Raising Fear

This is really not a story, but there was no category for essays. This deals with why the current state of fear exists in today's society.

Raising Fear’

By

Dr Ronald E Hestand

 

Fear seems to have taken over America in the last couple decades. It seemed to start with 9/11, but it has roots much further back at the end of WWII. 

That began the many years of growing concern about “The Red Menace”. We had the atomic bomb and we’re working to develop the hydrogen bomb. Our military warned us that Russia either was close to having, or already had developed an atomic bomb. In schools we had regular “duck and cover” drills. We dropped to the floor, scooted under our desks curled into a ball, and covered our heads with our hands.

In the late nineteen forties we listened nightly to Senator McCarthy hold his hearings to ferret out communists and communist supporters. In the process many careers were ruined, lives disrupted, and reputations disseminated., especially in Hollywood. Studios would not hire those accused by McCarthy’s purge. 

Then in the sixties, Kennedy and Kruchev had a toe-to-toe standoff over Russian missiles being brought to Cuba. We set up a Naval blockade around the island, on one end which we had a Naval base on Guantanamo Bay. Several Russian ships were turned around and sent home.

In the end, Kruchev blinked and the missiles were sent home.

We had fought the communistic North Koreans in the early fifties and the communistic North Vietnam Namiese in the sixties and seventies.

So communism was almost always on our minds during those decades since WWII. Fear of communism was always a constant under current. Then Sadam Husain invaded Kuwait, and suddenly we had someone and something else to fear since the USSR broke up and communism in the Soviet Union had all but died.

The new enemy to fear was in the Middle East. Sadam Husane became an once swoon to Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Then 9/11h happened, and Cheney and Rumsfeld, along with President George W Bush concocted phony intelligence reports about Husain having “weapons of mass destruction” mobilizing the country’s unconscious fear once again.

Of course there were no such weapons. But that claim coupled with Iranian Muslim fundamentalists holding American hostages for a year, and the true fact that Sadam had invaded Kuait toppled the cover on that festering fear left over from the cold war was enough to start a war to topple Husain’s regime.

It’s true he was far from a nice man, murdering his own people and gassing the Kurds, however the Middle East remained relatively stable with only minor skirmishes with the various Muslim factions.

However, with the toppling of the Husain regime, the entire Middle East became destabilized. Extremist Muslim groups sprang up all over the area. Some truly believing they were following the Korans directive to rid the world of “infidels” while others used Islam as a means to seize power for their own groups. Terrorist attacks sprung up and spread worldwide. Suicide bombers routinely killed dozens at a time, eventually even more brutal groups split off and beheadings became the new norm.

Now that fear in the United States surfaced and has been fueled by conservative pendants and the Republican Party joined in. Now in 20015 we have a gaggle of Republicans running for the Republican Nominee for president position, all spouting variations of the party line. That line is one of bigotry, hate and discontent. It became the norm to call the current president, Barak Obama names, claiming he is a secret Muslim, was not born in the USA, and conjuring all manner of phony statistics and half-truths, as well as video clips of the president saying words they wanted the public to believe he said that were so badly done the lip movement did not match the words.

Then claim the mass exodus of Syrian refugees to escape both the oppressive dictator and the radical ISIS groups. 

This allowed the conservatives to further stir up our fears to a higher level of Muslims. Paris was hit by multiple terrorist attacks, and rogue American Muslims who had become radicalized over the Internet staged some mass killings in the USA. When coupled with the sudden increase of mass murders by Radical Christians, the conservatives, backed by the National Rifle Association, called for open carry laws and further relaxation of gun laws. Their rally cry was we all needed to be armed when the Muslims come to take over our country by force.

All these things have raised a nation of fear and paranoia. 

Reviews

[richieb]

Ron,
Thank you for writing this fine article. You have mirrored my beliefs and perceptions 100%. I represented our Local U.S.W. during both of President Obama's campaigns. I was disappointed and frustrated by the ignorance,immaturity and fear that obsessed so many people.
Thank you,
Richie B.

[Samuel Dickens]

Yep. Your assessment sounds right to me. It's beyond my understanding how so many of us are so fearful that we'll turn our brains off and jump right on the panic wagon.

[Ron H]

Thank you Samuel. I appreciate your comments.