You can smell it. It is in the air. Fear is not far when the stock market is tumbling, banks are failing, and more and more bad news is assaulting us in every broadcast. The candidates keep swapping pokes and promises, and the generalities that sweep in their rhetoric is frustrating. Though it is what gets them the votes, so they deliver. The message is capitalizing on people's fears for the future, about money, and jobs.
This current administration became a big peddlar in fear when the Iraq war began. Any voices that protested were treated as criminals. It was a "You're with us or you're against us" mentality. We isolated our allies and the culture of patriotic zealotism reached a level that people were almost scared to speak out. The same sort of fear was raging during the McCarthy era in the communist witch hunt.
Our economy is paralyzed by the banks' fear to lend, consumer's confidence etc. etc. We are in danger of losing 1/4 of mammals to extinction.
Fear has a lot of power right now.
How do you encounter that. What can you do? Well, we get up in the morning. We think big thoughts and act on them. We vote with our values and with our hopes. We hold those in power accountable to greater standards. There is enough real, scary things going on in the world that we don't need to create a fear-based reality. We don't have to manufacture reasons to do action. There are plenty of worthy causes and actions for us to tackle, right here and right now. The thing that is important is to not let the fear paralyze you. We must get beyond it's power, if we are ever to move forward
Heck yes! Fear is control. A government that has the fear of the people controls the people. Similarly, people that have the fear of the government controls the government.
"Fear has a lot of power right now."
Amen, sister. Fear comes in the form of religious, political, racial extremism. When we get down to it, I think extremism is the very real child of fear.