Fear Nation is Exhausting

Aren’t you tired of the fear yet?

I mean, really exhausted that everything has to elicit anxiety?

Our president is going to take over our country. The NRA doesn’t care about children. Monsanto is changing our DNA. The circus is killing elephants for profit. The government dumps chemicals through planes in the sky. The oceans are going to swallow our coastal cities. Pit bulls are murderous. It’s dangerous to let your kids go to the local park alone. Cops are going to kill you. Terrorists are going to kill you. Everything causes cancer. Asteroids are going to kill us all.

Ever since the advent of the twenty-four hour news cycle, the volume and despair of everyday reporting has increased to regular, horrific levels. And this has permeated into just about every other form of mass messaging. Hell, we regularly now see advertisements for survival kits, rations, guns, gold, and self-defense classes!

Aren’t you drained from all this negativity?

The republicans are going to ruin the country. The democrats are going to create death panels. The Muslims are invading. The Christians are going to impose Biblical law. The snowflakes are going to take your guns. The KKK is taking over our country.

Isn’t it enough already?

Everyone has to be rammed into a category for others to fear. You have to be a Hillary supporter or a Trump supporter. You must be with us or against us. A vote for a third party is a vote for the other candidate.

This toxic polarization is ripping us apart, and that’s by design.

Advances in technology have shattered traditional media sources. Instead of there being only three VHF channels on television, there are now hundreds of thousands of cable, YouTube, and streaming channels. A few dozen FM radio stations have become millions of podcasts and online and satellite radio stations. Magazines and newspapers have been replaced with countless websites, apps, and blogs.

All of these outlets get paid by advertisers for the number of people who visit them, which means they’re all competing for your attention in order to make money. Year after year they’ve found that they need to yell louder, shock you more often, and frighten you in order to get your attention, and to include your family and friends. They’ve found that they can’t reach everybody, so they purposely separate you from others in order to have a common enemy – a bogeyman to fear.

We’re no longer neighbors, we’re opponents. We’re encouraged to self-segregate and to label others with prejudice. We’re directed to yell and to shut up.

I’m tired of it.

My neighbor isn’t a Nazi. He’s a good-hearted man who loves his kids, and has opinions and views that are different from mine. My co-worker isn’t a socialist or a communist. He’s also a good-hearted man who loves his kids, and has opinions and views that are different from mine.

The sky isn’t falling, and we’re all not about to die. The end is not near.

We need to reject the demands that separate and make us dread each other. We need to listen to each other, and speak with each other with respect and dignity. We need to deny media channels that insist we do differently.

We need to stop being jerks. We need to stop living in panic.

This Fear Nation is exhausting. And wrong.