Fortress America: How We Embraced Fear and Abandoned Democracy

246 Pages·2016·10.93 MB·English

by  Elaine Tyler May

Copyright
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First Edition: December 2017
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: May, Elaine Tyler,
author.
Title: Fortress America : how we embraced fear and abandoned democracy /
Elaine Tyler May.
Elaine Tyler May.
Description: First edition. | New York : Basic Books, [2017] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017023376| ISBN 9780465055920 (hardcover) | ISBN
9780465093007 (e-book) Subjects: LCSH: Crime—United States—History—
21st century. | Violence—United States—History—21st century. | Public safety
—Social aspects—United States—History—21st century. | United States—
Social conditions—21st century. | United States--Civilization—21st century.
Classification: LCC HV6789 .M359 2017 | DDC 364.10973—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017023376
ISBNs: 978-0-46505592-0 (hardcover), 978-0-46509300-7 (ebook) E3-
20171117-JV-PC
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
The Bunker Mentality
Chapter 1
Gimme Shelter: Security in the Atomic Age
Chapter 2
The Color of Danger: From Red to Black
Chapter 3
Vigilante Virtue: Fantasy, Reality, and the Law
Chapter 4
Women: Victims or Villains?
Chapter 5
Locked-Up America: Self-Incarceration and the Illusion of Security
Epilogue
Back to the Future: The Twenty-First Century
Acknowledgments
About the Author
More Praise for Fortress America
Notes
Index
In Memory of Jonathan Kaminsky, 1978–2016,
Whose light left this world too soon
And for
Ezrah Josephine May and Isaiah Nelson May
With hopes that they will grow up in a post-fortress world
Introduction
THE BUNKER MENTALITY
Fear is a potent force in America, and it has taken many forms throughout this
nation’s history. Perhaps at no point was fear more widespread than in the years
after World War II, which witnessed major political, social, and cultural
upheavals. In particular, fears of atomic attack, communist subversives, crime,
and physical harm at the hands of strangers have affected social norms, election
results, public policies, and daily life. This fear has generated the security state
defining the place of the United States in the world ever since the early years of
the Cold War. At the same time it has fostered a security culture, a bunker
mentality, within the country. This book is an effort to understand how that state
of mind developed, how it evolved throughout the twentieth century, and what it
has meant for the nation and its citizens up to the present day. Why have
Americans become so fearful? How has that fear been expressed and addressed
in the nation’s culture, institutions, and laws? What have citizens done to
achieve personal safety and security?
Americans learned to fear dangers from both inside and outside the country
in the early years of the Cold War and the Atomic Age. Citizens came to believe
that the government would not protect them, so they had to protect themselves.
Over time, they turned their attention to other presumed dangers, especially
crime and social unrest. Fear increased far out of proportion to any real threat,
leading millions of Americans to undertake security measures that did not make
them any safer.
Misplaced fear drove Americans away from true security. To be secure is to
be safe, out of harm’s way, and to have the essentials for a comfortable life:
adequate food, shelter, and clothing. In the United States, security is embedded
in the nation’s founding documents, particularly the Declaration of
Independence, which promises the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.” Traditions of individualism and free enterprise embody the belief
that security originates from self-sufficiency. American democratic practices
foster an expectation that virtuous citizens who work hard will be rewarded with
security, the good life, and the fulfillment of the American dream. Although
throughout the nation’s history large numbers of Americans never had the
opportunity to achieve this level of security, it has remained an aspirational goal
and a national ideal.
There was never a “golden age” of security. But there were moments in the
twentieth century when citizens and policymakers believed that the government
had a responsibility to create the conditions in which Americans could achieve
safety and a decent standard of living. Those moments resulted from two beliefs
in particular: that the government was a force for social betterment, and that all
citizens shared responsibility for the common good. That vision was never
perfect—in fact, it never fully became reality—but it had political, cultural, and
social traction, especially in times of hardship.
One such time was the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic crisis
moved large numbers of Americans to abandon the belief in self-sufficiency and
turn to the government for assistance. At that time, for most people, insecurity
was understood in economic terms. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal
offered programs, such as Social Security, to provide a safety net for the many
Americans who had lost jobs, income, and opportunities. The New Deal rested
on a widely shared belief that the government had a responsibility to assist
citizens in need.
The safety net did not reach everyone, however. African Americans who
worked as household workers or sharecroppers were not included, for example;
nor were many others who labored at the edges of the economy. Indeed, the
vision of security that prevailed prior to World War II belonged largely to the
white middle class. It rested on hierarchies of race and gender that many white
Americans believed to be rooted in biology. The belief that people of color were
inferior, and that women were innately destined to be wives and mothers,
maintained social arrangements that upheld the power and authority of white
men. Those boundaries of race and gender were enforced by both violence and
law. Lynching and Jim Crow segregation were among the strategies that kept the
racial hierarchy in place; exclusionary practices and gender-based laws restricted
opportunities for women and maintained their subordination. The social order
that resulted from these discriminatory practices enforced oppression for some
while offering predictability and stability for others.
Another pre–World War II source of security for mainstream Americans