn’t decrease government spending, it is by no means a spending cut. Rather it is a cut in the rate of increase in government spending; so we will be spending less than what we might have if we had spent more. It’s kind like riding in a car with someone who is driving too fast and still accelerating. You ask them to slow down a little, and they don’t slow down, but they reduce their rate of acceleration; they go faster slower.
The automatic cuts amount to about 90 billion dollars, which is on average about half of the amount the budget has increased each year over the past ten years. It represents approximately a 2.5% cut to the total budget, if we had a budget. Of course many mandatory expenditures are exempt from the cuts, so the remaining departments bear more like a 9% cut to allocated funding, spread relatively evenly between military and domestic discretionary spending. It is from this 9% cut that the specter of the ominous bogeyman arises. With a 16.5 trillion dollar debt, a 3.6 trillion dollar annual expense account (of which about 40% is borrowed), it is somewhat disconcerting to imagine that even this diminutive decrease will trigger the Mayan apocalypse after all.
Chief among the prophets of doom regarding the sequester is the President. His forecasts of a national catastrophe ranging from military inadequacy, to economic disaster, to loss of day care services, teachers being fired, air travel security hazards, lay-offs galore… all paint a picture of a truly toxic situation should the sequester become a reality. His forecasts of national ruin are ironic in light of the revelation that sequestration was in fact his idea. It begs the question, if this is such a horrible idea, why did he suggest it? The explanation of course is that the intention was to make it such a bad idea, such a bad alternative, that it would motivate all sides to come up with something else. Democrats, having no desire to face such a motivation, were widely opposed to the measure. Republicans went along with it, and the President signed it into law. Both sides imagined that the threat of sequestration gave them leverage in negotiation. It’s like two poker players all in with bad hand bluffs, all that remains to be seen is whose hand is worse; only trouble is that they’re both betting with our money.
IMHO: An important rule in behavior management is that you never give someone a choice that you aren’t willing to live with the consequences of them choosing. We have come to the place where politicians set up the nation for failure so that they can blame the failure on their opponents. If the horror of the sequester proves as anticlimactic as Y2K, the President begins to look like the boy who cried wolf. If such a minor cut as this does indeed bring on the crisis he forecasts, what hope is there for ever digging out of this hole? The President speaks of manufactured crises as though he has played no role in the process. I, for one, am tired of a national existence fueled by fear. Is there only darkness on our horizon? There are plenty of monsters in the world, but we are equal to them, provided we we are not paralyzed by the bogeymen invented by our leaders.
Right on, Kevin! We have been engulfed by constant fear tactics not only from politicians but through all manner of media. We are losing our ability to be strong and valiant, to overcome obstacles, when cold and uncertain facts are offered; such as, that three out of ten people will eventually die of cancer, or heart attack, or high blood pressure, or in an accident, etc., etc. The list is long, and, to a thinking person can never add up. Most people will leave this life overcome by something. The constant barrage of prophetic insights about how many children will be taking drugs by a certain age, or how many go to bed hungry every night, or that a large percentage of seniors will come down with Alzheimer’s or dementia is indicative of the poor diet of hopelessness that is being fed to the public. As the eating habits of the nation have deteriorated, so the consumption of all these dubious facts are swallowed down without filtering them through the thought processes of a wonderful brain that God has given us. Time to wake up and smell the roses, to see that there is sunshine above the clouds, people, to encourage, to love, to help along this wondrous journey of life. For those who love our great and awesome God – we are called to be lights in a dark world. I suppose that is not a politically correct idea, but it really works. Let’s have faith that Providence is yet watching over this nation for good – He has always brought courageous men to the forefront in times of trouble, and, doubtless, will do so again.
@GLO: Well said. You demonstrate that the employment of the bogeyman transcends poor parenting and poor politics. Those with whatever valiant, or sometimes not so valiant cause feel justified to bend the numbers to the point of incredulity for an often gullible public. I am reminded of the quote from Andrew Lang; “He used statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts; for support rather than illumination.”