Over the past couple of weeks I have listened and/or watched about two hours worth of political ads. I have also experienced the dreaded survey, as for some reason my age demographic and education fit the need for questioning: White male, 55-65 years of age, Master’s degree, card carrying democratic socialist, member of the American Humanist Association, and proud supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union…. The political ads that infuriate me the most are the ones who use fear and click bait action words. I dissent with this fear mongering. “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself,” as stated by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Those words are still true…

Let’s dig into fear. A fear is either a learned response to something uncomfortable or it is a response to something that may hurt you. Yes, I have fears of the first type. I am afraid of heights. I almost fell off a roof, while collecting bundles of shingles. The tar paper (underlining) I was walking on tore from the nails. As I slid, I fell down and grabbed the side of the roof with my left (gloved) hand. My legs were 2/3 off the roof. My brother and father came over to help me up. The height of the roof was 15 ft. After this event, heights became a challenge. I feel a little vertigo when I am in a balcony or rooftop. I struggle with climbing ladders as I have to clean gutters and paint various parts of my house. I rarely get on a roof as the experience of sliding traumatized me.

I have never faced fear of being hurt by a wild animal, or a human being carrying a gun. I have had a weapon drawn on me by a police officer who confused my tuba case for a drug carrying device. I offered to open everything up for him, but he chose the hard way and had me lay on the ground face down with my arms out. I smelled bad at that time, because I finished working a ten hour shift in a restaurant kitchen, and was driving to my hometown. I was speeding. Seven mph over the limit in a Pontiac T-1000 hatchback. I never feared the officer at all. He was an imbecile. When his chief arrived with the dog, and didn’t hit on any narcotics he received a tongue lashing. The man feared I was a drug trafficker, and all I had was an innocent Conn 3J C-Tuba in the hard case.

All throughout my life I have watched family members display fear of race, religion, politics, and immigrants. I fell for some of those fears too, out of ignorance but as I’ve grown as a person those fears disappeared. My biggest fear in my younger life was my fear of failure. This fear developed within me thanks to a narcissistic mother. I could never please her. I had a few relationships like that too over the years. It is amazing how education and reframing experiences through therapy turn off the amygdala in one’s brain. I still fear failing, but it is more about meeting my standard rather than someone else’s standards.

Fear of race or fear of someone being different due to skin color, disability, spectrum disorder, or handicap doesn’t compute well for me. I learned how melanin colored the skin in middle school. My pasty white complexion is a lack of melanin from ancestors who lived in Northern European latitudes for thousands of years. I have children ask me why I am so pale white. I just tell them the truth. At the age of four my first friend in school was Hispanic. This angered my grandfather. Having grown up in Virginia he was biased against everyone except for the melaninly challenged. I remember this experience with my grandfather more than elementary school. He passed nearly 30 years ago, and his fear of race still haunts me. I have been trying to make up for it ever since. We are all human… I want to celebrate our differences and learn from one another. The same goes for disability, spectrum issues, or handicaps. Get to know the people, you will be surprised at what you will learn. Fear is just an excuse for a bias.

Fear in religion has been a calling card since it was invented. Thou shalt fear, love, and trust God. Ummm, that is an abusive relationship. I remember asking my pastor how and why should we fear and trust God. His rebuke still haunts me. The punishment at home afterward was not fun either. This cognitive dissonance remained with me throughout my theist years. It truly is a control mechanism for the faithful. The fear of hell, the fear of judgement, etc… When I embraced the idea of men writing up the holy books to invent a god for human control the cognitive dissonance disappeared. Those televangelist and Nationalist preachers that use hellfire and brimstone to keep their congregations in line and giving are just abusive individuals using the fear of the unknown as a weapon. Those who use god within the political landscape are a special kind of fascist. I equivocate my confirmation to child abuse of the mental kind. It is better to say, “I don’t know,” than to use irrational words taught by fear “god did it.” Why are we afraid of the Jews, or Muslims? Same thing, fear used by religion. Not once did my pastors share that all three of these Abrahamic Faiths share a common ancestral lineage within their characters. Nothing to fear there… Pray to Allah, Yahweh, Lord your God, Jesus Christ, whatever… Just keep your fear to yourself, and you won’t discriminate…

It took many years for me to understand the use of fear by the political right. The use of words like socialism, welfare queen, extreme liberal, raising taxes, and taking away rights and privileges are all scams to bend a vote to a bias. Machiavelli’s The Prince was a useful tool for me. I read this short tome during my early 30’s. I had stabilized my life somewhat economically by establishing my education and performance career. I had more money, so I started to invest in grad school. As I was looking for research topics, I started to expand my knowledge of political policy and education. It all started with Machiavelli. Once I read that everything made perfect sense. I could see the playing pieces on the chess board more clearly and the manipulation they used on the populace. The political right is still using those buzzwords while the less conservative left and progressives actually share ideas to make life better for all of us, like healthcare, ending forever wars, holding the rich accountable for their theft of wages, and crimes against humanity (Epstein.) There is nothing to fear by raising taxes on the rich to solve a revenue issue at the federal and state levels. We did that once during the Roosevelt-Eisenhower administrations. Even Nixon floated a nationalized health care system…. That all fell away after Watergate… Josh Turek and Christina Bohannan are not far left extreme liberal candidates. As an extreme liberal democratic socialist, I can attest that their positions are corporate democrat, or mostly conservative democrat. Those that fear extreme liberalism should fear me far more than Turek or Bohannan.

I don’t understand the fear of immigrants. Many take jobs no others want to do. Some of them naturalize as citizens and create businesses. These businesses sometimes do the work better and less expensively than others. Having worked in educating immigrants on American Citizenship at a meat packing facility years ago, gave me a new perspective on the issue. Many of these men and women were far braver and smarter than anyone knew. Imagine being collegiately educated in your war torn country, and because you escaped as a refugee your new home country doesn’t recognize your skills or education. Imagine working at a meat packing plant for $25/hr when you are an engineer that designed and built similar equipment for the American company in their former homeland. Why do we fear this? I find it disrespectful. Many immigrants illegal or otherwise speak multiple languages. They have more skills than I for any worldly business due to their capacity to speak multiple languages. Fear of the unknown (like my grandfather’s irrational fear,) is a common topic now. I don’t fear the Latino/Hispanic immigrant. I don’t fear the Muslim immigrant. I don’t fear the African immigrant. These are people just like us who love their children unconditionally and are looking for their version of an American Dream. Whether they’re here legally or not, those immigrants are paying more in taxes than billionaires, and getting none of the benefits as a whole. Wait, you’re only talking about the bad ones… More white people break the law than they do… …don’t let facts affect that bias…

All of this fear, and most of it in willful ignorance. The fear of people based on differences is willful racism. The fear of a god to mask your biases to control a populace is abusive and outright fascist in the wrong context. The fear of billionaires, wealthy business owners, and the like is feckless. These people are no different than we are. They need to be held accountable too. The fear of politicians to control their power and influence over us is a game. Many fall for it, because of their willful ignorance, propaganda, and lack of thinking ability…

I left a lot out of this fear blog. Crime, guns, drugs, ICE, policing, etc…. It is just too much to consider. All of this b.s. is just used to make one fearful, create division, and blame others for their own inadequacies. Beware of the arrogant who fear the humble… so it goes….