CrossCurrents

CrossCurrents A Catholic Reflects on Faith in Our Times

Bernard F. Swain, Ph.D.

Beyond the Boogieman—Part I

Four years after 911, isn’t it time we outgrew the Boogieman?

I don’t know whether I ever believed in “the Boogieman,” but I certainly heard about him. For example, I heard “Watch out for the Boogieman!” as I headed off through dark woods to the campground toilets armed only with a flashlight. I also heard, “the Boogieman is gonna get you!” from grownups trying to discourage me from wandering off to places they thought unsafe.

I suppose some kids confused the Boogieman with the devil, or even with God, but mostly he remained this vague imaginary threat who served a very practical function of scaring us out of “mischief.” I suppose too, in dealing with young kids, it was an effective (if somewhat cruel) way of getting them to behave until they got old enough to motivate by reason instead of by fear.

But since 9/11 I’ve reflected a lot on how America responds to crisis, and it seems to me that too often Americans are treated like children who can only be made to do the right thing when they are afraid – and too often our leaders make us afraid by creating a great Boogieman for our time. Rallying Americans during the great depression, FDR told us we had nothing to fear but fear itself – yet fear has become a staple tool of our national leaders for more than 50 years.

By the end of World War II Americans were already scared of the “Red Menace” that obliged us to engage in a Cold War against the Soviet Union and its satellites. By the early 1950s, that scare led to the national scandal of McCarthyism, fueled by images of Communists as “Masters of Deceit” and “the Enemy Within.” I still remember our teachers scaring us with photo images of Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe on the table while proclaiming “We will bury you.” The Cold War brought spies and spy planes and the space race and the Cuban Missile Crisis and, by the 1960s, it gave us the “Domino Theory” which made millions of Americans afraid that a Communist Vietnam threatened our national security.

That fear got us into a hot war for more than ten years, but by the time that ended we had found new Boogiemen to fear: Salvador Allende in Chile, killed by a US-supported coup because we feared him; the Ayatollah Khomeini, demonized not so much for holding American hostages as for holding the American way of life hostage by restoring his version of traditional Islamic society; the tiny island of Grenada, invaded because its new airstrip might be used to attack us; the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, whose perfectly legal election provoked the U.S. to declare the original “War on Terror” and a state of national emergency.

Meanwhile of course the Cold War itself continued. By 1980 we had dubbed our adversary “the Evil Empire,” and we built ever more monstrous weapons of mass destruction for fear that Empire would strike back at us. When it collapsed in 1989, there was brief talk of a “peace dividend,” but 1990’s Persian Gulf conflict made Saddam Hussein our newest Boogieman, and soon our troops again saw combat. Through the 1990s, we dealt with civil unrest in the Balkans and in Africa, creating new Boogiemen whose names we could not even pronounce.

Then came 9/11, and Osama Bin Laden became our Millennium Boogieman. For a while, this kept our troops occupied, but Osama’s elusiveness grew tiresome, so we shifted our focus back to a better-known Boogieman: Saddam Hussein.

But now, with Osama on the run and Saddam in jail, we still are not safe, and we’re still driven by fear, and so we face a new phase on our long parade of paranoia. The solution for many Americans: their fear is targeting Islam itself.

Just this week Colorado congressman Tom Tancredo objected to the crescent-designed Pennsylvania memorial to those aboard a plane hijacked on 9/11, claiming people would think it honors the terrorists “because of the crescent’s prominent use as a symbol in Islam.” Earlier this summer, Congressman Tancredo had also suggested that an effective way to deter a terrorist nuclear attack would be for the US to threaten retaliation by bombing Mecca, Islam holiest site. And now Massachusetts governor mitt Romney has raised the prospect of wiretapping mosques to monitor the teaching of “doctrines of hate and terror.”

Is it possible that, in our desperate need for a motivating Boogieman, we’re about to shift from a crusade on terrorism to a crusade on Islam itself? It may be difficult for Americans to understand how outrageous this leap really is, but imagine the tables turned: what if an Arab politician in the Middle East proposed wiretapping Christian churches? What if Protestants in Northern Ireland had threatened to deter the IRA by bombing the Vatican?

Fear and frustration are understandable outcomes from 911 and its aftermath, but even though real threats exist, we may still be falling prey to paranoia.

As a Catholic American, several things strike me about this situation:

First, we have become a people constantly motivated by fear, even though Christians call hope a virtue. We seem hooked on Boogiemen, as if we were “chain smoking” our way through one villain after another. Sure, some of these men were monstrously evil, but many were harmless petty tyrants who never threatened us. Yet we treat them all as dire threats, which begs the question: are we letting fear run our country?

Second, this fear robs us of peace. We Americans are perpetually at war, even though we Christians claim to believe in peace. Since entering World War II in 1941 – more than 60 years ago! – we’ve seen only a brief year of peace following Communism’s collapse; for three generations, we have been almost constantly at war.

In fact, we Americans seem to link “freedom” with “fighting.” This is natural enough in a country born in revolution, a country whose union was forged only by civil war. But is it really part of the American dream that having freedom means we can never be at peace?

My own opinion is: this is not how people of faith should live. We should not behave like children who can only do the right thing if they are scared of the Boogieman. American Catholics should be able to find in their faith a more mature, confident, realistic and hopeful vision of the world with which to face the challenges of life in these difficult times.

I also believe that vision is right at hand. In fact, our new Pope has already offered just such a vision for a world in which Christians and Moslems work together to face the threat of terror, and finally put the fear born on 9/11 behind us and move on to peace. We American Catholics would do well to heed his words, and ignore those trying to claim our attention and support by coldheartedly concocting yet another Boogieman.

Next week, part two: Pope Benedict’s vision of “a new dawn.”

Send Your Comments and Questions to bfswain@juno.com