The Normalization Of Fear

     Are you afraid?

     You’re meant to be. Influential people in many high places have decreed that you shall be. And they’re putting a lot of effort into getting you there.

     One of the most important enduring features of the American milieu – for virtually the whole of our history – has been the absence of wide-spectrum fears. When have Americans feared invasion? When have we feared famine? When have we feared natural catastrophe?

     It’s not that our tale is entirely without tragedy. Ask anyone whose home was swept away by a flood or destroyed by a tornado. And yes, there have been relatively brief periods in which one of our regions was afflicted by food shortages of some kind. But historically, the American temperament has been an optimistic one. Our circumstances have justified it.

     Things are changing. Fear is creeping over the land. They who seek to rule us eternally and without constraint are contriving some excellent reasons for it.

     Even during the coldest bits of the Cold War, few Americans sincerely feared a nuclear bombardment. The possibility existed, but few of us made any room for it in our plans or arrangements. The head-under-the-desk drills inflicted upon schoolchildren were taken less than seriously, because we couldn’t credit the threat. Home fallout shelters were few. Civil defense preparations were marginal at best.

     But our political Establishment has excited a general fear of a nuclear exchange. Indeed, the insertion of our noses into the Russia-Ukraine conflict seems designed to do that. Unwise? Of course…unless the Usurpers are convinced that they can use the fear without unwittingly evoking the reality.

     The rapid inflation of the dollar and curtailment of our energy resources have combined to raise the prices of genuine necessities unprecedentedly high. The costs of food, clothing, electricity, gasoline, and heating fuels are rising to displace everything else from our budgets. Working-class families, and some nominally middle-class ones as well, are being pressed to their limits.

     He who fears for his ability to provide for his family will be especially cautious about anything, word or deed, that might cost him his livelihood. The variety of threats to the average wage earner’s wages is greater than ever before. There are people working to make it greater and more fearsome still.

     America has had its share of natural threats too: hurricanes, tornadoes, regional floods or droughts, the occasional California mudslide or earthquake. But historically we haven’t been so badly beleaguered by such things as to orient our lives around them. The Usurpers’ “catastrophic climate change” propaganda is straining to change that, especially in the minds of our children. That campaign is providing some of the rationale for limiting our energy supplies.

     What does a parent do when his child comes home from school quaking with fear that the world is about to end – that we’ll all be fried to a crisp unless we go back to Neanderthal standards of living? He’s bombarded with the propaganda many hours per week. It even finds its way into his entertainment. But Mom and Dad are worn to the bone merely trying to cope with their fears. How much room can they make for his?

     Need I point out the “red thread” that connects all these things, Gentle Reader?

     The normal, rational response to fear is to find the cause and remedy it. But how are we to do that with these wholly government-engineered fears? The Usurpers and their allies are even trying to make us fear one another, screaming from their lecterns and media perches about “white supremacy,” “gun violence,” “disinformation,” and “hate speech.” How can we deal with any of this while still attending to our personal and communitarian necessities? Indeed, what can we do when we can’t even be certain that our next election will be acceptably honest?

     As of this morning we have a new fear: the murderous mob, enraged beyond all possibility of constraint by the imminent overturning of Roe v. Wade. Elements of that mob have already harassed and threatened Supreme Court Justices at their homes. Their latest threat is to murder the Justices and destroy the Supreme Court’s building. As the Left has gotten away with such infamies over trivia like the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and George Floyd, dismissing the possibility of nationwide rioting and destruction, with us of the Right the intended victims, seems unwise.

     Apologies, Gentle Reader. This is upsetting stuff. It certainly upsets me to write about it. But it’s what’s on my mind at present. My reason might be yours as well, if the greater part of your retirement savings is in the equities market.

     Memo to me: There’s no such thing as too much ammo. Unless you’re on fire, of course.