Good morning people! I wish you well today! Fear mongers. Here is something at which I think we should look hard. As American’s we tend to look at other’s with an altruistic view. That most people are good and decent enough. Those who would do bad things are the few or the exception.
Over the years certain people have discovered that fear is the second most powerful motivator and a much more easily provoke reaction. You don’t find people trampling their neighbors at a football stadium because of love. When people become afraid they’ll conduct all sorts of mayhem en masse. I think for those of us who are even slightly awake we came to realize through the Covid episode that there were those who used that event for not so good purposes. Some of them becoming outright dictators, like the governor who closed half of Walmart stores. “you can go to Walmart because you need things but I’ve determined that you don’t need ‘those’ things.”
Let me define what fear mongering means in the sense I am discussing. The intentional use by an individual of their position to broadcast widespread fears in order to have more control or get a more advantageous position over other people. I believe what I have discovered are those would be tyrants, like the governor I mentioned above are also the people who do the fear mongering the most. Perhaps you thought that those measures were reasonable. I have to say, “come on man”, if you walk through the mud puddle behind me you know your shoes have the same mud. And so, it would seem, that those people now seek the highest positions of political office.
It used to be that someone would get elected and doing something like that only lasted about four years. I believe that is because love was the leading force in most American decisions and they would get voted out. American’s loved their freedoms and their neighbors. Well most of them. 🙂 All kidding aside, now we seem to have taken to the “us and them” mentality on most all things. It seems more popular than not, that being an American is not so special. You’re either a Democrat (sympathizer) or a Republican (sympathizer) and the line is drawn for combat and much more grievous than Monday night football.
When I hear Mr. Biden say things like, “there’s nothing special about being an American” he’s drawing a line like so many others who would divide us. Maybe he’s the American that’s not so special. But I’ll tell you what I understand, America brought the world out of poverty, America save the world twice from oppressors, America is still the place where people risk their lives to get into. Most places in the world people risk their lives to leave a place, here we have to exceptional country at our borders and the only way for people to get here is through a nice country. Don’t believe Mexico is a nice country, go there, look at all of the Americans retiring there. People risk their lives to come here because we are STILL special.
Drawing these lines is a most subtle form of fear mongering. It sets up an idea that is at odds with what you have always seen and heard. This then leads to a person thinking that in other places people live quite the same and we are no different than they are or that Canada has better healthcare, or Europe makes better cars. These subtle cues cause small decisions to be made which lead to picking a side in the battle. Then the mongering starts.
I think a lot of people witnessed this during Covid. The story didn’t add up and still doesn’t but you can still see the remains of the “sides” chosen and the readiness to choose that again when the time comes. I think that most reasonable people who did notice this going on, had a wake up call and are now wiser to it. I believe this will gradually begin the change we do desperately need. Going back to who we have always been, the people who made the world what it is by being the best at everything. We saved the world at least three time now, let’s do it again! Let me go back to an era of American greatness and point out a few things that came from that time. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”, a man gearing up a nation to do great things. “When your numbers up, your number up”, a reference to getting a number in a local shop when the line is too long, this metaphor people related to dying as it was totally inexplicable. Millions of people engaged in a war and some died, most didn’t, there was no logical reasoning that could explain who did and who didn’t. It was a time to be brave, overcome your fears and do your best!
Please choose whom you follow carefully, choose men like FDR (quoted above) or better yet George Washington (quoted below). Stop fearing and fighting each other and go be the best person you know how to be and do your best everyday and we’ll all be special again!
“Be Americans. Let there be no sectionalism, no North, South, East or West. You are all dependent on one another and should be one in union. In one work, be a nation. Be Americans, and be true to yourselves.”
Have a great day!
Greg