ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the Security story that has arisen in the US today as economic conditions decline for the working classes and the Meritocracy story loses its force and credibility. While it uses Trump’s Security story as the contemporary model at this writing, it shows that the essential story developed long before Trump and was perpetrated successfully by presidents—both Republican and Democratic—especially since the Reagan Revolution in 1980. We show that the story carries forward many elements of the ancient feudal Security story, highlighting protection of the “downstairs” through its acceptance of a protection or security pact with the “upstairs,” that delivers a small measure of economic security as well as assurances of cultural recognition of forgotten but honorable white working people by defining them as true members of the tribe who elites will protect against “those people” who are imposters and typically people of color, immigrants or other foreign or domestic enemies.
The chapter shows that the contemporary US Security story is a narrative about protection against three manufactured enemies. One is the foreign enemy, evolving from Communists to terrorists. The national security state becomes a state religion, in which true Americans will be protected by their rulers against those threatening incineration from nuclear attack or terrorism in the streets. A second enemy is the domestic one, those imposters—people of color, immigrants and liberal bi-coastal elites who service them—who are stealing state resources from white working members of the true American tribe. Elites restore to the “forgotten people”—who in fact have been abandoned by the system—a promise of both physical protection and cultural honor relative to racialized minorities and illegal aliens. A third war that elites manufacture is one of “all against all,” where fear of the generalized other spills over from foreign and domestic enemies to everyone. All are rivals or competitors in capitalism, who can become frightening enemies in competition for jobs, money, homes or simply a parking place in the streets or an antagonist in a violent road rage confrontation. The Security story breeds this Hobbesian war of all against all in the name of security, much as it manufactures foreign and domestic wars in the name of protection. Here we see the great paradox of a Security story breeding insecurity, but serving its function of diverting anger from a declining “downstairs” working population toward manufactured enemies and away from the upstairs elites who are bonding with them in the protection or security pact.
