Posted on 09/21/2001 8:35:47 PM PDT by suspects
FEAR ITSELF
Michael Graham is the author of “The Dumbest Generation: Can American Democracy Survive the Era of Abject Stupidity?” available now from i-Publish.com.
Thursday night, the leader of the free world had heart-to-heart talk with my wife.
He knew she was scared. He knew why. And he told her that she didn’t have to be, that there was something he could do about it.
He knew more about my wife than I did.
An hour before President Bush’s first official wartime address to the nation, my wife Jennifer—known affectionately in my writing as The Warden—suddenly showed me something that I couldn’t see standing next to her over a sink of dishes, but that the President saw all the way in Washington.
After I suggested we think about making a quick trip to New York in the next month or so, “you know, to show our support for Rudy,” tears suddenly pressed into her eyes.
“Michael, I am not getting on an airplane! Can’t you see that I and every mother of young children in America is practically scared out of our wits?”
No, actually, I hadn’t seen it at all. We husbands are notoriously thick, the last to know.
She told me about conversations she and her friends were having. Her friends are women, they are professionals, they are well-educated and well informed.
And they are very, very frightened.
Some admit to waking up in the night, startled by the most familiar sounds. Some are planning to buy barrels of bottled water and canned foods for when the bio-chem warfare comes. One is mad at Gary Hart for telling the Today Show that the next target could be “somewhere like Nashville or Denver.”
The fear in my wife’s eyes was real, so real it nearly scared me. It scares me in part because I don’t feel it myself. Perhaps it’s a guy thing, but I fear for my nation, not for my family.
I don’t worry about being the victim of terrorism anymore than I worry about winning the lottery. It could happen in theory, but I just can’t imagine it will happen to me.
My wife has imagined it, every moment of it. Jennifer has imagined the families on those doomed planes, the ones traveling with young children. She has imagined sitting in that same seat with our three children—8,6 and 2—and waiting for death. Like all mothers, I suppose, she already lives in a world where danger lurks in every dry cleaner bag and over-sharpened pencil, where tragedy is just one small, removable toy part away.
Now that world has appeared on her television. The unimaginable things she secretly imagined have now appeared before her eyes.
So as I listened to President Bush speak to the nation Thursday night, I watched her. She’s no Bush softie. She’s been very critical of the lack of passion in his public statements immediately after the bombing attacks.
But Thursday night, the president reached her. He carefully addressed her fears. In fact, he told her he was waging a war against fear, “a war between fear and freedom….and we know that God is not neutral between them.”
Unlike a certain former president I could name, George Bush did not try to placate my wife with Oprah-style emotion. He didn’t empathize or even sympathize. He simply told her how he was going to make the fear go away. And it worked.
After the speech, when the pundits started weighing in, their commentary hit her like a rude intrusion. It was as though Sam Donaldson had stuck his head into the confessional and taken a few swipes at Father Chet’s homily. “What’s this got to do with you, Sam?” was her reaction.
We pundits thrive on spin and obfuscation, which is why we loved the Clinton presidency. Bush’s speech was so simple and direct it left them little to say.
And this directness showed me something: Clarity is the enemy of fear. The president didn’t tell my wife there would be no more attacks. He didn’t tell her that he felt her anxiety.
Instead, like a doctor with a cancer patient whom he knows can be a survivor, the president simply described the disease (global terrorism and the fear it breeds in free societies), wrote his prescription (sustain military, diplomatic and financial war on the international terror networks) and sent the patient home with a reassuring hug.
And now my wife is ready for the struggle. There will be more moments of fear, no doubt about it. I’ve noticed she’s making more frequent visits to our children’s bedrooms after they’re asleep. I’m often standing right behind her.
But now we know the enemy, we have a vision of how we’re going to fight, and we have a confident leader who is certain of the outcome, and whose certainty allays our doubts.
America’s enemy is terror. My wife’s was fear. Thursday night, George Bush took them both on.
Today, we’re halfway to victory.
Overall I thought the article was fairly good, but this line annoyed me. Lack of passion? Who has she been watching? What would she rather have him do or say?
I live a few miles from Camp Pendleton. It's not unusual to hear the boom of various exercises and we are used to it. However, the booms I've heard lately are both reassuring and frightening at the same time.
My family is going to Disneyland this weekend and here we are asking ourselves if it's a good idea or not.
I could go on and on but it is not like anything we've ever experienced and frankly, we don't know what to think.
George Bush definitely had a calming presence last night. As the writer said he didn't feel my pain or promise me that everything would be okay. What he did was let me know that he knew what needed to be done and planned to do it. I saw a real man in charge and excuse me all you feminists out there but I feel safer now and awfully proud of my president.
She was watching Bush who reacted as a President should, but was expecting the empty lip biting pabulum spewed forth by X-42.
She remembered the Rose Garden talks replete with victims and possible victims (all minorities) and an empty eyed Al Gore hovering in the background like the family ghost.
What passed for Clinton passion and caring was professing to feel pain that he, as a sociopath, could never understand and promising retaliation in proportion to the level of his personal bimbo eruptions of the moment.
Yeah, that's what I concluded. I refuse to let THEM stop me from living and doing what I've always done.
Attagirl! I keep thinking of FDR's famous line "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" (alluded in the article's title). Think of this like a big fumigation plan. You know the insect problem will only get worse if you don't do something about it. It's going to smell terribly for days. You'll be inconvenienced for awhile but the end result will definitely be worth it. You'll have saved your home.
So we're eradicating the pests who want to eat away at our world and everyone will need to hold their noses for awhile and put up with a lot of unsavory things. But it's better to do it now before the problem gets out of control. Then, you'd *really* have something to worry about.
Have fun at Disneyland and be sure to tell them you wish Walt were still running things.
Great analogy !!!!
Have fun at Disneyland and be sure to tell them you wish Walt were still running things.
Oh to have those days back again. : )
I just found out my daughter-in-law's brother has been called up - he's a cardiovascular surgeon in the Marine Corp. I remember when he went to Desert Storm.
And ... now I have heard my neice's husband has also been called - another Marine.
Looks like my prayer list will increase substantantially.
As a suggestion - during Desert Storm, our church started a big list (hung in the sanctuary), upon which people in the church posted the names of their loved ones. We prayed over those names all the time. We never lost anyone on that list.
I'll join you in prayer. My son-in-law is a Marine but hasn't heard anything about his near future yet.
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