The Witness Chronicles, June 3, 2024

The manufacturing of fear by the Trump GOP

Photo by Vadim Bogulov on Unsplash

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The Republican Production of Fear Department

What can we scare people with next?

Woke. Trans. Gay. Everyone in the northeast. Crime (it’s down sharply). Women trying to save their own lives. Immigrants, if they are not white. Joe Biden (demon). The Department of Justice. Jewish lasers in space. DEI. Universities and colleges, especially if they are in the northeast. Black people in general. Judges not appointed by Donald Trump.

Have you noticed there are a lot more things to be scared of than there used to be? The things listed above, and I can come up with more, are not things that the average American will ever encounter in a scary way. 

Yet they constitute a shopping list of things we should all be terrified by, all the time. I would argue that for the vast majority of us, these things are entirely imaginary. Take DEI. Do you even know what it is? Diversity, equity, and inclusion.

If you break it down, it sounds pretty good. It is a policy and teaching that says we are all equal and should be treated that way. That is literally in the Constitution, that all men are created equal (sorry ladies, the guys back then had a limited viewpoint about what humans were).

DEI is not intrinsically scary unless you are already scared of some of the other things on my list, like gay people who, btw, are everywhere and are as normal as anyone, in fact you almost certainly know and work with some.

Some of these fears don’t stick as messaging and fade away. Take ‘woke’ for instance. This phrase was the bogeyman during Ron DeSantis’ incredibly lame campaign for president. But there was a problem. No one, including DeSantis, could tell us what it means.

It didn’t last long in the public dialog but it did its damage, particularly in Florida and in libraries across some of the country, as it became illegal to acknowledge or write about an identity that many Americans experience. We got censorship of books and free speech out of that.

Why are we so scared about all this stuff? Well, first of all, I think most of us are not scared of most of it despite being told over and over again that we should be. This is politics, it is being created out of whole cloth and it is the central policy of the Republican Party under Donald Trump.

The policy is fear. Fear of everything even slightly different than us. But this fear is different than real fear. Real fear is the kind that helps us stay alert and alive. This fake fear is manufactured and marketed by the right and it is the only true policy the Party offers.

We don’t hear anything about the good stuff, the stuff we should be working on to make the country a better place. That would require real policy and governing the country which it turns out is not the strength of the current Republican Party, the Party of No.

I have real fears. I’m not crazy about being in crowds in public. I know the odds are slight but the fear works its way into some crazies who face it by shooting people they don’t know until the cops kill them. That’s an unfortunate reality in today’s society. But are we doing anything about it?

Guess what? Fear of gun violence by crazies with assault weapons is not one of those fears on the list. Why? Because the gun lobby is a great friend to the Republican Party.

You know another fear of mine? Kids with guns, kids who have nothing else to do and who are not afraid of the law because they’re under age and they know they won’t pay a real price. In my state (NY) this is a real problem and my party is responsible for some of it. They passed stupid bail reform that is too lenient. That was a disaster and they know it.

But that is only part of the equation. Where do all these guns come from? Gun manufacturers who make far more firearms than the legal market will bear and who know there is an entirely underground gun market to sell their surplus. There’s a lot of money in that.

Seems like a problem we should be dealing with, right? See above.

But aside from these fears, crime across the board is actually down significantly all over the country in the past two years. Not if you listen to hysterical Republican politicians who will have you afraid to talk to your neighbor.

The logic behind this is simple. If we talk to each other we might find a lot of our fears have no basis. Our neighbors are not out to get us even if we disagree politically. Disagreeing politically has practically been the national sport in recent years, but we don’t cower from everything because of it.

Or we didn’t used to.

I don’t think we are really scared of each other, nor should we be. But we have a powerful engine, in the Trump Republican Party, that is telling us constantly to fear others, that others are coming for our jobs, our familes, our freedom.

Watch a hardcore Trump MAGA rally. There are people there who fear everything and cheer Trump on when he reminds them of it. If that sounds a little crazy, it’s because it is, but those are not average Americans, no matter what they think.

The Republican Party, which has essentially been taken over by these people, no longer represents the American identity of being positive, brave, innovative. It really is sad but there is a simple reason. If we are all victims and want vengeance for the harms done us by others, then we want the ultimate victim to lead us.

Never mind that the victim we seek is not a victim at all, he is a rich man who inherited all his riches and largely wasted them on a fake golden lifestyle with women, planes, exclusive golf courses where his MAGA people would be chased away by armed guards..a scam artist.

His scam used to be ‘get rich quick’ schemes. That didn’t work, so he turned to politics and here we are with a 34 time convicted felon who now runs as the ultimate victim and he runs on one platform.

Fear.

~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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