'The roots of fear' and the leaftips of hope

Sharon Begley, an outstanding reporter/writer for Newsweek, wrote an exceptional piece on the roles and rules of fear and hope in American presidential politics (“The roots of fear”, December 24 2007).

Against the backdrop of South Africa’s mostly superficial Bakelite* political analysis in which the same tawdry arguments about personalities and so-called “policy planning” (an oxymoron if ever there was one) parade like battery-operated toys, Begley’s astute and refreshing analysis examines psychological propaganda, the neurological functions of fear and the role of the mass media in the context of the American political melodrama. (*Bakelite is that hard but inflexible stuff that old 78rpm records were made of — easily cracked or broken, but recently returned to vogue as collectors’ items.)

Starting with Barack Obama’s “Got hope?” slogan (and even he is not afraid to call on the spectre of fear of immigrants either), Begley’s article probes how campaign managers and politicians have used fear to win voters — and just how willingly the sheeple have allowed themselves to be manipulated. She also analyses why fear, rooted in a tight, almond-shaped bundle of neurons in the centre of the brain called the amygdala, has always seemed to work so much better in swaying voters’ minds than hope, which is a rational, logical function situated way out in a peripheral region of the brain called the neocortex.

The amygdala evolved aeons before the sophisticated neocortex did. It functions at primal, animal levels, giving it a simple neurobiological precedence over the much younger neocortex, which depends on a complex interaction of data inputs, analysis and computation before giving us an answer.

Simply put: fear first, hope later.

Without debating the desirability of fearing a sabre-toothed tiger and thus avoiding it over hoping it won’t eat you and moseyin’ over for a cuddle, and even before LBJ flighted his 1964 iconic “Daisy and the mushroom cloud” ad and blew Barry Goldwater out of the water, researchers have been probing the value of fear as “votivator”.

Only hassle is that research has been confined to the United States. At least, that is the deduction from the fact that Begley focuses only on that country.

Maybe our political analysts, psychologists and communicologists (there really is such a word, ask Unisa) could examine the fear factor at work in South Africa. Surely that capacity exists.

Where South Africans share many fear buttons with the Yanks, our electoral system, historical baggage and racial demographics are vastly different. There is also the role the media play and the comparative power imbalances when it comes to advertising around election issues.

South Africa in 2008 is a nation ruled by fear. And fear has become such an accepted, ingrained way of life that we no longer even feel violated that we have to live and travel in fortresses; our movements are radically restricted; we view any stranger with suspicion bordering on paranoia; we have learnt to mistrust almost everything, especially the law; we behave — naturally — as if we work for the CIA or Secret Service; our circles of friends have shrunk; many carry weapons and know how to use them; and safety is the primary concern governing where our children go to school, have fun or go shopping.

So while Obama, Romney, Clinton, Huckabee and even Eveready Rudi have to evoke fear through images of 9/11, wetbacks swimming the Rio Grande, Columbine or Virginia Tech and street-corner drug peddlers, here in South Africa no evoking is necessary. In fact, our politicians and kakistocrats try to do the opposite.

Here the best liars, peddlers of fantasy or sharpest con artists spend billions on ad campaigns with archbishops jumping for joy on mountain tops or conga lines following CGI meerkats.

In the land of the brave and the free, the message is: vote for me or this will happen to you. In the land alive with possibilities, the message is: vote for us because this is not happening to you.

Methinks there’s an important difference between warning voters that the tiger with the big teeth will eat you, and urging them to say: “Here kitty-kitty.” In the US, they put criminals in jail to garner votes. In South Africa, we’re urged to vote for the criminals. Have you hugged your crime boss today? Look, he’s a buddy of the chief of police!

And now Kenya, once a continental showpiece, is a refulgent example of how centuries-old tribalism can instantly transmogrify a haven into a horror story. It’s so much like pretty little Linda Blair instantly being transfigured into the face of Satan.

And those tourists caught in Nairobi don’t cancel Kenyan trips; they cancel African trips. Not only is it a disgrace that Thabo twiddles his manicured thumbs in response to his shattered African-renaissance fluff, but take the tribal template from Kenya or Rwanda or Somalia and place it over South Africa and we also have a fearful scenario.

The dancing, watch-me-fall-over-trying-to-pretend-I’m-young, clownish antics of Zuma — a Zulu — at the weekend are not lost on his Xhosa detractors. And, as if to underline how friable our “demockcracy” is, you have other members of the kakistocracy warning of blood flowing if the aficionado of machine guns goes to court. God forbid he should be found guilty!

It is so bad even the country’s finest legal minds, renowned for their taciturnity, find it necessary to warn how close we are to having the rule of law see its arse like Zuma did at his own wedding. By the way, Sapa quoted Chaskalson and Bizos as saying: “We are confident [the courts] will do [their work] without fair or favour.” Just the kind of quality professional journalism we need!

In a country that has become a national embodiment of the Stockholm syndrome, where living as hostages of fear in a de facto state of civil war is business as usual and an electoral system that ensures government is of the most sheeple by the most sheepish for the sheeple, it’s clearly preferable not to frighten them with crime, disease, corruption, unemployment, brain drain, broken promises and so on. Let’s all just pay it no attention and hope it will go away. Then we can be alive with possibility again.

Bruce Springsteen’s hit Glory Days springs to mind every time I watch that tacky ad (in black and white for dramatic impact, y’see) about the 1994 elections. It ends with a petite smiling mummy with baby strapped to her back and voice-over saying something to the effect of “Play it again, Sam.”

Meanwhile, those of us who have moved on from the amygdala to the neocortex have figured out that in such a fatally flawed system, where anything that can be stolen will be stolen, it’s wiser to keep your vote safely under lock and key at Fortress Home on election day.

Future White House hopefuls won’t need to resort to images of mushroom clouds or burning towers or wetback swimathons. They’ll just flash a map of South Africa, and voters will know just what they mean.