Administrations can rhetorically frame economic malaise as existential threat

Evidence

Perhaps the most vivid example of the overall sense of threat was President Carter’s July 1979 speech to the American people in which he spoke of an “erosion of confidence” and a “fundamental threat to American democracy” (Carter, 1980, p. 1237): … The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 760

Categorization

• CANDY: Carter’s ‘malaise’ speech framing of demoralization as a national-security crisis is a compact, quotable nugget about how leaders narrate threat.
• XREF: connects to: Ideology shapes economic crisis rather than merely reflecting it; Inevitabilist rhetoric frames political choices as unopposable historical necessities — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 693; Moral framing of recessions as punishment blocks public acceptance of stimulus — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 562

Broader Connections

• Ideology shapes economic crisis rather than merely reflecting it #expands (0.80)
• Inevitabilist rhetoric frames political choices as unopposable historical necessities #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 693
• Moral framing of recessions as punishment blocks public acceptance of stimulus #complicates (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 562