American Politics and Fear

Christopher A. Preble

Domestic Politics,

At Foreign Policy last week, David J. Rothkopf opened his plaintive column casting Donald Trump as “the symptom of our PTSD” with a question: “How did we get here?”

As with most major events, there are many reasons, but it would be a mistake to discount the importance of a visceral human emotion: fear.

From the start of Trump’s presidential campaign, he has stoked apprehensions of foreigners, including foreigners in our midst (i.e. immigrants—or, more accurately, certain immigrants). Mexican immigrants, for example, “are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.” They are bringing in dangerous infectious diseases. And immigrants—especially if they are Muslim, or come from predominantly Muslim countries—are likely to be terrorists. Hence the need for “extreme vetting” or a “big, fat, beautiful wall” to keep them out, and a massive “deportation force” to expel those already here.

In many respects, Trump is reading from a familiar playbook. For decades, U.S. leaders and intellectuals have engaged in varying degrees of threat-mongering to mobilize ambivalent Americans to act. For many elites, the object was to convince Americans to embrace foreign adventurism. For Trump, the stated goal is renewal here at home. But there is acommon thread connecting them.

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