Fear

Fear is a powerful emotion. It is debilitating particularly when it seeps in to your psyche causing panic, trepidation and constant distress.

Growing up our conversations around the kitchen table were centered around news and politics. That was before my Father left the house. At one point my brother, at the mere age of 7 or 8 asked my Mom why he should even bother going to school since WW3 was coming. My mother immediately turned to my father and said enough of these conversations. It created a falsehood of fear.

These days we are living in fear. It has been masterfully created in the aftermath of 9/11 with the daily color alerts that came from the Bush administration. I knew people who carried around disaster kits….just in case. Not a great way to live.

If somebody tells you something enough times it seeps in to your psyche regardless of being truth or not. Trump has managed to use social media and the Presidency to fuel anger and fear in order to display power. It is the ultimate branding campaign.

Is there really a reason to be more fearful or is just our constant connection to our phones giving us the latest event across the globe. We are not reading about the wonderful things going on but the scary stuff. It breeds anxiety. That anxiety has seeped into the most vulnerable, teens who are not yet adults but think they are. We have witnessed that fear turn into anger and turn into killings of innocent people. There is a reaction from the inciting of fear.

How do we turn this back? Will the Presidential run of 2020 create more anxiety and anger over time? How do we turn this dread down a happier path? I hear more people saying that they can’t even listen to it anymore. That is not good. We should all be engaged in our society. The fear-mongering is no different than terrorism. We can’t let it win.

Comments (Archived):

  1. Pointsandfigures

    Joe Biden running around and saying that this is the same as Jim Crow isn’t helping either….Pete B saying America was never great is not helpful either….Virtually all politicians these days run on fear.

    1. Gotham Gal

      Completely

  2. LE

    Is there really a reason to be more fearful or is just our constant connection to our phones giving us the latest event across the globe.This actually started with cable and CNN and then of course online news and the fall of newspapers and everyone clamoring to make money off of advertising. In order to sell advertising (as you well know) you need to have views. To have views you need things that people will watch or read. Now you have so much more competition than back in the day when we were growing up. This is exactly what you would expect to happen given that landscape.More fearful? You know how much time they gave that story about the school shooting last night on the news? To much time. It’s sensational and honestly doesn’t matter other than infotainment. And what happens? It encourages other nut jobs to do copycat crimes so they have their moment in the sun. By ‘does not matter’ I don’t mean that it’s not a bad thing. Just that the super ramp up and reaction is to over the top. Anchors fly in to cover it. I have step kids in local schools. And there is a school right next to my office. Do I worry that someone will come in and shoot the place up? No actually I don’t. Anymore than I worry that my daughters took a plane overseas for a trip that it will crash or that my daughters who live in NYC will get accosted on the subway or on the street. But sure after an incident there is hyper awareness. And in the end (to your point) that is not a good thing it’s actually a bad thing. Small chance of a big thing happening. Small chance. More things happening? The news would say ‘40% increase’ and run with that. But 40% increase in a small thing is still a small thing.We are not reading about the wonderful things going on but the scary stuff. It breeds anxiety.Even 60 Minutes leaves the happy stories to the end of the broadcast. Before that is typically some FUD story.https://www.cbsnews.com/60-…The saying as you know in the news business is ‘if it bleeds it leads’. So news being a vehicle to sell advertising puts up material which gets people to watch. Who doesn’t slow down to see a car wreck?Jeff Glor (CBS Evening News which I watch every night) was just canned for having the lowest ratings of any major news broadcast. I used to watch Lester Holt (NBC) and Brian Williams before that. One night NBC didn’t have a broadcast so I switched to CBS. I found it actually more balanced and fair. Less sensational. Less of what you are talking about here. It’s still their but it just seems different. So why was Jeff canned? Nobody will tell you this but they are blaming him for their own less sensational broadcast which gets less views which means they sell less advertising. That is what it boils down to. And funny that is why I was watching it. I didn’t like being riled up.

  3. JLM

    .”These days we are living in fear.”I am not. I never have.JLMwww.themusingsofthebig

    1. Dan T

      I cannot think of anyone I know in the US that is living in fear. What the f*** is going on in NYC?I live in South Florida. Amazing diversity. Our company employs over 750 people – from $12/hour on up, I know a lot of them pretty well.

      1. JLM

        .Just part of the leftist de rigeur #HateTrump movement rhetoric.Everybody I know is happy as a clam.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  4. awaldstein

    My hate for Trump is clarifying and focusing not blinding.My hear of his having another term drives me forward as it does many.It that respect fear and hate oddly seem to function positively.

    1. Gotham Gal

      I fear him and his whole gaggle of scumbags

    2. JLM

      .The toxicity of hate in a vessel poisons all its contents. It is a metastasizing cancer destroying all that it touches.Hate does exactly what you indicate — it breeds blindness. This willful blindness of hate is what gave rise to some of the worst acts of mankind, like the Holocaust.Hate is a failure of humanity. It is the lowest that man can reach and it always evidence of the failure of character.Worse, Trump will be re-elected handily.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…

  5. TanyaMonteiro

    Critical Questions. Thought of this fascinating and thought provoking interview reading your post!<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/emb…” frameborder=”0″ allow=”accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture” allowfullscreen=””></iframe>

    1. Gotham Gal

      Very interesting

  6. P.K. Fields

    I had dinner with a friend in Las Vegas this week. She had gone to the WYNN to see Seth Meyers. She mentioned that she was anxious during the entire show since they had not checked people’s handbags before entering the theater.My daughter in law who lives in New York will not go to a movie theater since Aurora, CO. She has never lived in Colorado.Fear is rampant.And the conversations I have had with school teachers about going to work each morning..,

    1. Gotham Gal

      It’s not a way to live