During all those Cold War years, when Americans lived under the shadow of superpower "mutual assured destruction" or MAD (as the madly accurate acronym of that moment had it), seeing no way out, psychic numbing took its toll. What historians often call the "national security state" has actually been a national insecurity state, based on the sort of numbing fear that was bound to make Americans more conservative, more fearful of change.
The idea of a whole society working together to imagine a better world, and then turning imagination into reality, has been off the American radar screen for some six decades now (except for a brief ray of light in the 1960s). When it seems safer to allow no significant change at all, politics naturally becomes an exercise in circling the wagons and hunkering down for an endless siege. The September 11 attack and the Bush-orchestrated response ensured that the United States would continue to be a hunkered-down national insecurity state (and now a homeland insecurity state) well into the 21st century.
All of us, supporters and critics alike, have absorbed this lesson. When we criticize Bush because he has failed to keep us safe, we score valuable political points. But we pay a price for those points, because we reinforce the basic premises of the national insecurity state - that danger is everywhere and can never be eliminated; that all systemic change is dangerous; and that our best hope lies in a government strong enough and pugnacious enough to prevent significant change and so protect us from fear's worst effects.
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