Fear Porn is Driving Us Batshit Crazy
I’ve been off the internet a lot more than usual. My dogs have been needing my attention as they have had some problems. BJ gets a lot of stickers and needs his coat to be groomed a lot while Nutmeg got an ear infection. Her infection in the ear is over but now she has a spot on her butt she’s licking at and won’t let me touch. I sincerely hope it’s not another problem. In addition, I’ve started a war against weeds and have been trying to settle into my new place, putting up curtains and arranging my library.
The long and the short of it is that this has given me time to cool down from the frothiness of social and news media that has grabbed our attention almost to the exclusion of everything else. After having a break and returning, I can’t help but notice that as a people we have gone batshit crazy. The symptoms are quite apparent, when you have taken the time to distance yourself.
People are on a hair trigger alert. Their laughter is sometimes inappropriate. Their anger, though there is reason enough to be angry, flies up in the face of both opponents and allies. Many of us seem to be accepting the words of the mainstream media even though we know, all of us know by now, that it is all owned by just a handful of very rich people and they can and do manipulate what we see and hear. We are fighting over whose lives matter and who is going to lead us when we all matter and any leader we get will be picked for us. We are fighting among ourselves over whether to wear masks or not, over the color of persons we don’t approve of, and on and on. These battles have been masterfully orchestrated by rich people who hire clever people to come up with memes, sound bites, and ways to irritate us so that we won’t remember that we have several vey serious problems facing us. Fukashima is still pumping radiation into the ocean. The artic, Amazon, Siberia and half the world is on fire. Global warming is advancing at a rapid rate. Crops have been lost and starvation is on the schedule for several million people.
Yet we waste our time trying to elect someone to address this problem, someone the oligarchs have chosen. This time they are asking us to make a choice between two men who are both so unfit to lead that it blows my mind people are taking this so seriously. It is especially perplexing that people, knowing, I mean you have to know by now, that their vote is manipulated both before and after they vote if their ballot counts at all. Being able to control the news everywhere there is news and write the rest off as conspiracy theories is a powerful weapon. Closing the right polling places, creating paid for events to stir people up, throwing out people’s voter registrations and if none of this works, they have control over the voting machines that many of us vote on.
But don’t ask questions or you might be supporting one or the other misogynist, lying, and demented candidates for which you will be mightily punished by the opposing side. Actually, you are not allowed to ask why on a number of items. Why do they allow a big funeral attracting thousands and lasting over a week but a smaller, personal funeral is prohibited because of COVID? Why is it OK to go to Walmart but the little shops owned and operated by individuals must remain closed? Why aren’t we being given updates on important stories and less of the posturing and clownery that we are fed instead? Why are we still at war in the Middle East after 17 years? Why aren’t we told about the progress of the seven wars we are still in as well as the three or four we are stirring up at this time? Why are all the people appointed to high office to the various departments of the government on record as wanting to destroy the very departments they are appointed to? Why, with all the people losing their housing and even the ability to put meals on the table, do we sit and watch our representatives give the rich people and corporations the bank while we get a couple of crumbs? Why do we keep adding to the military budget but can’t find money for SNAP, schools, crumbling bridges and other infrastructure projects so desperately needed?
I could go on but if you don’t get the point by now you never will. They have pushed us into this psychological mode, but we allowed it. We have allowed their fear porn to invade and work on our minds. We listen to it intently. We can’t get enough of it until we are driven batshit crazy. Fear is in the mind. It is meant to raise our adrenaline level so that if a tiger were to attack, we would be able to flee or defend. But there are no tigers attacking us. Just a lot of fear coming from so many angles we can’t keep track of them all. It all registers in our minds and whether we react when the fears are first introduced or not. But fear also keeps us from seeing things clearly. The adrenaline and other hormones released in response are party to that.
To stop the response, one must remove the effects of the fear for that is the most damaging part to our having a reasonable response to what is going on around us. Stop watching the news. Get off the net. Take a walk. Have a nonpolitical laugh. Communicate joyfully with someone, anyone. We have to take care of ourselves. To allow our minds to be in a constant fear is destructive to our health and makes us unfit to cope with the problems we face.
During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt told us that the greatest fear is fear itself. We must be realistic about our fears, face them and realize that the emotion of fear comes only from inside us. Then we will be able to think rationally and have a chance at solving the life-threatening problems facing us. To continue sucking down the fear porn will keep us in a state of batshit crazy from which we will be easily manipulated and unable to think rationally.
#fear, #politics, #well being