Fear

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court decision about military tribunals for the detainees in Guantanamo is another step in unraveling the politics of fear that the Bush administration and the majority in the Congress have manipulated for the last five years. It is now time for a politics of hope to emerge. The manipulation of fear has been the basis for a staggering array of Bush administration policies and congressional votes. Fear of terrorists led to the creation of a lugubrious federal bureaucracy, the Department of Homeland Security, which spends $30 billion a year but cannot protect the citizens of New Orleans.

Los Angeles Kings star Wayne Gretzky is so good at what he does, no one ever thinks that The Great One might know the meaning of the word fear.But yesterday, as Gretzky talked about the increasing anxiety of breaking Gordie Howe's NHL goal-scoring record of 801, the word kept sneaking into the conversation."

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself," said Franklin Roosevelt in his first Inaugural Address in 1933 to an America alarmed by the Great Depression and the growing Nazi war machine in Europe.Sixty years later, another fear grips New York City, and indeed all of America, again troubled by economic matters and unsettled in a still turbulent world. Now something has finally penetrated our seemingly sure defenses."Fear: an unpleasant, often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- A memo by outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recommending changes in U.S. strategy in Iraq is being spun in some quarters as a declaration of capitulation. In fact, it is akin to what an assistant coach for an under-performing NFL team might hand to the head coach, if the assistant seeks to alter a game plan so that his team will win. Winning in Iraq, however, does not seem to be a priority for growing numbers of American politicians. They are like the crowd at a football game that sees the home team losing and heads for the exits before the game is over, only to miss the big comeback and victory.

MY COLLEGE'S graduation ceremonies were covered by the national news recently. The West Point Class of 2005 received special mention since its members enrolled in 2001, just before 9/11 - the events, we are told, that "changed everything." The young lieutenants were presented as courageous volunteers in the "war on terror," and most of them expect within a year to be fighting in Iraq. How did the events of 9/11 become conflated with our Iraq adventure? It was, of course, easy. We know now that the Bush administration was preoccupied with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein long before those airliners hit the World Trade Center.

New York.---PARENTS ARE FRIGHTENED. Recent research, including my own work in Baltimore, shows that parents today are truly afraid for their children. They fear that the streets are stalked by predators, out to hurt, steal or kill their children. This anxiety is widespread, not just among parents in drug-infested, gang-controlled neighborhoods, but also among parents in quiet, middle-class communities.Social scientists and media commentators who discover this phenomenon seem genuinely perplexed by it. Isn't it odd, perhaps even neurotic and irrational, for parents to be so anxious and fearful?

FEAR.That's what Richard Wright named Book One of his classic novel "Native Son." It's as if, in 1940, Wright knew that more than 50 years later fear would still be one of America's predominant obsessions. One of the main themes of "Native Son" is that fear can have disastrous, even deadly, consequences.Last week, a Baltimore jury convicted police Sgt. Stephen R. Pagotto of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Preston Barnes. Pagotto testified that when he approached Barnes' car with his gun drawn the night of Feb. 7, 1996, fear of being shot was foremost in his mind.

"Fear," by Irini Spanidou. Knopf. 182 pages. $21.Irini Spanidou's "Fear" involves at least two wonderful activities. Foremost, of course, is reading it. Please do so under the bedclothes, by flashlight -- if, like me, you can recall sneaking past the Young Adult section of the neighborhood library to secrete your flat-T-shirted self in a dim corner of Adult Fiction. Decades gone, the thrill returns.The second wonderful thing is trying to categorize this book. The project flashes one's whole life-as-a-reader before her. I say "her" because one category is certain: "Fear" is a woman's book, though, like many such, it would do a man a world of good to read it; indeed, one of the central issues is what it means to possess "the soul of a man."

The newest martyrs in the Baltimore County public schools are Jody Ulrich and Kelly Butcher, two innocents declared guilty of the crime of attempting to protect themselves from harm.Their expulsions have set off a wave of public anger (and political grandstanding), and why not? We live in a time of generalized fear, and here were two kids expressing it. Instead of embracing them, instead of finding ways to calm their concerns, we've hidden behind some dry rules in a book and set loose the heartless bureaucrats.

DUBLIN - As I drove my son to school yesterday, everybody was talking about the revelation that a trader at Allfirst had allegedly defrauded the company of $750 million, possibly more. Talking is one of the things you do when you're afraid. That fear exists here because Allfirst is owned by Allied Irish Banks PLC, and AIB branches are as ubiquitous here as Blockbuster Video stores are there. AIB is simply everywhere. And most of the money my wife and I have in the world is lodged in AIB vaults.