More than 30 years ago, I had a hand in the publication of a book of essays on nuclear weapons policy called The Apocalyptic Premise.
Edited by E. Stephen Hunt and Ernest W. Lefever, this volume came to mind as I watched last Tuesday’s Republican presidential primary debate and as I anticipated watching tonight’s debate among the three candidates for the Democratic nomination.
The first paragraph in The Apocalyptic Premise – written in 1982 but still resonant today – says this:
Few great debates are truly great. No matter how vital the issue, the public discussion is usually trivialized by ignorance, naivete, deception, demagoguery, self-righteous posturing, and exaggerated hopes and fears. Truth, reason, realism, and even patriotism are sometimes overwhelmed by less noble human passions.
When I thought of The Apocalyptic Premise in regard to this week’s presidential debates, I did not have that particular passage in mind. I just luckily came upon it while I was looking for the definition of the term, “apocalyptic premise,” which I thought might shed light on the shortcomings of both the debaters and the journalists who pose the questions at these joint press conferences on CNN and ABC-TV.
Bear with me while I quote further from Hunt and Lefever’s introductory essay:
Ideas play an important role in determining the means we choose. Some ideas obscure desirable ends and confuse the means for reaching them. As a result, we fix our gaze on short-term objectives or adopt measures that betray the cause of peace and freedom.
One such influential idea is “the apocalyptic premise,” which has always flourished in times of trouble and uncertainty. Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have vivid apocalyptic passages portraying how the world will end for both the righteous and the unrighteous. These prophetic visions, properly understood, lend perspective to faithful Jews and Christians, who believe there is a dimension beyond history that gives meaning to the here and now.
But in current secular usage, an apocalyptic event is one that spells doom for a nation, a civilization, or the human race itself. Therefore the apocalyptic premise lacks the hope of the biblical vision of “a new heaven and a new earth. In the nuclear era some secular apocalyptic prophets proclaim that the world will be destroyed by fire and brimstone unless their particular prescriptions for avoiding catastrophe are adopted.
Today’s “threat,” such as it is, comes not from nuclear weapons aimed at us but rather from various terrorist groups like Daesh (also known as the Islamic State, ISIS, and ISIL), Boko Haram, and the remnants of al-Qaeda.
Yet politicians routinely and persistently exaggerate the threat of jihadist terrorism in order to stir up fears within the electorate. Charlatans like Donald Trump play on the fear of the “other,” xenophobia, and irrationality to win support among voters. Because Trump is in the lead, other presidential candidates have to play a game of oneupmanship to prove they are as tough on those distant enemies as he threatens to be, such as Ted Cruz promising to carpet bomb the Middle East.
What these politicians – Democrats and Republicans alike – fail to say is that Americans are safer today than ever before in history. The incidents of terrorism in the West are fewer today than they were in the 1970s. Gun crime, another favorite bugaboo of political “leaders,” is at its lowest level since the 1960s.
Worldwide, as Harvard’s Steven Pinker has shown, violence is less prevalent than at any time in human history. This applies to wars, crime, terrorism, and state-sponsored executions.
What I would like to see, tonight and at future debates, is for some journalist to separate himself from the pack and ask the candidates this:
Given that incidents of terrorism are much rarer today than at any time in more than 40 years and that violent crime is at a lower rate in the United States today than it was in the 1960s, why do you persist in frightening the American people with apocalyptic rhetoric that bears little resemblance to reality?
Nobody will ask that question. Somebody should.
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