Am I the only one noticing this? I can hardly get two or thee sentences into a discussion with someone about politics before their fears start welling up to the surface and swallow the conversation whole. Mind you, I'm not talking about one side of a political spectrum or another, its everywhere! Why is this? Its because the merchants of fear are churning like never before. Also, key shifts in who is peddling fear has occurred.
Old School Fear
Fear used to be the "go to" for those society deemed sketchy. The late night infomercial con men, telling you your health was in imminent danger unless you buy their pills. The televangelists on 24/7 religious programming with the donation number plastered at the bottom of the screen, forecasting the imminent the end of the world. Relegated to the dark corners of the infosphere (late nights, obscure UHF channels, AM stations way up the dial) only the lonely, the insomniac, and vulnerable fell prey to these messages. Hard earned money voluntarily vanishes in hope of salvation. Fear hits. Merchants of Fear win.
The Fear/Warning Response
Our brains send us signals, warning signals to assist us. Warning signals can come from remembering past events that went wrong. When our brain sees us in danger of recreating a bad action (like touching a hot burner or antagonizing an angry person wielding a knife). A signal gets sent to encourage us to stop. A similar thing happens when encountering the unknown. Our brain cannot give us a definitive answer on what is ahead and pings us similarly. If we are not aware, we can be stymied by the same signal.
Generating Fear
The big ingredient to fear messaging involves , creating a crisis. A crisis consists of a problem, a determination of high danger, and an need to deal with it immediately! Once accepted, the brain will shut out thoughts contradicting the claim. It will also make you focus almost exclusively on the crisis at hand. Other items become irrelevant. It is time to act and stop thinking. This makes sense when either a building is on fire that you must escape, or you are at the scene of a building collapse and people need rescuing.
The Mainstreaming of Fear
Now we are faced with fearmongering on an epic scale. No longer left to the dark corners of communication, our mainstream media (MSM) is now in the business of fearmongering for their particular interests. Unfortunately, they have enormous pull through market penetration. Now, the MSM has 24/7 news cycle and the ability to repeatedly reinforce the scare message . This creates a combo that affects vast swaths of consumers of the corporately owned TV and Newspapers. It is not restricted to Republican or Democratic fearmongering. Both are doing it. #RussiaRussiaRussia and Immigrant/Terrorist invasion scenarios, are examples of hyper fearmongering way beyond its reality.
The Democratic Fear/Fog Factor
The non-stop ranting on Trump (especially his personality deficiencies) is used by the Democratic establishment to distract from the fact that Democrats are voting with Republicans to increase the war machine to record levels , to deregulate banks and allow them to re-enter derivatives "casino gambling" investments, and to approve Trump's appointments.
It also serves to distract away from main street Democrat's calls for Medicare for All, $15/hr minimum wage, and building our own nation's infrastructure. Vote Blue, No Matter Who! and This is MOST important election cycle in our history! (Yes, this article is from 2012 and talks about how dead this mantra is.) The messages are intentionally general. The Democrats are a wide collection of diverse and divergent efforts. These are mantras designed to force people to not be sophisticated or, God forbid, independently minded with their voting choices. 
The Republican Fear/Fog Machine
"Othering" is a mainstay in the Republican playbook. The GOP is a smaller party nationwide and in most states of the union. It is more homogeneous and as a result can message in a pointed way. They point to groups of people whether living in this country or not. Images of your gun being taken away always involve a white gun owner, and the black "criminal" keeps theirs. While a message on gun laws, it sends another darker message as well. Fear . The recent immigrant waves from Central America and the Middle East have sparked similar reactions. Immigrants are always portrayed as criminals and suspected terrorists. "Others" to be afraid of or better yet, keep out of our borders. The message is, if you don't vote Republican, you will be swarmed with these others. Remember "Tacos truck on every corner"?
If all else fails, the boogeyman known as Socialism can be dragged out to scare their voters. While all that happens, most non-rich folk in red states are in more peril, suffering high drug use rates, and little hope in sight.
For both of the "Big 2", the message becomes the same: Don't process, don't think, just follow us, period. And now that we have you scared, that's exactly what you will do.
Do you really think the journalists are clamoring for war?
(Part 1 of a series "On Fear" - Coming Up How to face the Fear Merchants)
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