ABSTRACT
This chapter defines the Security story. It is a narrative crafted by elites about how they protect the society and its people from terrifying enemies abroad and at home. It unifies the downstairs with the upstairs in a common pact of protection and security. Elites divert the downstairs from economic and cultural anxieties, by promising security from manufactured enemies abroad and at home, dangling prospects of renewed economic security through military investments and cultural respect by honoring the true members of the national tribe as allies against domestic manufactured enemies who are imposters and not true members of the nation.
The chapter shows that US elites have reached far back into history to craft the new Security narrative. The major story today has roots in ancient feudalism, where lords of the manor with unchecked power and wealth, viewed as divinely ordained in a Great Chain of Being, offer protection to serfs doomed to permanent poverty and powerlessness. We show how the themes of that feudal Security story have been resurrected in contemporary Security tales. Modern rulers manufacture, as in ancient times, evil and satanic enemies who threaten all aspects of everyday life in the “downstairs” of the social order. With the blessings of the Church, they provide a divinely ordained Security system in which the lowest serfs find a measure of economic and cultural security through their obedience to rulers and their political and economic system ordained by God. Serfs who are powerless are vested by the Security story with a plot of land and a sense of respect or honor through their relation of subordination to their natural superiors. Subordination becomes a basis of security and even glory, reflected from their rulers.
