Fear. It surrounds, pervades modern American life like a drug. Our children are born in fear, nursed in fear, weaned in fear, diaper-trained in fear, don't eat that don't do that don't don't don't don't don't ooh a stranger fear the stranger fear the different fear the scary looking raghead fear fear fear fear fear if you don't buy a zit medicine to get rid of your zits no boy will ever like you fear if you don't do this, that and the other for your child they will become homeless bums fear fear fear fear liberals want to take your Bibles away! fear fear fear fear fear...
Fear. It is our heritage, for the past 100+ years, ever since an anarchist off'ed President McKinley. Fear has been the tool, the serum, the antidote to all that is good and all that is free, the toxic poison pervading American life, fear of anarchists, fear of Communists, fear of darkies of Japanese or African or Mexican descent, fear of ragheads, fear of those "others" who want to KILL US ALL...
In the end, all that is good, all that is of the teachings of Christ from the Gospels, dies under the waves upon waves of fear that radiate from our television sets and radios and newspapers and dictate to us how we will live every minute, every day of our life. We go to school because of fear, fear that if we do not, we will become one of the untermenschen, the unmentionables, the underclass whose name shall not be said, we go to work in fear, we live our every day in fear that we will lose our job, or our health insurance, or our home, fear is the broth that every American sips for dinner.
In the end, only those who reject fear, who do what is right rather than what is safe, who do what must be done rather than what will preserve their tidy little lives of quiet desperation, only those people are free. And even so, they are only as free as the rest of us who live our lives in fear allow them to be.
In the kingdom of fear, only the dead are truly free. If we are to have freedom in America, the first enemy to conquer is fear.
-- Badtux the Unfree Penguin
I fear that you are correct. ;-)
ReplyDeleteI've been disgusted for decades with all the fraidy pants who are forever telling me, "Aren't you afraid to?" this, that, and the other.
ReplyDeleteA coward dies a thousand deaths, a brave man dies but once.
I have found that fear is about 1% real - the rest in one's parnoid little brain.
ReplyDeleteAfter partying with bikers for years, I just don't fear much.
And it feels GOOD!!!