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As I have written on occasion in the past, the one sure route to wealth and power in this country is to invent a disease, then sell the cure.
Sometimes this works in a literal way, as with the invention of halitosis and the coincidental marketing of Listerine.
But our political discourse is not quite so crassly
commercial, and in that realm this concept might be better
expressed as Get people good and scared about something,
then show that your party or candidate will protect
them.
Both parties can work this one pretty well. For
instance, most Americans support education, which inspires
the Democratic Party to announce that American education is
threatened because Vouchers will destroy our public
schools.
In truth, any public school that got destroyed by vouchers is a school that should have been closed down anyway. The public school will almost always have access to more resources than a private school, and if the public school can't get community support because it misuses those resources, why should it stay open?
The simple fact is that vouchers are a threat only to some teachers' jobs -- the mediocre ones. The good teachers would benefit, because more schools would be competing for their services.
Someday, perhaps, the Democratic Party will discover
that there are more parents in the United States than there
are members of the teachers' unions. But until then, every
threat to the steady paycheck of any tenured timeserver is
a threat to public education.
Conservatives are more creative at contriving threats, which may explain the Republican party's success in recent years.
For instance, the Republicans in Congress devote much time and energy toward passing a constitutional amendment which would provide an exception to the First Amendment so that Congress could regulate flag-burning.
From that frenzy, you'd think there was an epidemic of flag burning, that on some days the streetlights come on at noon on account of all the smoke from burning flags.
In fact, it's pretty rare, and it would likely still happen from time to time even if it were a federal crime. Note that Congress has made a federal case out of just about anything connected with drugs, and people still break those laws.
Further, most Americans are inculcated with reverence for their flag. When I was in high school, I worked in my father's laundry in Greeley. One Saturday, I was the washman, in charge of rumbling steam-belching machines that could handle a 200-pound load of laundry. Among the sheets and shirts was the American flag that usually flew over the Weld County Courthouse.
It was so big and heavy that I couldn't grasp it all at once. As I loaded it into the washing machine, one corner swiped across the floor. For the rest of the day, and some days thereafter, I feared I would be struck by lightning.
If a rebellious teenager during the height of 1960s flag-burning protests felt that way, do we really need to amend the Constitution? Of course not, but certain politicians have elevated flag-burning to a threat that only they can save us from.
Another threat that they're trying to save us from is homosexual marriage. I tried to imagine what terrible thing would have happened if the gay couple who used to live across the street from us had possessed a marriage certificate issued by the state.
I couldn't think of anything. In fact, they took much better care of their yard than we did, and they didn't park a rusting dented '65 Dodge Dart in front of their house -- it's a wonder they didn't try to run the heteros out of the neighborhood because we were depressing property values.
I asked Martha if she thought our own marriage would
somehow be less meaningful or significant to us if lesbians
and urnings could legally wed. What difference would it
make to us?
she asked.
So I pondered some more. Maybe the biblical account of Sodom and Gomorrah is a warning, and if a community is sufficiently wicked, then divine destruction awaits. So those Republicans, in opposing gay marriage because they see it as state-approved wickedness, are trying to save America from the wrath of God.
But if God hasn't yet smote America for Sand Creek, Wounded Knee, the Nisei Internment, the Trail of Tears and thousands of lynchings, along with the rampant commercialization of Deadly Sins like Lust, Gluttony, Envy and Avarice -- then how much could a few pieces of paper matter?
They don't -- unless you need to generate some votes by contriving a threat, of course.
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