In his 1961 Farewell Address to the Nation, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the United States and the wider world had to avoid becoming “a community of dreadful fear and hate” and should instead become “a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.”

More than six decades later, political fear has become a measurable concern for many Americans. A new Lloyd’s Register Global Risk Poll, conducted among citizens in 140 countries, found that one in ten Americans — 10% — say politics represents the biggest risk in their lives, ranking it above dangers such as disease and accidents. Lloyd’s Register, whose history dates back to the 1760s, reported that the average across the other 139 countries was about 1%. There were exceptions, including Russia, where 5% of respondents said politics was the biggest risk to them.

The finding is notable because global risk surveys typically capture concrete worries such as health, work, violence, transportation, and disasters. For politics to rank as the top personal risk for a significant share of Americans suggests that partisan conflict is being experienced less as routine civic disagreement and more as a direct source of vulnerability.

The finding reflects a broader political climate in which many Americans view politics not as an abstract debate, but as something that can directly affect their safety, finances, health care, and rights. The concerns cited by critics of the Republican Party include fear of physical confrontation for wearing anti-Trump clothing or displaying anti-Trump bumper stickers; fear of losing health care this November when Republican “Big Beautiful Bill” Medicaid cuts take effect; fear of losing Medicare as GOP officials seek to restrict or privatize the system through what critics call the “Medicare Advantage” model; and fear that Republicans will eliminate or “reform” Social Security in ways that transfer the program toward large banks.

Those critics also point to GOP-led efforts they describe as turning the environment over to the fossil fuel industry, forests over to the lumber industry, streams and water over to the chemical industry, farms over to the pesticide industry, children over to the radical Christian school industry, and the economy over to the crypto industry.

Republican politicians and the billionaire-owned media outlets that support them, the argument goes, have repeatedly told voters whom to fear or hate. In earlier campaigns, that list included Willie Horton, migrant caravans, Muslim bombers, and undocumented immigrants described as murderers or rapists. In 2024, it included trans people. In the current election cycle, Trump, Rubio, Vance, and Miller are telling voters to fear and hate the person mowing their lawn, along with democratic socialists and “communists.”

Politics is supposed to support citizens rather than exploit, intimidate, or impoverish them. But critics of the Reagan Revolution argue that the past four and a half decades have produced the opposite result. Republican opposition to major reforms, they say, has helped keep student debt high, housing concentrated in the hands of Wall Street hedge funds, health insurance unaffordable for many households, and child care beyond the reach of many families. They also argue that the national system of hospitals and public schools built during the Eisenhower and Kennedy era, funded in part by a 90% top income tax rate, has deteriorated or shut down in many areas.

The central question is why this happened and what can be done in response.

From the 1930s through the 1980s, the United States experienced one of the most prosperous periods in its history. During that era, a 90% top income tax rate on the wealthiest Americans and a 50% corporate income tax rate helped reduce the national debt after World War II to about $800 billion — less than $1 trillion — when Ronald Reagan entered office. At the same time, federal spending supported large public projects and social programs across the country.

Those programs included power systems such as the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam, public schools, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, Public Broadcasting, Head Start, food stamps, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, housing projects, VA home loans, hundreds of airports and train stations, and thousands of smaller initiatives.

The American middle class became the first in world history to include half the population of any nation. According to this account, because of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, two-thirds of Americans were in the middle class when Reagan took office, many with only a high school diploma and one household paycheck. Today, that share is described as about 45%, with two full-time paychecks and a college degree often required to reach it.

Wealthy figures who described themselves as “Makers” objected to paying taxes that supported programs for the working-class “Takers” of society. In 1971, Lewis Powell gave them a strategy to challenge the New Deal and Great Society and move the United States toward an oligarchic system in which they would hold more power. They acted on it.

They built networks of influential think tanks, including Heritage and American Enterprise, created right-wing media systems with television networks and more than 1,500 right-wing radio stations, funded universities and seminars, brought corporations and lawmakers together through ALEC and related organizations, founded or funded the Libertarian Party and the Federalist Society, and worked to gain control of the Republican Party.

Over several decades, that strategy succeeded in reshaping American politics. Several U.S. billionaires are now described as richer than any human being who has ever lived, from the era of the Pharaohs to the kings of the 17th century.

The obstacle for billionaires and the Republicans aligned with them was that many Americans supported programs opponents labeled “socialism.” Americans embraced Social Security, unionization, and the minimum wage. They sent children to free colleges across the country. They supported the passage of Medicaid and Medicare under Lyndon B. Johnson, despite majority Republican opposition in the Senate. The legislative history of the Medicare and Medicaid bill is documented by Congress at H.R. 6675.

When figures such as David Koch ran for vice president in 1980 on a platform that included ending those programs and even shutting down the public school system in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires and corporations, they did not win broad public support. Koch received about one million votes that year.

After Reagan took office, the strategy shifted. If Americans would not vote directly for oligarchy and continued to prefer programs described by opponents as “socialism,” the solution was to frighten Americans about their neighbors so that fear and hatred would overwhelm self-interest.

That approach, critics argue, was visible 45 years ago when Reagan attacked “hippie brats” and referred to “that young buck ahead of you in the grocery line buying steak with his food stamps.” They argue that the same method remains central to Republican politics today.

Axios reported last week that “Republicans admit the GOP’s midterm forecast is bleak.” According to the report, Republicans are focused on two goals: suppressing the vote with the SAVE Act while intensifying voter fear and dislike of Democrats. The SAVE Act, backed by Republicans, would require documentary proof of U.S. citizenship to register to vote in federal elections, a change supporters frame as election security and critics warn could block eligible voters who lack ready access to documents.

“‘It’s going to be a hate election,’ a Republican tied to President Trump’s political operation told Axios. ‘Voters have to hate the Dems more than they hate us. And we have material to work with.’”

Critics of the GOP argue that since 1981, when the Reagan Revolution began, there has not been a single major law passed through the U.S. Congress that was written by Republicans, passed by a majority of Republicans, signed by a Republican president, and primarily benefited the average American.

The author says he has tested that claim for 23 years through a contest on his radio program, asking listeners to identify such a Republican legislative example, and that no one has won.

The problem, he argues, is that much of the U.S. media and intellectual environment is influenced by billionaires and their money, leaving many Americans unaware of that legislative record. Many voters assume Republicans understand economic management because of their close ties to billionaires and major corporations. Yet critics cite data showing that ten of the last 11 recessions occurred during Republican presidencies, many after large tax cuts for billionaires. They also argue that tax cuts enacted under Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump collectively added more than $34 trillion to the national debt. Recession data is tracked by PresidentialData.org.

The question, then, is how to reduce political hatred and fear when Republican operatives are openly telling reporters that the approach has worked in the past and that they intend to intensify it this year.

The first proposed response is exposure. When political figures use hate, critics should identify it directly: “That’s hate-mongering. It’s beneath you.” Voters should say they reject efforts to divide Americans by gender identity, race, religion, region, and nationality, and should point out that promoting bigotry has historically led to destructive outcomes.

The second response is public education. Since 1933, Democrats have written into law every major federal protection or benefit for working Americans, according to this argument. Those include Social Security, the minimum wage, the right to unionize, Medicare, Medicaid, workplace safety rules, environmental and consumer protections, civil rights, voting rights, food assistance, Pell Grants, the Affordable Care Act, and other programs.

Without Democratic legislative efforts — along with Eisenhower’s contributions — over the past century, the argument concludes, the United States would not have had a substantial middle class.

Eisenhower, described here as the last honest Republican president before the Reagan Revolution handed the party to billionaires, ended his farewell address with a prayer:

“We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.”

Original source: https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/hate-election/