BRING ON THE FEAR

What are you afraid of?  Rejection?  Spiders?  Armed robbers?  Starving to death?  Being poisoned?  Tripping over a dead body?  Losing your Social Security?  How about losing your medical care?  Roving bands of feral foxes in the neighborhood?  Someone who says, "boo!"  Freezing to death?  Dying of heat prostration?  Getting hit by lightening?  Going broke?  Getting smacked by an authority figure?  The IRS?   

Really.  Bear with me...this may be a little hard to follow, but it may make you think about how we got here. 

There are people who love to make other people jump out of their skin with fear.  They are the Freddie Krugers of the world.  If life is going along just fine, they are not happy.  They just have to do something to get a reaction out of someone.  It's how they get attention.  Sadly, it is usually the only trick they know......do or say something outrageous or horrible and, voilá, they are center stage and on everyone's front page.  This group loves to scare other people because it makes them feel in control.  By scaring people, they have elicited a response to their own core need for attention and thereby, rule over masses of hysteria.  They will scare you with your deepest fears, such as feelings of being rejected, feelings of insecurity, feelings of guilt, feelings of inadequacy, etc.  Whatever feeling they use to scare you with, you play right into their hands by letting yourself feel the desired response. 

President Obama is continually telling us we have to do one thing or another or all hell will break loose, and then we will be very very sorry if we don't do what he says....i.e. he attempts to scare the bejeezus out of folks to make them do his bidding.  If "we" don't spend billions of dollars on lowering carbon emissions, "we" will kill the planet.  If "we" don't raise the debt ceiling, the country will collapse.  If "we" don't pass the health care bill, your medical care will go in the tank.  If "we" don't borrow trillions more dollars, everyone will be out of work.  If "we" don't take over the car companies, thousands and thousands of people will lose their jobs.  If "we" don't do whatever he says, America is doomed.  I want to ask, in the immortal words of Tonto, "Who is this "we" kemosabe?"

Evidently, Al Gore is good at scaring people to death.  In his baritone voice, he warns everyone that humans are killing everything on the planet.  What does he want?  Money.  He set up an entire business based on terrifying people.  So what that he is lying, that his premise is completely a fraud.  That is no matter to him.  If he scares enough people, he is successful in creating the fear he needs to get them to buy his lies and make him rich.  You just don't want to believe old Al Gore, that nerdy rich politician, would lie to you to enrich himself?  Ah, yes, it's much easier to think the best of the fellow and then swallow the poison he serves you through the surrogate news media airwaves every night over dinner.  You might get acid indigestion if you actually realize leaders are lying to you.  Which is harder; believing Al Gore would lie?  Or, believing you are killing the planet?   If you realize the fact that you are not killing the planet, then you have to face up the fact that Al Gore is lying, that government officials are lying, and that the media is lying right along with them.  Faith and trust in leadership is gone.  Get out the Rolaids. 

The interesting thing about such people is that they have figured out how to scare people to death in order to get their own way.  There must be a psychological name for this dysfunctional personality, but I'm not sure what it is.  (Psycopathic liar, comes to mind.) Today it seems to me that such fear-mongers are gaining an audience in huge proportions.  Chicken Little is alive and well.  On street corners, for years, folks have stood with signs that say, "The End Is Near."  Traditionally, those folks have been laughed at and scorned for being loony.  Today we have Chicken Littles everywhere. We seem to have a political class that is operating on the same premise as Chicken Little.   They are telling you the country is going to collapse unless you divvy up your money, counting on you to be afraid of everything except themselves, distracting you from facts and historical truths.  Fear is epidemic. It's a national shake down based on fear.

This is not to say we don't have problems.  We do.  But reacting out of fear to those who are manipulating emotions is not the solution.  I wish everyone would step back, take a deep breath, do some serious critical thinking, and then proceed on the basis of facts. 

Some people are afraid of truth.  Some people are afraid of history.  "Oh, no, don't bring up the Holomodor or the Holocaust again!"  "Don't tell me again about Jews thrown into ovens or Mao killing off millions of dissenters!" Don't remind me of Lenin and Stalin starving people to death!" "I can't stand to it....it can't be true!"  "Please shut up!"  "That will never happen again!" 

We are all afraid of something.  For instance, I'm afraid of not knowing the truth.  You might be afraid of the truth.  And that, to me, describes at least some part of the great disconnect we are experiencing in our nation today.  A nation gripped with fear.  Some of us fear the liars.  Some of us fear the content of the lies. What are you afraid of?

Seems to me that a great number of people in this country want to believe lies because some lies make them feel less afraid than the truth.  The irony in this is that the lies are just reinforcing a different kind of fear.  We are caught between two categories of lies.  One is that our leadership will not lie.  The other is the boatload of lies our leaders are telling us. For instance, if you know the truth that there is no such thing as global warming, then you have to face the fear that your leaders are corrupt and are lying to you.  Which do you fear most?  The leadership lying?  Or global warming?   The leaders are relying on the theory that you will go for the global warming lie.  They know that it is easier to get you to fear some unfounded theory which plays into your fear of rejection or guilt, than to tell you the truth.  The truth being that they don't have a clue about what in the hell they are doing regarding the false premise of climate change, but they are going to make themselves very rich and powerful by lying to you.

Is it easier to believe that $14 trillion in debt is managable?  Or is it harder to face the fact that $14 trillion in debt is likely to ruin the futures of your grandchildren?  Is it easier to believe that getting groped at the airport makes you feel more secure?  Or, does it scare you that getting groped at the airport is not doing one damn thing to make the country safer?  Is it easier to believe that we can just fund millions of Mexicans coming across the border?  Or, does it scare you to believe our government just won't secure that border?  Is it easier to buy the lies or harder to face the truth that we are being lied to?    That we are being lied to is very disturbing and hard to face.  It gets you way out of your comfort zone.  

So ends my 50 cent psychoanalysis for today.   I am afraid that too many Americans are believing lies in order to escape the hard truths.   I am afraid of people who ignore history for the sake of corrupt and convenient gratification.  The American premise is; we are supposed to be allowed to lead ourselves without the tyranny of a heavy handed federal government.  Leadership that will tell lies in order to gain power and money is, indeed, something to fear. Americans who choose to believe those lies are a huge part of the problem.

In the current age of Progressive liars, we should be afraid.  Very afraid. 

Hat Tip: Diane Rello on the Psychology of Barack Obama
Hat Tip: Are Barack's Followers Mindless Fanatics?