How Being Angry or Fearful Shapes Your Democratic Values
And how our government can use this to respond to a crisis
We have seen it many times throughout American history. A tragic event occurs on American soil, and the masses rally around our leadership to respond swiftly to the cause of the crisis. The rally effect creates a nationalistic wave that engulfs the citizenry, increasing public support for elected officials to deal with the problem the way they see fit to do so.
Anger and anxiety play crucial roles in whether a person chooses to rally around the flag or not. Furthermore, this emotional response can lead to a broad range of consequences for the nation and the world.
A Look Back
For those of you old enough to remember the tragic events of September 11th, 2001, you will know exactly what was just described. Almost immediately after the second plane hit The World Trade Center towers, an us versus them group mentality swept across the country. We demanded that our government locate who was responsible for the attacks, and handle them quickly by any means necessary.
Approval ratings shot up for President George W. Bush, reaching 92% at one point, and remaining between 80–90% for four months following the attacks. These are extraordinary public opinion numbers that gave the president the ability to respond to the terrorism threat how he saw fit.
One of the first things that President Bush did with this added power was get Congress to pass The Patriot Act. A piece of legislation that increased the government’s ability to spy on its own people without court orders, search homes and businesses without the occupant’s consent or knowledge, allowed for the indefinite detention of immigrants, and more. The bill passed the House 357–66, and the Senate with a vote of 98–1 in favor.
Public opinion of whether citizens think the government should take all steps to prevent another terrorist attack, even if that meant giving up some of their own civil liberties, showed an even split among respondents in January 2002, four months after the bill was passed.
The president also responded by announcing the War on Terror, and while Congress did not explicitly declare war, they did authorize the use of the military. We sprang into action by invading Afghanistan, which had the support of the American people.
In 2002, the drums began to beat for the next target in the fight, Iraq. The president alerted the public to the threat Saddam Hussein posed, exclaiming the fact that he had weapons of mass destruction, and that an attack on America was imminent. The public again supported the president with incredibly high approval ratings and a willingness to eradicate the dictator, and the invasion commenced.
Hussein was removed from power, and was hung by his detractors. Weapons of mass destruction were never found. Almost 4,500 American soldiers have died in that conflict alone.
Anger and Fear
We can see that the decisions that a government make in response to crises depends a great deal on the level of public support the president has after the event takes place. This is to protect their chances of reelection, the number one goal of any politician.
However, are there certain types of people more prone to giving up civil liberties and supporting wars, or any other type of action, that a government presents to the public as a meaningful response to the crisis? According to previous political science research, the answer is yes: those who are angry.
This research has shown that those “who experienced anger were significantly more likely to rally by showing more approval of the president and expressing less political tolerance…”, while on the other end of the spectrum, those who experience anxiety and fear “were more likely to regress by showing less approval of the president and expressing more political tolerance.”
Let’s take these findings and bring them to the present day, where the nation is involved in a global pandemic, and a president who is ramping up dramatic rhetoric toward the Chinese government.
Rally Effects During the Time of COVID-19
For President Donald Trump, the coronavirus timeline has been an interesting one for his approval rating and his rhetoric toward the Chinese government. Polling from the beginning of the virus becoming a focal point in the American media show that a rally effect did occur with Trump rising to 50% in the middle of March, where he was in the low to mid 40s just 30 days earlier.
At first, it seemed as though Trump was exclusively focused on how Americans could get through the pandemic both with their health and their wallets minimally effected. He recommended that people stay at home and signed the CARES Act into law giving people a stimulus check. Over the course of the first couple weeks where the virus was spreading throughout the nation, actual criticism was minimal as his public opinion rating on his job performance went up.
This would not last long however, and soon the president was facing objections from partisans and pundits for his handling of the situation. Job approval ratings have since gone back into the mid-40s with one exception being 51% on May 6th.
The relationship between the United States and China is extremely complex. The two nations are very different in their approaches to governing, but are also tied at the hip economically. The United States relies on Chinese manufacturing for an immense amount of supplies and products, and with the U.S. having the world’s reserve currency, a power struggle has blossomed over the past couple of decades, with tensions mounting during the Trump presidency.
This tug of war has been going on since the Trump campaign of 2016. Anti-China remarks were a mainstay of the Trump stump speech, but once in office, there was a time where Trump changed his tune to embrace President Xi, even exalting the fact that he was going to be the Chinese leader for life. The trade deal that was done to temporarily thwart the trade war escalations of the past couple years was also done whilst giving high praise of Xi by Trump. Even during the first few weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was not much negativity toward China from the Trump administration regarding their handling of the pandemic’s impact on the U.S.
This has changed in the last month or so. China has been on the radar for Trump and the GOP, targeting their response to the virus as being inadequate, calling into question the honesty of the Chinese government to appropriately convey information to the rest of the world, and blasting them for delivering broken medical supplies when the world needed it the most.
This talk is very much in line with wording a leaked GOP memo from O’Donnell & Associates that Politico released revealing how elected officials are to discuss China in public, and it involves blaming China for the virus, calling them the enemy of the United States, and that the way forward is bringing manufacturing jobs back home and sanctioning China for their belligerent actions. It seems that the drums are beating a little faster these days.
When anxiety is the dominant expression in an individual, there is a tendency to not be as supportive of acting against a foreign threat. It might be worthwhile to draw a comparison to how the beefed-up rhetoric does compare to the talk about Iraq by the Bush administration, and we can see a few similarities.
For starters, Iraq was blamed for being involved in the terrorist attacks of 9/11 as China is being blamed for the spread of the coronavirus with statements bordering on accusations that China deliberately wanted the virus to be worse for their adversaries.
Second, there is a long-running, tense history between the U.S. and both countries. The Bush family had it out for Saddam Hussein for generations, and China has been a growing threat to America as well with both Democrats and Republicans doubting that they have the United States’ best interests in mind.
So, just as when 9/11 happened, did the pandemic crossing our border give the Trump team the green light to act on a longstanding desire to weaken China’s placement on the geopolitical totem pole?
This might seem reasonable to suggest since Trump saw his approval rating jump during the first few weeks of the pandemic. However, the situation might be that Trump is looking to use the pandemic to create a foreign threat that his base, as well as those who view China negatively, can rally around to give him a further boost to his approval ratings during this election year.
The economy took a nosedive during the pandemic, and while the president has pressured the government to pump the economy full of newly printed cash which seems to have secured a temporary fix that might buy Wall Street some time to deal with the greater underlying problems it faces, he may feel he needs more to secure a second term in office since opposition rhetoric is now blaming him for acting poorly in response to the virus.
However, it could be a combination of these two reasons. He may think that by inflating the tensions between the two countries, he might be able to get reelected and lower China’s standing in the world.
The pandemic on its own is a virus that creates fear and anxiety. It is a nameless, faceless entity that strikes without prejudice, and the results of the infection vary tremendously from person to person. If Trump wants to deflect criticism of his response to the pandemic and rally the public around foreign policy goals that can help him win reelection, a good way to start would be to flip the anxiety associated with COVID-19 to anger.
If conservatives do a good job at delivering their memo talking points to the media and the world, we could see public opinion shift into supporting action against China as the masses will blame them for deliberately harming the United States. This would not be unlike the War in Iraq where alleged ulterior motives were at play for why the invasion took place as the public was told about who to blame for 9/11, and that the threat still existed for future actions. In fact, we already see that negative views by the public toward China are on the rise with 70% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats having this opinion in a recent update to a long-running survey, the highest levels since it began in 2005.
How well could an elite message like this work on the American people where a virus spreading throughout the world could be used to spark support for a trade war or militaristic actions against a country like China?
One indicator is to ask yourself if you are angry or afraid.
