Debbie Wasserman Schultz may not want you to know about it, but there’s a Democratic presidential debate on Saturday evening, and The New Republic’s Brian Beutler believes that the candidates therein “would be doing the country a service by placing the right wing appeal to paranoia in its proper context—and then rejecting it forcefully.”
In a Friday piece, Beutler described this week’s Republican presidential debate as “an elaborate group sermon on the importance of being afraid”; opined that the GOP candidates “have made almost no attempt to argue” that their proposals “will reduce the terrorism risk, which is so small to begin with”; and asserted that Republicans’ “position on Jihadi terrorism (that no risk is too small to ignore) is practically the opposite of their position on mass shootings in general (that no risk is worth mitigating at all).”
From Beutler’s article (bolding added):
[T]he most recent GOP primary debate was an elaborate group sermon on the importance of being afraid…
The putative remedies to the mortal dangers we face are a hodgepodge of reactionary policies that go beyond xenophobia: greater police power, “carpet bombing” campaigns, much less immigration, and even the willingness to start a war with Russia. But the real remedy—the one that matters most to the candidates playing this game, is of course the accretion of political power to them.
…When Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Martin O’Malley debate on Saturday night…[they] would be doing the country a service by placing the right wing appeal to paranoia in its proper context—and then rejecting it forcefully.
They could begin by pointing out that every society in the world faces and tolerates certain levels of risk—and that in every open society, terrorism is one of those risks…
…[O]f all the risks we face, terrorism is a relatively small one—lower by far than the risk of death by auto accident, disease, or even of mass-shootings carried out by non-Jihadists. If ISIS was genuinely a mortal threat to the Western way of life, Western countries would be treating the threat much differently.
The way that Republicans grapple with these other risks gives us a window into the sincerity of their flashing-red panic over terrorism. Republicans aren’t terribly interested in creating incentives for using safer modes of transportation, and their position on Jihadi terrorism (that no risk is too small to ignore) is practically the opposite of their position on mass shootings in general (that no risk is worth mitigating at all)…
…[The GOP candidates] have made almost no attempt to argue that the policies they have proposed will reduce the terrorism risk, which is so small to begin with. The plausible exception here is Donald Trump, who has proposed to largely close American society in response to a number of perceived threats.
By contrast, there are many strong arguments to the effect that killing more innocent Muslims abroad, and portraying Islam as inherently, uniquely malignant will exacerbate the terrorism risk.
Democrats have made those arguments forcefully.
