Editor,
I've been reading and hearing a lot lately about fear. Americans, we are told, should be afraid of another terrorist attack. Britons, the media say, should be afraid of a similar attack. The Koreans are afraid of an American pre-emptive strike. The Israelis are afraid of a film about the Jenin refugee camp and have banned it. The list goes on.
I think, however, that the thing that we should be most afraid of is the fear being felt by this nation's rich and powerful. This small, but extremely wealthy segment of our society is scared shitless about the possibility of losing their position, power and privilege. And what's really scary to me is what they are planning to do about it.
The Pentagon "bombing" obviously scared the crap out of the American military. That it even happened was the military equivalent of exposing the Emperor's nakedness. President-select Bush, no military hero himself, scurried for cover like a recruit at his first "live fire" exercise. Wall Street froze like a thief, caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Add to this blow Islam's rejection of Western domination, the stubborn refusal of the Palestinian intifada to bow to Jewish oppression and exploitation, worldwide opposition to corporate globalization, a people's movement against the destruction of our natural environment, an assassination attempt on George I, Europeans who refuse to buy genetically modified American crops, etc., and what you get is a bunch of wealthy powerbrokers scared out of their greedy little minds.
What you also get is the so-called "Patriot Act" and its proposed "improvements," the anticipated war on Iraq, the "new" Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive military action, legislation allowing the government to demand to know what you read, the evisceration of domestic programs in order to fund tax breaks for the rich, who, because of the depression, can no longer exploit consumers in the usual way (high prices and low wages), increased military rather than humanitarian foreign aid, etc.
Under these circumstances, I'm pretty sure of what I'm afraid of. It's fear itself.
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David Vaughan
UNM student
