Coddling terrorists
Democrats and Republicans both have recently been reinforcing the frame of “coddling terrorists” as the thing you do when you don’t support the Bush administration’s policies on warrantless wiretapping, rights of prisoners, and foreign relations in general. Dictionary definitions for “coddle” include: “to treat tenderly; nurse or tend indulgently; pamper,” and “to treat with extreme or excessive care or kindness.” The word has its origins in food preparation, where to coddle something is to cook it in water just below the boiling point, warming it slowly.
When we think about coddling terrorists, we imagine holding them gently in our arms, tenderly telling them that everything is going to be okay, and that all the bad parts of the world that made them terrorists in the first place are going to go away soon. It’s a perfect frame to fit into the nurturant parent model of governing, and a perfect antonym to what a strict father might do to a terrorist: hurt, punch, maim, kill.
The frame forces people who generally experience parts of a nurturant parent morality to question whether their morality is flawed. “Terrorists are, without exception, bad people because they kill other people for reasons I don’t agree with. I would never want to be tender to a terrorist! So maybe I should let the government do what they want.” It draws attention away from the specifics of the legislation and policies being discussed, which do not at any point ask us to say how we would act given the opportunity to hug or not hug a terrorist. In this frame, we have two choices: to hug the terrorist, or to kill the terrorist. There is no in between.
Queries: Could coddling a terrorist ever be a good thing? Are terrorists still terrorists in that moment if they’re giving you a loving hug? Is hurting and killing individual terrorists a good way to stop terrorism? What other kinds of population groups do we simultaneously condemn and coddle in some way? What does the hypothetical image of giving a terrorist a loving hug have to do with discussions about protecting constitutional rights of U.S. citizens? When can treating a human being with warmth and compassion have any positive effects?
