December 8, 2002

We are all survivalists these days. Or characters in a Stephen King or Michael Creighton novel. Fear is the central organizing emotion of our time.

The race. That teeth-grinding, white-knuckled scramble up and down the Interstates that began long before the terrorists hit town. (Don't let anyone cut in front of you; you might lose the race; they might get the edge.) And of course the race to war, and the unavoidable race to find the terrorists, and the race ... well, we all seem to be one step ahead of something; we're not sure what it is, but it's gaining on us.

Author Barry Glassner calls this state of mind "the culture of fear."

"We are [being] turned into a nation of little, shaking Chihuahuas," said Michael Moore, quoted this week in Newsweek. A docu-propagandist of the highest order, Moore is drawing critical praise for his film, "Bowling for Columbine," which challenges what he considers the American gun culture. In the documentary, partly inspired by Glassner's book "The Culture of Fear," Moore argues that America's every-man-for-himself ethos combined with the presence of too many guns keeps everyone on edge, fearful.

Here's another way to look at it: guns don't kill people, fear kills people. "In a culture of fear, we're more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later," says Jeffery L. Bineham, a communications professor at Minnesota's St. Cloud State University.

Are they overstating the case? Maybe.

Think of all the brave Americans who resist the culture of fear. These folks go on about their daily lives, accentuated by small moments of modest courage. They get up each morning and send the kids off to school with a smile, and go to their jobs, and sometimes even make love in the afternoon. They retain a sense of proportion. (Want to live a really scary life? Try Somalia.) Still, even these Americans describe a kind of fog settling over everyday life, the tendrils of fear finding the cracks and moving closer.

In 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned Americans that they had nothing to fear but fear itself, he wasn't kidding around.

But Glassner, surprisingly, contends that Roosevelt was wrong. Glassner doesn't believe that "all we have to fear is fear itself." Rather, most of the time "we simply fear the wrong things," he says. Misplaced or distorted fear not only kills joy, but distracts us from real threats. "While fortunes are being spent to protect children from dangers that few ever encounter, approximately 11 million children lack health insurance, 12 million are malnourished, and rates of illiteracy are increasing," he writes.

On some issues, we seem to prefer the fog. Even as crime rates fell dramatically in the 1990s, the public continued to believe that crime was catapulting right over the prison walls.

That belief was, and continues to be, no accident, says Frank Gilliam, UCLA associate vice chancellor and director of the Center for Communications and Community. Gilliam conducted a five-year study of local newscasts aired in Los Angeles. He reported startling imbalance and inaccuracy. Violent coverage outstripped the rate of violent crime in the case of murder, by a factor of as much as 30 to 1. Black crime was portrayed in numbers higher than reality.

Some news directors pursue this practice because they know crime, especially black crime, sells. The product: more fear, more racism and points in the ratings race.

Now comes the age of terrorism.

Media coverage aside, fear can distort policy and undermine safety. For example, immigrant-rights organizations argue that anti-immigrant sentiment and government sweeps are driving immigrant communities further from the American mainstream and deeper into secrecy and that this is happening at the very time when their full participation is most needed.

These advocates make a strong case for a different policy, one that encourages immigrants to come forward with information about potential terrorist activity, without fear of arrest or deportation for minor violations of immigration laws. Reduce fear; increase security.

Honest people can disagree on the proper balance between these approaches, while agreeing that fear the socially indulgent kind undermines hope in the future and faith in ourselves.

Which brings us back to the race. "I've flunked my own feelings," a mother told me last week. "My ideals tell me not to push my kids so hard academically, but I still do it. Why? Because I'm afraid. My kids aren't geniuses, but I'm afraid if I don't push them, they'll be left behind in the race."

Fear seeds panic and passivity. The more driven by unreasoned fear we are, the more likely we are to place our faith in the elevating power of aliens or the guy on the white horse; to shrug and turn away; to shred our greatest protection, a 211-year-old piece of parchment called the Bill of Rights.

Last week, in a letter to the editor, a high school student articulated how many (not all) young Americans feel these days:

"Yes, we may tend to talk about Britney Spears' new outfit or what's hot this season more than about politics, but that does not mean that we're ignorant. We just see no point. We can't even change simple policies at our own school, let alone the world, so why bother? Why should we waste our time arguing about something that we see no solution to?"

That statement worries me more than all the stories about West Nile Virus, bin Laden or anthrax combined. And you won't see much news about it at 11.