“Freedom over fear,” “fear is the real virus,” “the cure is worse than the disease.”
These are just a few of the catch phrases being employed by conservative protesters and Republican politicians about stay-at-home orders and mask-wearing regulations related to the coronavirus pandemic.
There is a bitter irony in these pleas to reject the siren call of the threat-monger: The newly formed anti-fear contingent has spent years playing on the anxieties of Americans, just ones much less dangerous than COVID-19.
Take, for example, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who back in March suggested that grandparents like him should be willing to sacrifice their lives in order to get the US economy moving again.
Patrick recently attacked the idea of mail-in voting by mocking those who, because of the coronavirus, might be afraid to go to a polling station on Election Day. “There is no reason — capital N, capital O — no reason that anyone under 65 should be able to say I am afraid to go vote,” said Patrick. “You have more chance of being in a serious auto accident if you are under 65 on the way to vote than you do from catching the virus and dying from it on the way to voting.” Auto fatalities, unlike the coronavirus, are not contagious.
This is the same Dan Patrick who began his political career by declaring “the silent invasion of the border” is the number one problem facing America, and who said last year that, without the border wall around the Texas city of El Paso, the state would be witness to “mass decapitations.”
Or there’s Representative Ken Buck of Colorado, who in March decried the “overreaction” to COVID-19. “We are in the midst of a panic that is creating irrational responses,” the congressman said.
Buck, who has offered support for President Trump’s Muslim ban, “expressed outrage”in 2016 at then-President Obama’s plan to bring prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay to the United States because “it makes us less safe.”
Four years ago, at a campaign event in New Hampshire, I heard former New Jersey governor Chris Christie tell a roomful of factory workers that we had to accept restrictions on our freedom to defeat terrorists like ISIS because “civil liberties” don’t matter all that much if you’re in a coffin.
Last month he told CNN reporter Dana Bash about the choice between opening up the economy and protecting public health: “Of course, everybody wants to save every life they can — but the question is, towards what end, ultimately?”
Much of this is at pace with Trump’s insistence — and those of Republican governors and members of Congress — that the country should open up as quickly as possible, even at risk of exposing more Americans to a deadly virus. Yet for nearly five years, Trump has repeatedly told Americans that undocumented immigrants, Muslim visitors, and migrant caravans are practically an existential threat — and extreme measures must be taken to protect Americans from them.
Indeed, Trump’s takeover of the Republican Party was undoubtedly spurred by his proposal of a Muslim ban in December 2015, after a mass shooting by a husband and wife who had pledged fealty to the Islamic State. Oddly, however, a report earlier this month that a terrorist attack by a Saudi officer, at a naval base in Pensacola, was orchestrated by Al Qaeda produced no similar reaction from either Trump or his Republican allies.
It’s almost as if fear is merely a tool used by politicians to manipulate voters.
One might argue that if it’s wrong to fan the flames of fear about terrorism and immigrants, it’s also wrong to fan the fears of a pandemic. The problem, however, is that the coronavirus is a deadly risk to Americans, while undocumented immigrants commit less crime than native-born Americans and one is more likely to be hit by lightning than be killed by a jihadist terrorist.
For much of the past two decades, Americans have been manipulated by inflated fears and 1 percent threats — and more often than not by Republicans. It’s why we went to war in Iraq in 2003 and is one of the reasons Trump was elected president. Those threats were magnified for often nakedly political reasons, just as the dangers of the coronavirus are today being minimized for the same political rationales. It is ironic that at a moment when the dangers to Americans could not be more real it is Republicans who are warning of the dangers of fear.
And maybe the critics of an over-the-top response to the coronavirus are right that we should not give in so readily to our fears. Or maybe, we should judge threats with data and evidence and respond accordingly.
Michael A. Cohen’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @speechboy71.