2024-12-17 at 18

The power structure in America has a lot invested in the people being continually afraid and craving protection. The people of this country put up with half our tax dollars going to military related spending or to service debt on previous military spending. It's framed as “defense” spending as if we are continually under so much of a threat that we must spend as much on our military as the rest of the world put together. When we do go to war, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, we incur debts our grandchildren will still be paying off for little noticeable safety or increase in quality of life.

We also put up with squadrons of militarized police who enjoy near immunity for taking civilian lives, particularly minority lives. All they have to do is claim to have feared for their life over the toy your child was holding, and they can and do escape justice. We build prisons with money that could be used for schools. Politicians from both parties but these days primarily Republicans tell blatant lies about the crime rates to get elected and then rob social services to hire more cops and put more people in prison.

Americans buy environmentally unfriendly SUVs because they think them to be safer than cars that get better gas mileage. The home alarm industry is thriving as people pour money into unreliable and easily defeated systems to keep out the bad guys. We throw out perfectly edible food because of arbitrary and misunderstood dates stamped on the can. Large sections of the population are now resisting vaccines because they are afraid of some unspecified and unproven boogeyman.

The more afraid the ruling class can convince us to be, the more they can make themselves look goof by promising to protect us. The more money they can steer towards their cronies in the defense industries, the more they can consolidate power through quid pro quo donations and kickbacks. Where does it end?

It permeates into everyday life. Most American workers, especially in non-unionized workplaces live fearing arbitrary layoffs or discipline without due process. Productivity and forward progress is often stymied by workers who fear making a decision for fear of “getting in trouble.” There are entire workplace cultures built around "cover your ass” practices that add nothing to the mission or the bottom line.

Conservatives tell those who are the most privileged in society, white, Christian affluent citizens that their way of life is threatened by, you guessed it, non-white, non-Christian, non-affluent people. They demonize the immigrants who pick our food, build our homes and work in our factories with lies about their criminality and cost to society.

I'm so sick of it. I've felt real fear, the kind you feel when you think someone is going to do great violence to you. It's a horrible, shameful, emasculating feeling that can, in just a few moments, alter your entire life. I never want to feel that again and ever since I had that experience, I've tried not to let fear of any kind be a feeling associated with my self-identity. I'm not afraid of immigrants or terrorists or gangs of crazed criminals or of getting fired because I didn't get the boss's permission to do X. I reject all of that. I choose to live in a world where I believe we can solve the problems we face with something besides cruise missiles, more cops and restricting the rights of whole classes of people.

The ruling class better be careful. The scare tactics are working today, but in all of human history, no society has remained as subjugated as ours is becoming without the pitchforks coming out in the end. We are developing a societal case of PTSD based on the lies we have been fed and the results will not be pretty.

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