Category Archive

A few days ago, I wrote about my fears that some sort of terrorist attack would be staged yesterday by people wishing to manipulate the public and Congress to further their own ends. I was actually quite on edge all day yesterday, expecting something to happen.

Nothing did.

I’m really glad I was wrong.

I still think it is likely that we will see either an actual attack or a very scary plot that is successfully foiled in a very high profile way sometime before the election, if McCain continues to trail Obama in the polls. I think the Republicans will need something to put a good scare into the American public if they want to have any hope of heading off the Obama express in November. And I think Bush wants an excuse to start a war with Iran. An attack or near-attack would help on both those fronts.

As I’ve said before, I’m not accusing the Republican party or any particular politicians of anything here. There are a lot of interests outside of the government (technically, anyway) that might set something up to ensure that things go the way they want them to, though. Big corporations like Halliburton, KBR, Blackwater. (Talk about an axis of evil.) And there are others as well. For instance, has anyone looked at how the Saudi economy has been doing lately, with all the chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan? Weren’t most of the 9/11 hijackers Saudi?

As we get closer to the election, I will probably start sounding increasingly paranoid again. Sorry about that. I’m just not going to be able to really relax completely until the current criminal in chief is out of office.

As far as other things I mentioned in my earlier post, I did go out for that drive into the countryside last night. (Recreational driving - that’s something that’s sure to become a thing of the past, with current gas prices. But sometimes, I just need to go somewhere, you know?) The corn in the fields around Redstatesville is green with almost glossy leaves right now, and it looks to be an excellent crop, based on my limited (okay, completely non-existent) knowledge of agriculture.

Turns out, though, I couldn’t really see the stars last night. Other things made up for it, and I’ll get to those in a moment, but first I just have to say this:

Apparently farmers are completely insane.

Maybe it’s the fertilizer, or all those pesticides they work with, but those guys are nuts. (This could actually explain a lot about local voting patterns, now that I think about it. But I digress.)

Imagine, if you will, the following scenario:

So here I am, tooling along a little two-lane road in Middleofnowhere County (which is the next county over from Redstatesville, where I live) in my much-abused ten-year-old Saturn, thinking, “Okay, I’m far enough from the city lights to do some serious stargazing. It’s almost completely dark out, I’ll just find a wide spot in the road to pull over so I can get out and look up at the sky.”

All of a sudden, there’s this big fireburst off to the right side of the road ahead.

Someone is lighting off fireworks out there in the middle of all that corn.

And I’m thinking, “Are these guys nuts?! Are they trying to start a fire and take out their whole crop?”

Then I look around and realize that they’re not the only ones shooting fireworks up into the sky. No, there are a good six or seven other people/groups out here in Middleofnowhere doing exactly the same thing.

Crazy, I tell you.

Of course, I grew up out on the west coast, in deepest, darkest suburbia, and don’t know much about crops. Out west, things are usually tinderbox dry at this time of year and fireworks are generally verboten except in a few specially designated areas, usually out over water. Maybe when the corn is this green, there’s not so much risk. I didn’t see any fires, so I guess they knew what they were doing.

It was pretty cool to watch, though. I’ll say that.

All around me, fireworks were going off in the night sky for about half an hour or so. And the fields were twinkling with fireflies, tens of thousands of them, flying around and blinking on and off like demented Christmas tree lights.

Smoke from the fireworks mostly blocked the stars, but all the other lights made up for it.

And aside from the occasional booms and pops from the fireworks, it was quiet. No politicians speechifying, no flag waving, no John Phillip Sousa.

Just a bunch of Americans, out celebrating the end of King George’s tyranny over the colonies, and the birth of our country.

Or maybe just getting a little drunk and making some noise, lighting up the night sky. That works, too.

-jane doe

…if they really are out to get us?

It’s a question I’ve been pondering today, as I contemplate the current state of things in American politics.

There is a phenomenon in psychology known as habituation, in which an organism - human or animal - begins to ignore some stimulus in its environment that has been repeated over and over. After a certain point, the brain just tunes it out, and stops reacting even at the neurological level. Our nervous systems are set up to notice changes in the environment. Changes represent potential threats, or risks, or food sources, and they draw our attention quickly, while unchanging things are quickly filed and forgotten.

Say you bring home a new clock and put it on your mantle. When you first start it up, you notice the ticking sound made by the second hand as it moves in its circular route. But very quickly you become unaware of the noise unless you are deliberately attending to it.

Here’s another example: I live in the flight path of the Redstatesville airport. There are relatively few flights in and out of the airport each day, and once I had been living here for a while, I rarely noticed the planes anymore unless one passed by particularly low directly overhead. In the last few days, however, a helicopter has been flying around my neighborhood frequently, presumably because of its proximity to the airport. That, I notice. But if it becomes routine over the next few weeks, I’ll probably stop noticing it, as well.

People who live along train tracks experience a similar phenomenon, and wonder why their house guests never seem to get a good night’s sleep.

It kind of works the same way with warnings. Call it Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome: when a warning is repeated endlessly, and the event warned of never happens, the warning itself becomes meaningless chatter that gets filtered out as we go about our business.

When’s the last time you really listened to a flight attendant give the pre-flight safety speech? Do you actually look around the cabin to find the nearest exit before takeoff? I’m betting that for frequent travelers, the answer to those questions are, “Um, jeez, I don’t know,” and “No,” respectively.

Where am I going with this?

Well, as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, I believe that the current administration has been using terror management theory to manipulate public opinion. Keith Olbermann has ably chronicled this in the series of reports he has done about the nexus of politics and terror, in which he recalls for us all the times that bad news affecting the Bush administration was followed, usually within a day or so, by press releases from the White House or the Department of Homeland Security about the terrorist threat. Increases in the threat level, the sudden reporting of uncovered and averted plots, that sort of thing.

And of course, the Republican Party’s beating of the 9/11 drum in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election was plain for all to see.

In the 2006 elections, they tried this strategy again, but it didn’t work for them so well that time. Partly because people were fed up with the ongoing Iraq war, and likely partly because of habituation.

People have simply heard the politicians talk about 9/11 so much that most people (though of course not all) now sort of tune them out and focus on other issues. Like the war, or the economy, or the huge laundry list of scandals perpetrated by this administration.

What does all this mean?

It means, quite frankly, that if the Republicans (and those interests that support them or benefit from their policies) want to continue to use fear successfully as a tool of political manipulation, they probably actually need another terrorist attack, preferably one on US soil. Something that makes a big boom, figuratively or literally.

This thought has been keeping me awake at night lately.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe that this is a Republican party campaign strategy. I am not accusing anyone of treason. There has been no attack yet, and I have know knowledge of actual facts about any plot.

What I’m saying is, that it would only take a few people with knowledge of terror management theory’s implications to see what “needed” to be done and to arrange for it to happen.

You may, at this point, be thinking, “Wait a minute. This is all well and good, but so far I haven’t heard anything that would suggest that people high up in the current administration or the Republican party are even aware of terror management theory. Isn’t this just something a bunch of ivory-tower social psychologists like to jawjack about? Where’s your evidence that any of the people you are talking about know anything at all about this?”

Here’s the thing:

Since 9/11, there has been a major increase in government funding for terror management research. Much if not all of that funding comes through the Department of Homeland Security, and various military officers and DHS officials have been briefed on the findings by the very university professors who are conducting the research.

How do I know this? Ah, that would be telling. But some of it, at least, can probably be confirmed through public sources - particularly information about research grants that have been made to fund the research. As for the briefings claim, well…let’s just say I have my sources, and leave it at that for now.

You can see why I am losing sleep at night: I don’t think the terrorists are the only ones we have to fear.

Hell, I don’t even think the terrorists are the most dangerous threat at the moment.

What might motivate otherwise loyal Americans to orchestrate a “terrorist” attack on their own country?

Money. Power.

Both of these are at stake, in huge amounts, at the moment.

My original mental doomsday scenario called for the attack to be a few weeks before the November election. Say, late September or early October.

But last night I got to thinking, what if manipulating the election results to ensure a favorable outcome weren’t your only goal?

What if you were trying to force measures further eroding our privacy and civil liberties through Congress?

What if you wanted an excuse to start bombing Iran?

Am I being paranoid?

We’re heading into a three-day weekend, a time when people will be pumped up with patriotic fervor. The day when we celebrate our country’s founding and the battle for our independence.

There will be all sorts of big events drawing thousands of people, all across the country. Baseball games, outdoor concerts, fireworks displays.

And large gatherings of people make really good targets for a terrorist attack.

Am I being paranoid?

I really, really hope so. Believe me when I say that nothing would make me happier than to be wrong on this.

I just hope that, if the worst does happen, if another attack does occur, that things will be a little different than they were after 9/11. That Congress won’t rush to sell out our remaining civil liberties, or allow us to be bulldozed into a war with Iran before the investigation into the attack is even finished. That the media will question the information being fed to them by those in power, instead of just mindlessly reporting it as truth. That whoever conducts the investigation looks not just at the Middle East, but also closer to home, when trying to establish the list of suspects and their motivations.

I think I’ll end on that cheerful note. Again, I really hope to be proven wrong in all of this. I’ll be really happy if on January 21, 2009, I’m writing a post about how I got all worked up over nothing.

As for this weekend, well, I don’t think I’ll be going to any baseball games, or large concerts, or fireworks shows. Maybe I’ll go for a drive out into the farmland surrounding us here in Redstatesville. See how the corn’s coming up. Get away from the city lights and lie on the hood of my car staring up at the sky, counting stars and dreaming of a world where I don’t feel the need to engage in the kind of paranoid speculation I’ve been doing here today.

-jane doe

Addendum: A new CNN poll out today (July 2) reports that “Americans’ concerns about terrorism have hit an all-time low for the post-September 11 era,” and goes on to say:

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday, 35 percent of Americans believe a terrorist attack somewhere in the United States is likely over the next several weeks.

The figure is the lowest in a CNN poll since the September 11, 2001, al Qaeda attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people.

All of which ties in with my comment above about Boy Who Cried Wolf Syndrome. If Americans have become less concerned with the threat of another attack, then repeated comments about 9/11 and the threat of future attacks are less likely to have the kind of impact at the polls that they did in 2004.

I’m just saying…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few days, you have most likely heard by now about the brouhaha surrounding McCain adviser and lobbyist (because apparently all McCain advisers are lobbyists) Charlie Black’s comment that a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the coming months would likely help the McCain campaign. According to the article:

On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

Black’s statement, and McCain’s relative lack of reaction to it, have been causing great consternation and discussion both in the mainstream media and here in teh internets. Keith Olbermann has covered the remark and its fallout for five nights running so far. The liberal blogosphere is all a-tizzy. People have been calling for Black to resign from McCain’s campaign, and/or for McCain to show him the door.

Some people have also been debating the accuracy of the assertion. Is it fair to say McCain wins on national security? Is he better than Barack Obama in this area? Frankly, I find that idea hard to accept, and it’s disturbing that so many in the mainstream media seem to take it as a given. I mean, the man doesn’t know Sunni from Shia, he gets confused over the fact that Iran and al Qaeda are not best buddies, and he sang “Bomb-bomb-bomb Iran” in a town hall meeting. Color me unimpressed.

But when it comes down to it, as much as it pains me to say this, whether McCain is better than Obama in any substantive way on national security matters is probably irrelevant. Because in all likelihood, Charlie Black is right on this:

McCain benefits if there is a terrorist attack in the US in the run-up to the election.

Go ahead and yell at the computer monitor for a minute if it makes you feel better, my dear non-existent readers, but then read the rest of what I have to say before you flame me in the comments that you never leave.

It all comes down to terror management theory.

I’ve written about this theory from the field of social psychology in the past, so I won’t go into a detailed explanation of it again here. See here for my original post describing some of the theory’s principles and its relevance in the political sphere (it’s a long post but it covers the basics and how they connect to the political realm generally), or click on the terror management category link in the left column of this blog.

Suffice it to say that research into the field of terror management has found that on average, people react in rather predictable ways when they are reminded of their own mortality.

Say, for instance, the way they are when there is a major terrorist attack like 9/11, or even when some Republican politician harps on 9/11 and the threat of terrorism over and over in his campaign speeches.

It’s called mortality salience by the psych researchers. Terror management research indicates that when people are put in a mortality salience condition, they are more likely to exhibit the following behaviors:

• They become more fearful of the “other” in society, and are more willing to express racist or stereotypical viewpoints.
• They retreat into more conservative values, and show reduced tolerance for differing views.
• They become more likely to support authoritarian policies.
• They become more likely to support candidates perceived as charismatic over those seen as intellectual (and by charismatic, I mean politicians who use the strength of their personality and “values”, as opposed to their positions on the substantive issues, to win voters).

Does any of this sound familiar? Say, 2004-ish?

Now look at some of the memes floating around on Faux News or in the talk radio realm and conservative blogosphere:

• The emphasis on using Obama’s middle name (Hussein)
• The constant “mistakes” where people say Osama when they mean Obama, or vice versa
• The whispered rumors that Obama is really a Muslim
• The talk of him being an elitist or a more intellectual candidate who may be “difficult for voters to relate to”

I submit to you that some people are consciously, deliberately setting Obama up as an “other” to be feared, as different, as not a real American. And I expect that the closer we get to the November election, the more frequently we will be hearing McCain and his surrogates beating the 9/11 drum, reminding us of the threat of future terrorist attacks.

They’re trying to raise mortality salience in the electorate. An actual attack on US soil, or even a very real looking threat of one that is somehow stopped, would certainly do a fine job of it.

The effect of mortality salience on a person’s behavior seems to be influenced by the strength of the stimulus that put him or her into that condition in the first place. That is, the bigger the stimulus, the greater the change in behavior as a result.

When a psychologist is conducting research in the field of terror management, there are limitations on the strength of the stimulus that can be used to put subjects into a mortality salience condition. One wouldn’t want to traumatize the research participants, after all. Thus, the people participating in the research are often just asked to think about the experience of death (e.g., death of a loved one), or to read a paragraph that talks about something related to death (people in the control condition are often asked to think about dental pain, instead). This sort of stimulus (or prime) is enough to produce statistically significant results, but generally doesn’t produce a very large effect size - that is, the difference between the control group and the experimental group in the study usually isn’t very big. Indeed, some participants’ behavior might not change measurably at all in such circumstances.

In contrast, people who have directly experienced something that reminds them of death - say, by witnessing a car bombing - may exhibit very marked changes in behavior consistent with the trends I mentioned above. People who would not be affected at all by just a spoken or written reminder of death may be deeply affected by a more traumatic experience, and changes in behavior across the population become more substantial.

Translating all of that into political terms, reminders of 9/11 and the threat of future terror attacks spoken by a political candidate or broadcast in the media probably wouldn’t change the voting behavior of a huge percentage of voters, but in a very close election, like for instance, the 2004 presidential election, it could sway enough voters to change the outcome. I am aware of at least one study that concluded that this did, in fact, happen.

In contrast, an actual terrorist attack on US soil, or even a credible one that was somehow thwarted, would probably have a much larger effect. Its impact in the voting booth could be huge.

Of course, many factors influence voters’ decisions, so it is difficult to gauge the impact of any single factor. Still, based on my reading of the research, it seems safe to infer that the bigger the boom, the bigger the change in the polling numbers.

Think I’m crazy?

Think back to the weeks and months following 9/11. A whole lot of people who were still very bitter about the 2000 election results suddenly fell into line supporting our alleged president after the attacks. American flags were flying off the store shelves. Bush’s approval rating soared, and Congress couldn’t give away our civil liberties fast enough in their desire to be seen as protecting us from the evil terrorists.

So yeah, I think Charlie Black is right. A terrorist attack on US soil would help the McCain campaign.

Would it be enough to swing the election?

That’s much harder to predict. Obviously many other events will occur between now and November that can change the two candidates’ standing in the public opinion.

And I think Obama’s campaign is focusing on some important themes that the research suggests can help counter the effects of the constant reminders of the terrorist threat that we are likely to hear from the McCain camp. Themes like the idea of Americans uniting and his faith in the strength of the American public.

Themes like hope, and change.

So I can’t say conclusively that a terrorist attack would change the results in November. But it would certainly heavily influence the levels of support for the two candidates, with McCain likely seeing a strong increase in his polling numbers.

You may think I’ve made a bad call by posting this information. Am I not giving the terrorists (or anyone else who might have an unhealthy interest in the outcome of the presidential race - say, businesses legitimate and not-so-legitimate that are making a killing in Iraq, pun very much intended) a roadmap for how to influence our elections?

I don’t think so. That ship has already sailed.

All of the research I’ve referred to here is available in any number of social psychology journals. Abstracts of all the articles I’ve read, summarizing their key findings, can be found in a number of online databases and search engines by anyone curious enough to look for them. This isn’t like publishing the designs for a nuclear device, or anything.

The bad guys aren’t stupid. They can google just as well as anyone else, I assure you.

Anyway, for those who would like to find out more, I’ve included a few references at the bottom of this post. I would post links, but the articles are all in proprietary academic databases that require a paid membership to access. Any friendly college student would probably be able to access copies of the articles from his or her school’s computers. The one book that’s listed (last item on the list) is actually available at Amazon.com.

Or just google terror management theory, and see what you come up with.

-jane doe

Note: I edited this post to add the very last sentence, which was inadvertently omitted. Sorry about the multiple posts, RSS readers.

References

Cohen, F., Ogilvie, D. M., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T. (2005). American Roulette: The effect of reminders of death on support for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5, 177-187.

Cohen, F., Solomon, S., Maxfield, M., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2004). Fatal attraction: The effects of mortality salience on evaluations of charismatic, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented leaders. Psychological Science, 15, 846-851.

Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Miller, C. H., Ogilvie, D. M, & Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136-1150.

Pyszczynski, T. (2004). What are we so afraid of? A Terror Management Theory perspective on the politics of fear. Social Research, 71, 827-848.

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association.

It bears repeating. Tonight’s Special Comment was probably his best yet. News Hole already has the transcript up, of course, and I am sure that Crooks and Liars will post the video clip shortly. Go watch it, or read the transcript.

Tonight, Keith talked about how the Bush presidency has been transformed into an operation designed around one purpose: to keep Bush, Cheney, and their minions out of prison for repeated, flagrant violations of our laws and our constitution. He talked about Daniel Levin, the lawyer at DOJ who, when tasked with determining whether waterboarding was torture, went to a military base and had himself waterboarded. The lawyer who, when he concluded that waterboarding was indeed a form of torture, was forced out of his position at the Department of Justice, so Alberto Gonzalez could come up with a memo more favorable to the president’s position without fear of contradiction.

For once, the story apparently did not break on the blogs — at least as far as I know. It broke in the mainstream media, on ABC News, in a rare instance of them getting it right before it became common knowledge in the blogosphere. This is not some minor difference of opinion. This is a major instance of our government doing something appalling and inhumane, something flagrantly illegal, allegedly in the name of keeping us safe.

But Keith correctly points out the darker aspect of all this, which goes back to my concerns about how Terror Management Theory is being used by this administration to manipulate the public. Because ultimately, torture does not produce good intelligence. We have been hearing this repeatedly from military and intelligence experts — most often retired intelligence experts who are safe from retaliation by the administration. What it produces is a lot dubious information which the victim of torture makes up in a desperate attempt to make the torture stop.

But perhaps, as Keith points out, Bush doesn’t really care if he gets good intelligence. Because what he really wants is continued ammunition in his war against the constitution, and that means keeping the American public scared of threats from outside. Because most people will countenance any number of abuses, any expansion of executive authority, if they come in the guise of keeping us safe.

But safe from whom, I wonder? False intelligence certainly won’t protect us from future attacks. Meanwhile, our government is becoming increasingly dangerous to us, to our rights, to the essential liberties guaranteed by our founders.

Which brings me back to what I have said here repeatedly. Bush and Cheney really ought to be impeached. Now. Before it is to late.

-jane doe

Addendum: Crooks and Liars now has the video of tonight’s Special Comment up here.

Hillary Clinton is getting a bum rap in recent days from both sides of the political spectrum at the moment for her remarks to the effect that another terrorist attack like 9/11 in the run-up to the next presidential election would help the Republicans.

It appears that many on the liberal side of the spectrum are accusing her of conceding that the Republicans somehow “own” the terrorism issue, and are the only party that can keep us safe. Meanwhile, at least one conservative goofball — Faux News’ John Gibson — is suggesting that by making these remarks, Hillary is trying to make a deal with the terrorists — essentially, that she is saying, “Hey, Bin Laden — lie low until after November 2008 and you won’t have any of those nasty scary Republicans to deal with. Instead, you’ll have a nice Democrat who will give you a free pass.”

In fact, all Hillary is guilty of doing is recognizing the reality of the situation.

As I have already discussed elsewhere in this blog, research in terror management theory (some of it funded by the Department of Homeland Insecurity) has demonstrated that when people are reminded of death — in psychspeak, when they are placed in a condition of mortality salience — most tend to retreat into more conservative political views and endorse more conservative, charismatic and/or authoritarian candidates.

Bluntly speaking, at the present time, in the United States, these candidates seem to be showing up more often on the right side of the political spectrum. Republican candidates are more likely to hammer the themes of traditional values and, at least in recent years in the neo-conservative branch of the party, a very strong central executive.

Bush has been a huge offender in this regard: he has done more to expand executive authority beyond the intent of our country’s founders than any president in recent memory. And Bush has been very savvy in his use of fear for political purposes. I know of at least one study that links his win in the 2004 election to his repeated hammering of the 9/11 drum.* Many of his political maneuvers that have expanded the power of the executive branch or narrowed or destroyed our civil liberties have been directly tied to his asserted need for such powers to protect us from the terrorists, bringing us to the point where it is very difficult for me to say who I fear more: the terrorists, or our own government.

The current Republican candidates are no better: Giuliani is expressly campaigning on a 9/11 platform, and Romney has said he wants to double the size of Guantanamo. Don’t even get me started on Tancredo.

So don’t get on Hillary’s case for recognizing the reality of the situation. A terrorist attack in the run-up to 9/11 the presidential election likely would help the Republicans. Many of the Republican candidates know this — that is why they are emphasizing it so much. The Department of Homeland Security has funded a number of studies in the field of terror management theory in the years since 9/11, and the Republican political leadership is aware of the results of those studies — I know for a fact that some of the university professors doing the research have briefed very highly placed military and civilian officials in the government on the outcomes of those studies.

We need to wake up to the reality that certain politicians are using our fears of terrorist attacks to manipulate us. Hillary gets my thanks for pointing this out in a larger venue than this tiny blog.

-jane doe

* The study is in a proprietary academic database, so I can’t post a link to it here, but if you are interested in obtaining a copy, send me an e-mail and I will be happy to send you its citation, or check the references listed at the end of this post.

A Florida paper (h/t to Wonkette) is reporting that one of its local battalions was “deployed” to Washington, D.C. to protect the capital against any air threat. Families are not going along with them, and are apparently only allowed limited opportunity to visit them, so this is not like a routine relocation of a unit. It reads more like they are being sent on a combat assignment.

I find this somewhat puzzling. I would have assumed we had troops routinely stationed at bases around D.C. for this sort of purpose and wouldn’t need to “deploy” a whole unit there in addition to those forces. Does anyone out there know whether this sort of thing is routine military procedure? I know our troops are stretched thin at the moment, but this still seems really weird, and I am just paranoid enough about the current administration to smell a rather large and odoriferous rat here…

At any rate, this does not change the fact that I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Am I the only person who finds it really alarming when a former Reaganite warns that the current administration is perhaps months away from instituting a full-on police state? Much of what this guy is saying is consistent with some of my posts on terror management theory from last month. Nice to know I’m not the only person venturing into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land.

Can we please, please impeach Bush and Cheney now?

-jane doe

I should note that my description of terror management theory is grossly over-simplified (in spite of this post’s probably excessive length). I focused only on those aspects of the theory and research that seemed most relevant to my political concerns, and left out many other aspects of the theory and the research to date.

Terror management theory is in fact a very rich and complex theory that attempts to explain human behaviors and emotional responses in a wide variety of settings, not merely their responses to terrorism or in a political arena. Much of the research, for instance, focuses on the interaction between mortality salience and reactions to the “other” – that is, people who are in some fundamental way different from the individual being studied. These aspects of the theory are also very important on a social and political level, and I hope to spend some time on other aspects of the research in later posts. Terror management theory also concerns itself with the effects of factors like self-esteem, stereotypes, and competing worldviews in a variety of situations. I hope to write about some of these factors in later posts, because they are relevant both to understanding the overall theory and some of its political implications. I opted not to include these factors in my original post because, let’s face it, it was more than long enough given the material I did include.

In the mean time, if you want to learn more about the theory, I do recommend checking out both the book I mentioned (see the reference table at the end of this post) or some of the articles I cited in the post. The Wikipedia entry on terror management theory is quite short but has some of the basics and, unlike many of the academic journals I cited, is readily available to anyone with an internet connection. You can also try running the term “terror management” and/or any of the author names I mention (if only for the fun of typing Pyszczynski) in a search engine like Google for additional information on the subject, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of information found that way.

And furthermore, I think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Kudos, by the way, to New York’s Mayor Bloomberg, who yesterday reminded us that while the threat of terrorism is real and often preventable (and an appropriate threat for our government to take steps to prevent), it is not the biggest threat facing most of us in our day-to-day lives, and that people need to stop all the fear and hysteria. Far more people have died of things like cancer, automobile accidents, and gunshot wounds in just the last year than in all the terrorist attacks (foreign or domestic engineered) that have taken place on our soil in the last ten years.

Terrorist attacks naturally capture our attention because, like Bruce Willis movies, they involve lots of explosions and action and may result in a large number of casualties in a very short period of time. And of course, if there ever is a bona fide nuclear attack in a major population center, it might even exceed the number of deaths from all other sources combined for that year. Such a scenario is indeed chilling.

But if we live every day in constant terror of such events, and give up many of the things that have made this country better than probably any other country in the world – things like our constitutional rights and civil liberties – then truly, the terrorists have already won.

And furthermore, in case there is any confusion on this point, I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Something in a comment I got last night made me fear that one of my major concerns/points in my previous posts on the subject of terror management theory was not coming across clearly, so I thought I’d take another stab at it.

My hope, in writing about terror management theory and its implications, is that by educating others about it I can help reduce its effectiveness as a tool of manipulation. I do not mean to imply that the threat of terrorist attack is not a legitimate one, nor am I deluded enough to believe that awareness of the theory will insulate people against its effects if, heaven forbid, another event of the magnitude of 9/11 were to occur at some time in the future. Rather, I seek to ameliorate its effects as a tool of political manipulation by our own leaders and voices in the media and blogosphere.

I fear some may also misinterpret my intent in making certain named and unnamed Republicans the villains of the piece. I do not believe that all, or even many, Republicans are evil. I know and respect many people who have been lifelong Republicans, even though I frequently disagree with them.

I have two main reasons for making Republicans the villains of the piece when I ventured into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land in yesterday’s posts. The first is that, as I already indicated, I believe that Bush, Cheney, Rove, and their ilk are already using the principles of terror management theory consciously and deliberately to manipulate the public, and that it would therefore be a much shorter trip for them to make the jump from merely hammering on 9/11 and the terrorist threat in speeches to manufacturing a situation that looked like a real terrorist threat of far more serious magnitude than pizza delivery guys attacking Fort Dix or a plot by intermitently homeless immigrants to blow up JFK airport by igniting jet fuel storage tanks miles away from the airport – particularly when something as serious as the next major national elections were at stake.

The second reason I chose to make the Republicans the villains of the piece is because, given the current political situation, I believe that they are the party most likely to benefit from such an attempt. The general public is very annoyed with our beloved president at that moment, and that annoyance has been transformed into much stronger support for Democratic Party candidates – we already saw some of this last November. By the time the next federal election rolls around, we will in all likelihood be another two years into the catastrofuck that Iraq has become, and may be at war on other fronts if Bush follows through on his saber rattling. (And by the way, has anyone else wondered how exactly he plans to back up those threats, given the current, over-extended state of our military? I can think of only two options: reinstituting the draft about six months ago, or using at least “tactical” nukes (if not the really big ones) to bomb Tehran into the stone age – a move that would probably be the kiss of death for our country on an international scale, completely alienating our few remaining allies and uniting everyone in the Middle East against us. But I digress.) The point being, the Republicans are the ones who would most need some sort of major attack on U.S. soil to turn public opinion their way in time to change the outcome of the election.

I also want to point out that even when I ventured into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land, I did not go so far as to think that Rove and Cheney, or any other members of my hypothetical evil back room cabal would actually plot a real attack against U.S. civilians. I frankly do not believe that they would do that – I cannot believe that, because if it were true, the implications for our democracy would be unthinkable. In my second scenario (the one where a nuclear weapon was actually detonated in downtown Los Angeles), they just made the mistake of seeking help in carrying out their attempt to scare voters from individuals with a hidden agenda who did want to kill a lot of innocents. Big difference.

Although there have been studies showing that mortality salience tends to make people in the aggregate (though not in all individual cases) more likely to support more charismatic and/or authoritarian candidates and policies, such politicians could theoretically arise in either party – though I tend to believe authoritarianism is more compatible with a Republican worldview than a Democratic one, at least as the two parties seem to be expressing their views through policies of late. [Addendum: I will acknowledge that this belief could be a side effect of my own biases, which are decidedly on the liberal end of the political spectrum. Except that I really don't think that's the case.]

And here is a big news flash for those who think that I am so blinded by my own political views that I would continue to follow a Democratic candidate using fear tactics to sway voters: if such a candidate did exist, and I became aware of him or her using such tactics the way certain Republican politicians and commentators are at present, I would call him or her to task for it, as well. It is the emotional manipulation and scaring of voters for political gain that I am objecting to here. I have targeted Republican politicians because they have been the ones blatantly engaging in this sort of behavior in recent years.

As I said in response to a comment last night, it is my hope that if members of the public are educated about terror management theory, they will become more conscious of deliberate attempts by politicians of either party attempting to use emotional manipulation to obtain votes, and thus better able to resist such attempts. Politicians of both parties really ought to be focusing on the issues facing our country at the moment in the course of their campaigning – and to their credit, many of the current crop of presidential candidates in both parties seem to be attempting to do just that. (Well, except for Giuliani, who can’t shut up about 9/11 – though that is perhaps understandable since it is public perception of his performance in the aftermath of that catastrophe that is keeping him viable against the other Republican frontrunners among likely Republican primary voters.)

Notwithstanding the foregoing, I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

In my previous post, I outlined some of the principles of terror management theory, and described the theory’s implications for American politics. But despite the length of my post, I left out one very important point that I really wanted to emphasize.

You see, I am aware of anecdotal evidence that awareness of terror management theory can actually change individuals’ reactions to those lovely death primes the research relies on. Certainly, I have found that my own awareness of the theory has changed the way I watch the news, and in particular it has changed the weight I give to various political assertions by members of the current administration.

But I am not drawing solely on my own experience in making this assertion, even though I am unaware of any published study that would support it. Rather, I am relying in part on unpublished whisperings among the graduate students at one of the academic institutions where much of the research into terror management theory has been conducted.

First, you must understand that much of the research in this field (as is the case with nearly all psychological research) is performed on undergraduate college students, usually those enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses. There is a very good reason for this, of course: undergraduates are a convenient research population, and they will usually participate without pay in exchange for a few extra credit points in their psych classes.

On at least one of the campuses where much of the research into terror management theory takes place, the graduate students who collected the data complained that they had gotten reputations among the current crop undergraduate psychology majors for always working on terror management studies, and the students participating in the studies would be looking for the death primes as soon as they saw the graduate students conducting the research. Suddenly, the researchers had trouble getting statistically significant results, even in cases where all previous research suggested that the present study should produce such results. In other words, awareness of terror management theory at least partially nullified the effect of the death prime. As a result of this, the grad students had to start going to other college campuses in the area to seek research participants.

It is for this reason that I have devoted so much time researching and writing my post on the politics of terror management. (Though the post ostensibly responds to Olbermann’s recent piece on the nexus of politics and terror, I have actually been working on it for some time and only made the changes that address his piece in the last two days.) I hope that my post on the subject, and a few others I have planned, will spark a discussion of terror management theory in the blogosphere, and that that discussion will eventually reach the mainstream media. It is my hope that, by increasing voter awareness of terror management theory and its implications, the ability of politicians to manipulate those voters with fear will be reduced.

Please note that I am not claiming there is no reason for us to be concerned about future terrorist attacks. The events of 9/11 made it plain that we are vulnerable to attacks on American soil, and it is appropriate for our government to devote significant resources to preventing future attacks. My point (and hope) is that voters should be able to make their decisions about which candidate(s) would be best to lead our country into a post-Bush future and undo the damage he has done to our country and our standing in the world arena free of the sort of emotional manipulation that we have been subject to in the recent past. Knowledge is power, and in the present instant, knowledge of terror management theory confers the power to resist manipulation by those who hope to use the theory to manipulate us with fear tactics.

And furthermore, I believe that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Monday night, Keith Olbermann updated a report he did in August 2006 about the nexus of politics and terror to incorporate recent events. He and his staff went through the news archives and found thirteen instances where the current administration either raised the terror threat level or announced the threat or foiling of a “terrorist attack” at times that could best be described as politically convenient. More specifically, these instances all took place at times when the White House was facing a variety of political difficulties (e.g., the absence of WMDs in Iraq, political scandals, the 2004 Democratic Convention, and so forth). Crooks and Liars has posted the clip and I suggest you go watch it here before continuing with this post.

Olbermann points out that, of course, the fact that these events happened close in time does not mean that they are related. It could, in fact, be a coincidence that the White House has just happened to raise the threat of terrorism whenever it is taking a particularly bad beating in the press over its various misdeeds.

And pigs might one day evolve wings and learn to fly.

I do not believe for one moment that it is mere coincidence that the Bush administration just happens to uncover some plot or threat of attack whenever the administration is facing political troubles. Rather, I believe that we are seeing is an administration deliberately using terror management theory to deflect attention from scandals and manipulate public opinion to expand White House power in our increasingly, distressingly authoritarian society.

What is terror management theory? If you are like the vast majority of people, you have never heard of terror management theory. In all the books I have read recently by various political commentators, I have seen plenty of talk about the White House’s use of fear and 9/11, but no mention of terror management theory. It has received surprisingly little attention from the mainstream media. Nobody talks about it outside of certain academic circles, mostly within the field of social psychology, and presumably certain government officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the White House, whose discussions I am not privy to.

The DHS and White House officials are among those who know about terror management theory because they’re the ones paying for at least some of the research in this field. DHS and military officials have received briefings from some researchers in the field, and have presumably reported on those briefings to their superiors in the White House. Other research has been funded by grants from the National Science Foundation and similar organizations.

All this silence on the subject of terror management theory is striking, because the theory so thoroughly explains much of the Bush administration’s interactions with the press and the public that understanding the theory can change the way you interpret the news.

Several times, I have seen Keith Olbermann ask Countdown guests if they knew why the Bush administration kept raising 9/11 for purely political reasons or in seemingly inappropriate contexts, and I have found myself saying to the television at these times, “Well, it’s basic terror management theory, Keith.” And I have foolishly assumed that, because I know about terror management theory, lots of other people who are interested in the political happenings of our world must, as well, so I have not done much with that knowledge. After all, there are plenty of articles out there on the subject. So lots of people must know about it, right?

But it has become clear to me that most people don’t know about terror management theory or its implications. Most of the articles that I have read appear in academic journals. As a graduate student at a large university, I have free access to many of these journals. Most people do not. It is for this reason that I am publishing this little primer, if you will, on terror management theory and its current political implications. Because I think this is something the general public, or at least political commentators, need to be more aware of.

So take my hand, don’t be afraid…because afraid is exactly what they want you to be.

The Basics

Terror management theory is primarily the brainchild of three university professors who do research in social psychology: Thomas A. Pyszczynski, at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Sheldon Solomon, at Skidmore College, and Jeff Greenberg, at the University of Arizona. They initially articulated their theory in the late 1980s, but it didn’t begin to get much attention outside of social psychology circles until shortly after 9/11, when suddenly the government became interested in funding a lot of research in terror management.

This is already going to be a long post, so I’ll spare you a detailed history of the theory’s development, and will only be hitting relevant highlights of the theory itself. The three authors mentioned above co-authored a book called In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror following 9/11 which explains much of the theory and its background (and is also a really good read) if you are interested in finding out more about it. I want to emphasize that none of the terror management theory stuff is my work – I have just read articles and books by these three men and others in the field, and have drawn my own conclusions about the theory’s implications, specifically that George W. Bush and others in his administration have been deliberately using the results of terror management theory research to manipulate public opinion (though others have written about how the theory has played out in American politics, see especially Pyszczynski, 2004, as well as several of the articles mentioned at the end of this entry). Unfortunately, I can’t provide links to most of the articles I relied on in writing this post because they are in proprietary databases, but I will provide full citations at the end of this post for those who want to track down the articles.

At its most basic level, terror management theory has its origins in existential psychology. Human beings are, at least as far as we know, the only beings that are aware of the inevitability of their own death. This creates a tremendous amount of anxiety in most people’s minds, and we go to great lengths to insulate ourselves against that anxiety. We have, as individuals and societies, developed a number of defense mechanisms to protect ourselves from the thought of our own mortality. Religion provides us with a kind of immortality (e.g., life after death or reincarnation), as do various social institutions (e.g., I may die, but my family/country will go on).

Every now and then, though, things creep by our defenses and remind us of our own mortality. Maybe a loved one dies, or we have a conversation with a coworker whose spouse is terminally ill, or some fanatics fly airplanes into buildings killing thousands of people, forcing our minds to confront the possibility of our own deaths. This awareness of death is referred to by terror management researchers as mortality salience. This is where things start to get really interesting.

Terror management researchers have found that in conditions of mortality salience, certain predictable changes in individuals’ opinions and behavior occur as part of our defense against thoughts of our own mortality. Most intriguing for the purposes of this discussion are changes that affect the political realm, particularly how people are likely to vote.

The Intersection Between Theory and Politics

Let me repeat that last point. In italics, to show that I am not fooling around here. Terror management research can be used to influence how people vote. And it can be used by one party – the Republicans – more effectively at the present time than by the Democrats, because of the direction of changes in most people’s opinions.

You see, people in a mortality salience condition – that is, people who have recently been reminded of the possibility of their own death – are more likely to espouse more traditional opinions usually associated with the conservative end of the political (and religious) spectrum (see, e.g., Cohen, Ogilvie, Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2005; Pyszczynski, 2004). More importantly, given efforts by the Bush administration to expand White House authority and eliminate our civil rights (ostensibly in the name of fighting terror), people in a mortality salience condition are more likely to favor more charismatic and authoritarian leaders (Landau, Solomon, Greenberg, Cohen, Pyszczynski, Arndt, et al., 2004; Cohen, Solomon, Maxfield, Pyszczynski, & Greenberg, 2004).

Thus, it is very much in the interest of the Bush administration to put the public into a mortality salience condition when it is taking actions that are causing significant protest in the public arena. Not to sound like a member of the Tinfoil Hat Brigade, but I believe this is all a part of a deliberate attempt by the Bush administration to institute an increasingly authoritarian political agenda which may have continuing effects on the political landscape long after his term in office expires. I cannot prove this, of course, not having been privy to administration political strategy sessions, but I believe that the evidence supports this inference.

We saw significant evidence that this is exactly what the Bush administration was doing in the run-up to the 2004 presidential election. Bush repeatedly hammered the 9/11 theme in nearly every campaign speech and public appearance – often when it seemed inappropriate given the subject under discussion. At the time, many people commented on the way he was doing it, and wondered whether this was truly a good idea given that he had not been able to find Osama Bin Laden, and given that people were increasingly of the opinion that the whole Iraq mess might well have been a huge, tragic mistake – one that has now cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars.

Those who know terror management theory, however, saw these constant reminders of 9/11 for what they were: a death prime, intended to induce mortality salience in the public mind in order to sway more voters in his direction. Indeed, at least one study that I am aware of found that Bush’s constant hammering on the 9/11 theme played a significant role in the final outcome of the 2004 presidential election (Cohen, Ogilvie, Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2005).

Of course, as some will be quick to point out, politicians and other leaders have been using fear as one of many tactics to sway their followers (and opponents) for as long as there have been politicians. If I am recalling my ancient Roman history correctly (and forgive me if I am not, as it has been nearly twenty years since I read of this anecdote), Cato the Elder, as part of his ongoing effort to persuade the Roman Senate to authorize war against Hannibal and Carthage, once held up a freshly cut branch from a fruit tree and asserted that it had been cut in Carthage mere days before. His point was that if a branch from a fruit tree could get from Carthage to Rome so quickly that its leaves were still unwithered and fresh, how quickly might Carthaginian troops make the same trip? This tactic – a brilliant piece of political theater for the age – worked in a way that his constant exhortations at the end of his speeches that he thought Carthage out to be destroyed didn’t. Rome was soon at war with Carthage. (And doesn’t this whole incident remind one of the selling of the whole Iraqi WMD “threat” prior to the Iraq war? Aluminum tubes and yellowcake, anyone?)

What is curious about the present use of fear by Bush and his minions is just how blatant it is if one is aware of the workings of terror management theory. Olbermann’s piece on the nexus of politics and terror Monday night brilliantly points out some of the many times the Bush administration has attempted to use reminders of 9/11 and threats of future terrorism in its attempts to sway the public, and specifically how these attempts have often closely followed some of the many political reversals suffered by this administration.

Reminders of 9/11 and the World Trade Center have been shown not only to induce mortality salience, but also specifically to increase support of President Bush (Landau, Solomon, Greenberg, Cohen, Pyszczynski, Arndt, et al., 2004). According to the authors of that study:

From our perspective, the increase in favorability toward Bush reflects the effects of death reminders on the appeal of a leader who promotes security and the vanquishing of evil, but an alternative possibility is that reminders of death or 9/11 simply make people more politically conservative, which in turn makes Bush more appealing. (p. 1143).

Following their data analysis, however, the study’s authors inferred that the inductions (that is, the use of the mortality salience prime in terms of the reminders of 9/11) “enhanced affection for President Bush without altering political orientation” (p. 1144) – that is, people did not change their characterizations of themselves as politically more liberal or conservative, they just changed their views of President Bush. Curiously, both groups (liberal or conservative) fell at roughly the same level in their support for President Bush in the terrorism priming condition, unlike in other conditions with a terrorism-neutral death prime or a control condition in which the student participants thought about an impending academic exam (though the differences between liberals and conservatives in the other two priming conditions were not statistically significant).

The study’s authors acknowledged the possibility that mortality salience or reminders of terrorism might increase support for anyone in the presidency or with the potential to become president, so they conducted one further experiment as part of the study. They used four groups, two each to evaluate support for either George W. Bush or John Kerry. For each candidate, the parties were in one of two conditions: mortality salience (that is, they were reminded of death) versus intense pain salience (the report is silent as to the type of pain used for the induction, but researchers in terror management theory commonly use a reminder of severe dental pain for the control condition). The data for this study was collected in May 2004 – well before the presidential election the following November.

The results of this study were striking: in the pain condition, support for John Kerry was much higher than support for Bush – suggesting that in the absence of fear of death, Kerry might well have won the 2004 presidential election. However, in the mortality salience condition, support for Bush was much higher than support for Kerry. Conclusion: reminding people of death (and by way of example of 9/11) helped George Bush and hurt John Kerry.

It is worth noting that this study was published in September 2004 – roughly two months before the election. It would be interesting to see whether Bush upped the 9/11 rhetoric following the articles publication – though of course, even if an increase were shown, it could be argued that that was more a function of the increase in all political rhetoric in the final days in the 2004 campaign rather than of the Bush administration seizing upon the findings of the study and changing its tactics.

A Bit on the Nature of Psychological Research

Do the studies cited above mean that we are mindless in our responses in conditions of mortality salience? Of course not. As with all psychological research, this research does not mean that for every person who is reminded of (or in psych-speak, primed with) thoughts of mortality will respond in the manner predicted, but there will be statistically significant changes across groups in these opinions and behaviors. Some individuals will respond more or less strongly to death primes, and their manner of response may be influenced by other factors, such as the strength of their underlying values and beliefs, temperamental factors like tendency toward anxiety, perceptions about the likelihood of the event used as a prime happening to them or those they care about, et cetera.

Interestingly, the strength of an individual’s response to a death prime might vary given the specific nature or strength of the prime. Now, in psychological research, researchers are limited in the sorts of stimuli they can use in the course of their research. They are not permitted to cause their research subjects undue anxiety simply in the name of furthering this research, and all research that uses human subjects must receive prior approval from an institutional review board which examines the materials and procedures to be used in a study and may request changes to the study or refuse to authorize it entirely if they believe it may be in any way harmful to the participants. Thus, most research in the field of terror management theory merely induces some thoughts of death or some control stimuli (like the previously-mentioned thoughts of dental pain), either directly or with subliminal stimuli.

As a result, the degree of response to mortality salience in experimental settings (known in statistical terms as its effect size) is often relatively small – maybe only a few percentage points different on the dependent variable being studied (e.g., support for a given political candidate, degree of agreement with certain statements, level of anxiety), even though the difference is considered statistically significant.

However, in conditions of mortality salience in the real world, the impact of a death prime on thoughts and behaviors can be far more significant. One need only recall the crazy things many normally sane people were saying and doing in the immediate aftermath of the events of 9/11 (I, myself, actually expressed gratitude that Bush was our president instead of Al Gore on the day of the attacks, to my now great embarrassment), to realize the potential impact of a disaster of that scale.

Political Ramifications of the Research

Which brings me to some of the political ramifications of terror management theory, some of which we have seen and are continuing to see.

If you will recall, in the days before the 2004 presidential election, the race was really too close to call, with Bush and Kerry jockeying for the lead and a very closely divided electorate. In every speech and political appearance, Bush and his supporters kept hammering on the 9/11 theme – an attempt to raise mortality salience in voters, to sway those who were swayable to vote for Bush over Kerry.

Now, talking about 9/11 and the terrorist threat would not be as strong a death prime as an actual terrorist attack in those final days of the campaign would have been, but in a close election, Bush would not need to achieve a very large effect size, in terms of the overall percentage of voters swayed by reminders of 9/11, in order to tip the balance in his favor. And of course, when all was said and done, Bush won by a vary narrow margin of the popular vote, and by a single state (Ohio – a race which many still question the result of) in the electoral college. I am aware of at least one study that attributed his victory to reminders of 9/11 and the effects of terror management theory (Cohen, Ogilvie, Solomon, Greenberg, & Pyszczynski, 2005).

When differences in the parties’ levels of support are much greater, as we saw at the midterm elections last fall, the relatively small effect size obtained by mere reminders of 9/11 would not be sufficient to overcome the many other factors influencing voter decisions (such as concerns over the continuing, deteriorating situation in Iraq, frustration with White House scandals and the rubberstamp Congress, etc). Thus, in 2006, we saw a change in the power structure in both the Senate and the House of Representative, in spite of White House officials repeatedly raising the specter of 9/11 and the terrorist threat.

All of this hasn’t really stopped the alleged president and many of the Republican candidates for the 2008 election from continuing to beat the 9/11 drum. Rudy Giuliani in particular has been guilty of this offense (and really, is there any wonder?).

And with the 2008 presidential election looming, I find myself getting increasingly nervous about the potential implications and effects of terror management theory in the run-up to the election. Care to venture into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land with me, my dear non-existent readers?

Your Humble Author Heads into Paranoid Conspiracy Theory Land

Okay, then. Let’s fast forward to, say, late September of 2008. Both parties have had their conventions by this time, and have nominated their respective candidates. For the present hypothetical, let’s assume that the Democratic Party has nominated Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton and the Republicans have nominated Rudy Giuliani and/or Fred Thompson, though the actual identities of the candidates may not matter all that much.

The war in Iraq is continuing, and who knows, we might also be fighting a second front, either Afghanistan (again) or Iran, or maybe both if Bush gets his wish. Members of the military are on their fourth or fifth combat rotations since the start of the Iraq war, and there is talk of reinstituting the draft to fill a desperate need for more troops as the military has been stretched beyond capacity. Also as a result of the wars, the deficit has reached truly breathtaking new heights (more than it already has, that is), and the economy is suffering as a result.

The United States is essentially standing alone in the world, as Bush has completely alienated our few remaining allies. Most people have lost count of the number of Congressional investigations into various administration actions and scandals. The Democratic Congress has been unable to rein in an increasingly isolated and intransigent President Bush, because they lack the votes necessary to overturn his vetoes, and there are continuing rumors that the president has returned to the hard-drinking ways of his youth. Even Barney has abandoned him in disgust at this point.

Although the Republican candidates have attempted to distance themselves from Bush and link themselves to the memory of Ronald Reagan, their continued support for the unpopular war(s) concern many voters, and Giuliani’s positions on a number of social issues, particularly abortion, have alienated many in the traditional Republican base. Democrats are ahead in the polls by a substantial margin, both in the presidential race and the various Congressional races, and barring any unforeseen catastrophes, look likely to win the presidential race and increase their margins of control in both houses of Congress. Clearly, at this point, merely banging on the 9/11 drum will not be sufficient to turn the election in the Republican party’s favor.

Cut to a smoke-filled back room somewhere in Georgetown, where Dick Cheney and Karl Rove (who in my hypothetical finally left the White House early in 2008 to “pursue other options” following increasing revelations about his involvement in various White House scandals) meet with a number of Republicans and certain business leaders who have traditionally worked in a behind-the-scenes sort of way to maintain and expand Republican Party power in this country. Also included in their number are several less-savory types with connections to a number of organizations that Republicans would never publicly associate themselves with, in spite of utilizing their services on occasions when normal political channels will not produce the results desired. Cheney and Rove, of course, are aware of the particulars of terror management rheory and its implications, as they would have been briefed by DHS and military officials who were, in turn, briefed on the research by some of the researchers themselves.

[NB: I have picked Cheney and Rove for my little paranoid speculation because I believe them to be fully aware of terror management theory and because I think they are evil bastards, not because I have any substantive reasons to believe they actually have been or necessarily will be directly or indirectly involved in anything as sinister as I am about to describe. It could involve people mostly uninvolved in the current administration who have found out about terror management theory by reading the research, or hearing about it at other backroom political gatherings in the past, or whatever. Not that this is ever going to happen, of course. Just paranoid ranting on my part. But still, very, very plausible…]

Our evil back room cabal discusses the election, which at the moment looks bleak for the Republican party, and lets those not already in the know into the implications of terror management theory. After some debate, the group decides on a course of action. The meeting adjourns, and one of the less-savory types leaves to place a few calls from a secure line to some, for want of a better term, business associates in a country in Eastern Europe.

Flash forward again to Monday, October 20, 2008. The election is now fifteen days away, and the evil back room cabal’s plot is about to come to fruition. This part could play out one of two ways:

Scenario 1: Federal agents, acting on a tip, raid a storage locker near downtown Los Angeles, and discover a nuclear warhead that has somehow been smuggled into the country. The warhead is real – perhaps one that was lost around the time of the Soviet Union’s collapse, perhaps from some other source. Federal agents then raid the home of the Islamic immigrant in whose name the storage locker was rented, accidentally killing him in the process. A search of his apartment reveals no evidence of co-conspirators, but does provide “evidence” (planted by associates of the aforemention member of the evil back room cabal) tying him to the storage locker.

The White House immediately calls a press conference, showing everyone the nuclear warhead and touting the raid as a significant victory in the war on terror. Immediately following the press conference, there is speculation that the President may declare martial law and postpone the election, though that never actually comes to pass. People around the country, and particularly people who live and work in Los Angeles, lose a lot of sleep over the next few nights, thinking about the bullet they dodged.

Suddenly the presidential election looks too close to call, and the outcomes of a number of Congressional races look less certain, as well. Republicans return to the familiar territory of harping on 9/11, terrorism, and the Los Angeles plot. Political observers everywhere bite their nails as November 4th approaches.

Scenario 2: The above-mentioned Soviet nuclear warhead is smuggled into Los Angeles, but this time, there is no successful raid by federal agents. It seems some of those, um, business associates had a real desire to wreak some havoc here, and moved the warhead from the locker where it was supposed to be discovered to some undisclosed location – actually, to an unused office on one of the upper floors of an office building in downtown Los Angeles. The warhead is detonated, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the surrounding area, vaporizing the entire downtown section of Los Angeles, and injuring and sickening millions of others outside the primary blast radius. (I pick on Los Angeles in this scenario because it is a city the neocons probably wouldn’t miss much if something went wrong with the plot – though San Francisco might be better from that perspective – plus a nuclear warhead seems a somehow fitting, Sodom and Gomorrah type ending for that town.)

Chaos reigns, and people across the country go into a sort of dazed shock over the magnitude of the loss – it is like the aftermath of 9/11, but several orders of magnitude greater.

Bush declares martial law with himself under more-or-less complete control, under the provisions of that little policy directive for continuity of government that made the news a few weeks ago. Elections are cancelled. There is no real help for the residents of Southern California, because the bulk of the National Guard troops and equipment in California and the surrounding states are all in the Middle East fighting Bush’s wars, so Bush calls on his buddies at Halliburton and Blackwater to restore order. Civil rights are suspended, not only in the disaster area, but nationwide. Oddly, given the effects of terror management theory and the general public’s fear of further attacks, there is almost no protest against the President’s actions, and those few who dare to speak out are swiftly arrested, classified as unlawful enemy combatants and sent to Gitmo, never to be heard from again.

Of course, none of this could ever possibly happen. Clearly, I am allowing my distrust for the current administration and certain Republican politicians override my good sense and push me into paranoid fantasies. And strictly speaking, neither of these attack scenarios in the days leading up to the election are particularly original. I have heard both scenarios or variations on them discussed elsewhere, with two significant differences: (1) in the scenarios I have heard elsewhere, the attack or threatened attack in the days before the election would be the result of the actions of foreign terrorists, not a plot by American citizens hoping to influence the election; and (2) I have heard no mention of terror management theory in connection with any of these scenarios.

It is terror management theory that makes my scenarios believable to me – and makes me willing to speculate that the events I discuss could actually arise from the intentional action of Americans, rather than being the unfortunately-timed acts of real foreign terrorists. One implication of terror management theory, after all, is that it is possible for someone with knowledge of the theory to actually manage terror (though I am quite certain that is not the intent of any of the researchers who developed the theory).

So am I some paranoid person, looking for trouble where there is none and trying to create problems where none exists? Possibly. I certainly hope so, because the alternative – that I am correct in my speculations in this humble little blog entry – is really too terrible to imagine. Clearly, though, as this post from Crooks and Liars suggests, I am not the first to have thought of the possible political consequences of another terrorist attack on U.S. soil.

Nevertheless, just in case I haven’t made this clear already, I really think that Bush and Cheney ought to be impeached.

-jane doe

Addendum: I have tried to be as complete as possible in citing the studies I refer to directly in this article. If I have inadvertently omitted any citations or mistakenly cited the wrong study for one of the points I attribute to research in the field of terror management, please e-mail me at janedoe [at] inbox.com (particularly if you are one of the authors on a study where I’ve omitted the correct citation) so that I can make any necessary corrections to this entry. And as always, thoughtful comments on or criticisms of this entry are welcome and encouraged. Thanks! -jd

Addendum 2: I should probably note that I’ve made a couple of minor changes to this post, mostly in terms of fixing grammatical errors or clarifying some confusing phrasing. I didn’t specifically call out the changes, as they were non-substantive, but thought I should probably mention it.

References

Cohen, F., Ogilvie, D. M., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T. (2005). American Roulette: The effect of reminders of death on support for George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, 5, 177-187.

Cohen, F., Solomon, S., Maxfield, M., Pyszczynski, T., & Greenberg, J. (2004). Fatal attraction: The effects of mortality salience on evaluations of charismatic, task-oriented, and relationship-oriented leaders. Psychological Science, 15, 846-851.

Landau, M. J., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., Cohen, F., Pyszczynski, T., Arndt, J., Miller, C. H., Ogilvie, D. M, & Cook, A. (2004). Deliver us from evil: The effects of mortality salience and reminders of 9/11 on support for President George W. Bush. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 1136-1150.

Pyszczynski, T. (2004). What are we so afraid of? A Terror Management Theory perspective on the politics of fear. Social Research, 71, 827-848.

Pyszczynski, T., Solomon, S., & Greenberg, J. (2003). In the wake of 9/11: The psychology of terror. Washington, D. C.: American Psychological Association.