The Power of Nightmares

Here’s a documentary you won’t see on American television anytime soon: The Power of Nightmares.

It’s long, but worth your time, as it explains very clearly how, over the course of the last fifty years, politicians have learned to use fear to unite and manipulate us. Watching all three episodes will help you understand why President Bush is so eager to issue color-coded security alerts, dangle unsubstantiated terrorist threats in front of the media, and wage an unending “War on Terror.”)

It’s pretty chilling to see archival news footage of a young Donald Rumsfeld asserting, against all evidence to the contrary, asserting that the Soviet Union (even as it neared collapse) was on the verge of attacking America with a new generation of undetectable weapons. When CIA data made it clear that the Soviets had no such weapons, Rumsfeld and friend Paul Wolfowitz organized Team B — an alternative “investigative body” that concluded that the lack of evidence of weapons of mass destruction was, in fact, proof that the Soviets had created weapons American science simply couldn’t detect.

Further, Rumsfeld and friends established a fear-mongering political action group: the Committee on the Present Danger. It’s message? “America was under threat from hidden forces that could strike at any time — forces that America must conquer in order to survive.”

Ultimately, the NeoConservatives driving this fantasy went so far as to fabricate a link between all terrorism in the world and the Soviet Union, which they positioned as the Axis of Evil in the modern world.

Hmmm. Donald Rumsfeld and crew manufacturing proof of a threat from a lack of evidence that such a threat exists. Shadowy forces coiled to strike without warning. A nation singled out as the evil source of all terrorism on the planet. Sound familiar?

For those with short attention spans, the central message of the film is this: Once, politicians inspired us with ideal visions of a Golden Age. Today, though, a very small, very organized group of power-hungry people have realized that fear is a far more powerful tool for organizing society (and preserving a choke-hold on political power). A population that lives in a constant state of terror will not balk when their rights are stripped away “to keep them safe.” A nation united by fear will not question illegal or immoral actions taken “to keep them safe.”

The more convinced you are that your government is all that stands between you and some terrible, shadowy, evil force that lurks just outside the gates, the less likely you are to take a stand against anything the government does. In five words: fearful people make great sheep.