Fear Factor

By Frank Joyce, AlterNet. Posted October 26, 2004.

It's widely acknowledged that the "music" of the campaign is more important than the "lyrics." The Bush campaign has been playing the fear card from day one. Willie Horton, meet Osama bin Hussein. The music is what makes us comfortable and happy; it's what lulls us to sleep or gets us revved up. The lyrics? They make us think.

A recent column by Arianna Huffington nailed the single most important aspect of the music: The defining dynamic of this campaign is fear.

Quite astutely, Huffington's column "Appealing to Our Lizard Brains" quotes the research of Harvard neuroscience professor Daniel Siegel on how fear affects the brain. Among other things, fear makes it very hard to think logically and clearly – meaning that non-verbal cues become especially important.

"... when we are afraid, we are biologically programmed to pay less attention to left-brain signals – indeed, our logical mind actually shuts itself down. Fear paralyzes our reasoning and literally makes it impossible to think straight. Instead, we search for emotional, nonverbal cues from others that will make us feel safe and secure.

When our right brain is at Threat Level Red, we don't want to hear about a four-point plan to win the peace, or a list of damning statistics, or even a compelling, well-reasoned argument that the policies of Bush and Cheney are actually making us less safe. We want to get the feeling that everything is going to be all right.

In this state, our brains care more about tone of voice than what the voice is saying. This is why Bush can verbally stumble and sputter and make little or no sense and still leave voters feeling that he is the candidate best able to protect them. Our brains are primed to receive the kinds of communication he has to offer and discard the kinds John Kerry has to offer, even if Kerry makes more 'logical sense.' Which, of course, he does.

The strutting, winking, pointing and near-shouting that marked Bush's town hall debate performance all sent the same subconscious message to our fear-fogged brains: 'I'm your daddy, I've got your back. So just go to sleep and stop thinking. About anything.

'At the deepest level,' Dr. Siegel told me, 'we react to fear as adults in much the same way we did as infants. It's primal. Human babies have the most dependent infancy of any species. Our survival depends on the caregiver. We instinctively look to authority figures to comfort us and keep us safe.'"

And so, Huffington concludes, the test facing undecided voters isn't "which candidate you would rather have a beer with." It's "which candidate would you rather give your blankie and a bottle and keep the bogeyman away."

That's, of course, exactly what Cheney/Rove/Bush having been doing. What can Kerry do to combat it?

Hope, courage, toughness and confidence trump fear. Statistics don't. (Anger trumps fear too, but that's a special case that doesn't apply here.) The great international leaders – Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Jr., Churchill, Ghandi, FDR, Ho Chi Minh, JFK and others (yes, even Reagan in a way) – all exuded hope, confidence and steadfastness in times of change, turmoil and adversity.

Kerry makes a good tough guy, and he exudes confidence and courage. But on a key point he has fallen behind. A small but significant example: It's forgotten now, but he made a very bad response to Bush's announced intention to redeploy tens of thousands of U.S. troops now stationed in Europe. Essentially Kerry said, don't do it. In other words, he identified with the status quo-that is, the past.

This is a big problem. Unions, progressives, liberals, whatever, have become firmly allied with the past. The message is all about the bad people "taking good things away" (Social Security, pensions, worker rights ... you fill in the blank). Therefore, we must "take our country back." There is fear mongering underneath these appeals too as in the fear of losing social security and so on. But that fear mongering is too "small" and weak to be effective.

Frank Joyce is a labor activist and communication consultant based in Detroit, Michigan.

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