Why Americans Are Okay With Spying

The Miami Herald runs an editorial about President Bush's basic okayness with spying: Fear destroys what bin Laden could not.

The gist: "There is so much outcry about the president’s recent actions and attitudes, and how could we as Americans simply accept this?"

This train of thought seems a failure to understand Americans, particularly the ones who voted for and continue, in decreasing numbers, to support the president.

These are a mass of voters who believe strongly in Jesus. They might not always believe clearly about Jesus, but their vaguely directed faith is strong. President Bush shows up and makes unashamed Christian noises. These voters like Christian noises. They themselves make these noises and they trust other people who utter them.

Further, many of these people are older. They have lived in periods when they had to sacrifice personal liberty for the common good, and it was a good thing. For some of them that meant entering the armed services, a place that restricts liberty considerably for national well-being. For others, this meant rationing and victory gardens, if not personally, then certainly by their parents and older siblings. These people were indoctrinated when they were young to sacrifice personal liberty of all sorts for the national good. They might feel uncomfortable with the idea that the government would spy on them, but they’ll accept it because they've accepted invasive government action before and it turned out just fine.

These people are not necessarily meek or thoughtless. But they accept what's happening, and what has happened throughout Bush's administration, because an authority figure who makes the right noises says he’s doing it for their good.

Also, consider: These people not only grew up in an era where trusting authority was good and right, but they sort of miss it. I don't know if you've noticed, but postmodern wariness is taxing, and I grew up in the thick of it. If this had come upon me as an adult, after my expectations were set, I too would be unsettled and bewildered by the low-slung pants and the constant metatext.

These people grew up with more basic trust than we have now, and they're ready and willing to trust someone in charge who has their best interests in mind.

You know what? I want that too. Sometimes I wish I were entrusted with fewer mortal decisions and responsibilities. Wishing like this long-term is, of course, poison. But sometimes I wish it anyway.

George Bush, despite an awesome display of consistently egregious buffoonery, makes sense to these people. His call for reduction in liberty for safety does not resonate with Jeffersonian distrust for them, but with the gentle, well-intentioned authority of their childhoods. To them, this is not merely unshocking, but sensible.

What these Americans are not doing is thinking very clearly about what and why their leader talks the way he does. What’s more, they don’t want to think clearly about it. They just want to trust.