Demand for ‘extreme safety’ presents its own dangers as Kansas elections approach

Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion pieces from writers who share our goal of widening the conversation about how public policies affect the day-to-day lives of people throughout our state. Mark McCormick is the former executive director of The Kansas African American Museum and a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission.

Political pundits say some November election candidates will once again try to make crime a campaign issue. Crime unfailingly fires up some voters, despite the fact that the people most obsessed with it are probably the safest people on earth.

The United States represents 5% of the world’s population but houses 25% of the world’s prisoners. It’s a stunning irony. The safest people seem preoccupied to the point of neurosis with safety and comfort. If locking people up made us safer, we’d be invincible now.

But demands for extreme safety and comfort — namely from a privileged minority living in wealthy suburbs as well as in cozy rural communities — tend to come at the expense of the majority and remain a luxury we can’t afford.

This is not to say that crime isn’t an issue. It is. It’s just strange that the folks least likely to confront daily violent crime want more police and more jails and harsher penalties while people who live in dangerous communities consistently seek jobs and police accountability.

In Kansas, we have about 6,000 people in county jails, primarily because they don’t have bail money. When you don’t have bail money — to get out of jail, hire a lawyer, and participate in your own defense — you tend to get convicted. Also here in Kansas, we have almost 10,000 people in prison.

But this old “fear of crime” song still manages to pack electoral dancefloors when desperate politicians need to move a crowd.

Nixon pulled this album from its jacket and played it in 1968, promising safe but frightened Americans a return to traditional values and an end to what he called lawlessness following summers of racial unrest from Los Angeles to Detroit to Newark.

Former President Trump played a similar selection at his inauguration portraying the U.S. as crime-ridden, despite the fact that according to FactCheck.org, the nation’s violent crime rate in 2015 was less than half of what it was at its 1991 peak.

Does crime happen? Of course.

But Americans worry disproportionately about crime, in part because news media on the left and the right have irresponsibly prioritized it. Forced to fill news pages, websites and airwaves, news organizations lean into crime coverage, creating a distorted reality for audiences.

Crime also has become a dog whistle for race, a reliable tool to nudge safe but frightened voters to the polls. The constant demands for absolute safety feels like people standing on the shore watching a boat capsize, demanding life preservers while people actually in the water drown.

This obsession with extreme safety and comfort has bled into other civic discussions.

We caught glimpses of this during the faux critical race theory debate. Fears from parents that their children might experience discomfort hearing what happened to Black people in this country actually swept some fearmongers into office.

Similar fears drive attempts at book banning.

We see it in the constant attacks on a tiny handful of transgender female athletes. We already have rules governing these aspects of competition.

We see it in voter suppression efforts, where a powerful minority essentially says that they want everything calibrated to their comfort and that just isn’t possible if too many people are allowed to vote.

We see it in cancel culture, too: “You said something I disagree with, so you’re banished.”

Comfort and privilege breed this kind of entitlement. Like bad tippers, they demand lavish courtesies, but offer paltry appreciation if any.

Another perspective on privilege is inequality, and that’s key here. Some people in our society have so much while others have so little. Our brand of cruel, guardrail-free, low-road capitalism creates and depends on such inequality.

One indication that you might have too much is the gnawing and constant sense that some imagined person or group plots to take it away from you.

Perhaps that’s why so many Americans stockpile guns or move into enormous suburban homes behind gates and walls. They stack enormous wealth. They drive giant SUVs. They have so much that any movement toward equity feels like loss.

All this safety and comfort has made people soft. People have lost their sense of proportion. They’ve become what one pundit calls “emotional hemophiliacs.”

All this fear has driven absolutely craven policies that continue to destroy lives, families and communities. Our society’s only hope is to begin backing away from reflexive fear.

Three wise women have offered thoughts on a path forward.

Brene’ Brown said, “you can choose courage, or you can choose comfort, but you cannot choose both.”

Mary Tyler Moore said, “you can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”

Maya Angelou perhaps said it best: “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous or honest.”

So, fear not. It does more harm than good.

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