Fear and Loathing

According to a Quinnipiac poll, 47% of Americans know someone who is living in fear because of ICE. Fifty-one percent did not know someone.

To repeat, this is not 47% of people are afraid of ICE, but that they know someone who is afraid. Nearly 2/3rds of Americans think ICE has gone too far while 12% (about 1 in 8 people) don’t think ICE has gone far enough.

But it was the first set of poll numbers that fascinated me more. Nearly half of Americans know someone who’s afraid of ICE.

This made me think of polling from twenty years ago on same-sex marriage. Stay with me. The poll asked two questions. 1) Do you support same-sex marriage? 2) Do you know someone who is GLBTQ+?

The poll showed an interesting correlation. The people who knew someone who was GLBTQ+ supported equal marriage at a rate of 80%. Only 20% of those who knew someone who was queer opposed it. Of those who didn’t know someone who was BGLTQ+, only 20% supported equal marriage. The other 80% did not.

I would expect this correlation of knowing someone and not knowing someone applies across a lot of issues.

Take fear. If you’re one of the 47% of people who know someone who lives with fear of ICE, I have little doubt that at 80%, if not more, think ICE has gone too far. I would also bet that of the 12% of people who don’t think ICE has gone far enough, very few of them know someone who lives with this fear.

Indeed, I would bet the 12% are very much in their own echo chamber and individuals there are mostly talking and interacting with people in this 12% group.

The images from Minnesota also have had impact. Seeing the videos of the mother shot while in her car and the ICU nurse shot while trying to protect a nearby woman have undoubtedly increased the fear.

I highly suspect that the talking points that came after the shooting of Rene Good and Alex Pretti were developed and affirmed in the echo chamber thinking they will have impact on the other 88%.

I would be there are people in that 12% group wondering why people don’t agree with them.

I’m wondering though how the numbers got that low. I would have guessed higher, but likely the graphic murders of two people, both white, which I think has more impact on the right-wing base.

I had a favorite shirt years ago that I wore all the time doing presentations that I washed with a pen. It looked ruined when I pulled it out of the laundry. But because it was a favorite, I wasn’t’ quite willing to give up on it. So I washed it again. That helped some. Then I tried site specific stain removers. One worked better than the other. In the end I think it was about 15 direct applications of the stain remover, sometimes followed by a Tide Pen, along with a dose of ink-stain specific remover from time to time, that the shirt came clean.

I was thrilled. Until a few years later when I left it in a hotel, and housekeeping said the room was empty when they checked. I hope it became someone else’s favorite shirt at least.

But the effort to get the shirt clean was a great example of chipping away at a problem and wanting to solve it.

I think the reason we see the poll numbers we do is that people are exhausted, and they are exhausted from the idea of having to live in fear.

I think the deaths of Rene Good and Alex Pretti amplified our nation’s fear.

Many people in the echo chambers of the left wondered how the current president could get re-elected, especially women voters. Eventually one answer that made sense to me was mothers concerned in particular about their children, especially their sons, voted for the president because they feared for the future of their children, especially their sons living without purpose, sometimes at home, who felt lost and as if they didn’t matter or that they were the problem.

Then Rene Good got shot. A mother of three, one of whom was a six-year old boy, had to make the mothers who voted for the president fearful. How could you support someone who blamed the mother? Chip, chip, chip.

Then Alex Pretti got shot. Here was a man protecting a woman. That’s what many of them say they believe is their role in the world—to be a protector. As young men in our country who saw hope for that in the president and who found some sense of purpose, watched this ICU nurse trying to protect a woman get shot. Who could be protected?

Then when the echo chamber suggested that Alex Pretti shouldn’t have been carrying a gun they expected that to matter. Instead, it didn’t. SO many on the right have the talking point that having a gun is for protection. So this chipped away some of the gun-right advocates as well as the protectors.

Additionally, it sorted of made it clear that the president’s echo chamber was more that of billionaires than gun owners. Chip, chip, chip.

Then there is the federal government refusing to work with local police on the investigation. Police who generally were supported and supportive of Republicans. Chip, chip, chip.

Let’s add two seemingly unrelated things. The tragic abduction of Nancy Guthrie, mother of “The Today Show’s” Savannah Guthrie has reminded people how powerless we all are. Americans don’t take well to feeling powerless.

That was why people voted for the president. They felt he gave them more power, more purpose. Yet the abduction reminds us how powerless we can all feel. Alongside the images of Rene Good and Alex Pretti as well as Liam, the five-year-old taken by ICE to Texas, and the 2-year-old also taken by ICE in Minnesota, reinforce the idea that powerful people can reach into your family.

America doesn’t take well to feeling powerless. In fact, we loathe it. So, we organize. We fight the British. We respond to the Japanese after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We come together after 9/11.

And I think 47% of Americans living in fear is a sign that we are done with living in more fear, especially from the government.

Also, Treasury Secretary Scott Bissente was asked by the Senate’s Ruben Gallego about the 10-billion-dollar lawsuit by the president and where the money would come from. He answered from the treasury. He was then basically asked if the president was looting his own coffers. Bissente, a billionaire, responded that the president would donate the money to charity if he won the case. He thought that would play well and possibly does with other billionaires and maybe some others.

(Speaking of thinking it would play well, the president’s racist tropes on social media, which was then reported to be about the Lion King—despite no apes in the Lion King—then it was an intern’s fault to then the president saying he wouldn’t apologize. None of this played well except to the 12%. Yet it reinforced the powerlessness of the president gets to do whatever he wants while the rest of can’t.)

Yet, to those not in the echo chamber, this has added to the feeling of powerlessness. The president sues for our money and then decides on his own what charity it goes to. And why is the president more interested in suing for 10 billion dollars than ending the fears of the majority of Americans? Chip, chip, chip. Chip, chip, chip.

Americans are coming together over a shared fear. We know people living in fear. A higher percentage of people know the fear around what will happen to their children, their parents, their friends. We live in fear of being hurt while helping others. We live in fear of having more rights taken away. We live in fear of billionaires dictating our lives thinking they have our backs when what they do well is acquire money, sometimes ours, to do with what they well.

Those that feel powerless are watching the powerful. The powerful listen to each other. The tide will continue to turn as the powerless feel more disconnected and less in control of what their lives could be like.

The powerful won’t listen until they feel powerless.

Chip, chip, chip away. Fear and loathing.

We can be a better country than this.