A couple decades back, pundits and comedians made hay with the news that new hammers at hardware stores were coming with a written warning about their dangers.
But the joke was on us.
The Fear and Hazard Racket is now big business, with governments at the local, state and national level cashing in on this message: Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Fear is the world’s greatest motivator, a hammer used to keep people in check in every place and in every age.
As fear is used by governments, H.L. Mencken observed, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
So I was amused, and not particularly surprised, to see a “Nixle” alert on Facebook from Haines Borough Police Wednesday, Aug. 28, warning us of a possible frost the next morning. That’s right. A frost alert in Alaska. God help us if there was a possible tsunami on the other side of our wall of mountains, somewhere way out in the Gulf of Alaska.
Oh wait, we’ve done that.
Let’s just be glad we have someone there to serve and protect us from frost.
It’s all in the same vein as President Trump proposing a giant wall to protect us from the brown hordes arriving from the south. Oh woo. Brown people coming from foreign lands who will rape our women and steal our jobs! Or how about the full-time job at the boat harbor, protecting cruise ships from terrorists who would sneak a bomb into the potato salad?
Really, it’s all the same racket, making friends or points by scaring people, then telling them that for a low price you’ll protect them from some conjured-up bogeyman. Presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican, used the same trick successfully for years, claiming their opponents were “weak on Communism” or “losing the arms race.”
Little or none of it was true, but that didn’t matter. By the time the media discovered the truth, the lie had run its course and done its damage. The scare published on the front pages was followed up by a nuanced story debunking it buried somewhere on the inside pages.
Most of the media love a scare, maybe more than they love the truth. That’s part of the reason local TV stations will lead their newscasts with the zika virus or a random stabbing on the south side instead of digging into budget numbers to identify where tens of thousands of dollars of your tax money are being wasted. Being scared by an insect or a man with a knife is a thrill. A budget story?
We live in a nanny town in a nanny state in a nanny nation. Everything is a danger and the government is here to protect you from it.
The Fear and Hazard Racket gets into everything, from our locked-up school buildings to the “marine security level” posted at the ferry terminal. It’s worse than the Cold War. Back then we were only afraid of the Russkies and nuclear apocalypse. Now we’re afraid of everything.
Try driving up the Haines Highway. Every curve in road on the U.S. side is straddled with signs in the shape of a giant sideways chevron, indicating which way the road is curving, as though there was any doubt. On some curves, you’ll find more than a dozen.
Every place crews are working on or along the road you’ll find a flagging crew and a pilot car to lead you through the hazard zone. (When I drove down the highway from Canada on Wednesday, there were three pilot cars at work between Haines and the Canada border.)
Then drive into Canada. On Wednesday morning, several crews were cutting brush at the shoulder near Klukshu. But traffic wasn’t stopped. There were no flaggers or pilot cars. Instead, a sign on the shoulder warned motorists to slow down and watch for men working in the area.
In Canada, there are no chevrons, either. There’s hardly a guardrail. The Canadian government trusts that you can see a curve coming and that you’re smart enough not to drive straight off the road.
In mid-July, I drove through a forest fire burning on both sides of the Alaska Highway near Snag Junction, Yukon. There was no pilot car, no flaggers, just a kind highway worker asking that drivers not stop in the fire zone.
On Aug. 23 I drove through the smoldering remains of a fire south of Talkeetna on the Parks Highway. To get through, drivers were required to wait a half hour behind a barricade, then be led by a pilot car at a snail’s pace. Unlike the Snag Junction fire that was aflame, there was no visible fire south of Talkeetna, just smoke and some charred trees.
But there were scores of people being paid heaps of taxpayer money, just making sure, just keeping you and me safe.
The price of safety? In this country, it’s never been higher, and chances are, your government is buying it with piles of your tax money that would be better spent on providing you health care, affordable college tuition or a bicycle trail through town.
Fearmongering is the oldest trick in the book because it works. It has now spawned the Fear and Hazard Racket, which will fleece you — and as importantly, control your behavior — if you let it. Don’t buy it.