We have, in essence…dumbed ourselves down.
In not being willing to address and resolve our unresolved experiences – and relationships - on an emotional, perhaps even spiritual level, we’ve stunted our growth as human beings; impeded our own natural evolution.
It’s not “perfect love,” that casts out our fear…we do.
Just look to Jesus, the Buddha, Krishna, Allah, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others to see the truth in this; thus FDR’s directive, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.”
The term “perfect love” is mankind’s definition of love. Intellect seeks "perfect love."
It is “pure love” that possesses the power to help, heal, and transform. Why?
Because “pure love” encompasses whole-hearted acceptance...without judgment.
That which is severely lacking in our society…and in our world.
4
Has Mr Brooks been reading Thomas Hobbes? The 17th century philosopher was born prematurely after his mother was frightened by the approaching Armada, and later said that twins had been born at his birth: “Myself, and Fear.” He went on to write “Leviathan” , his defense of the social contract of government, which is needed to avoid descent into the natural state of mankind as “A war of all against all”. He went on to say, in his most remembered passage
“ In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
Hobbes would recognize Mr. Brooks’s column, with the exception that for a tiny portion of society, life is solitary, extremely rich, nasty, brutish and very, very long
4
Speaking of fear, I wonder how we would react to having an armed drone buzzing in circles overhead, waiting for a chance to obliterate some suspicious guy down the block, or maybe miss by a few dwellings?
Or what about smart bombs raining down on the city, but not quite smart enough to avoid a few civilians?
But, of course those things only happen in our numerous"over there" wars. Imagine the homeland fear escalation if our shrewd, stable-genius leader bumbled into a war that has some "over here" consequences, e.g. with Russia, China, or North Korea. Thank heavens he is such a shrewd stable-genius.
Part of the fear is an amorphous anxiety engendered by a technology that fails to solve the problems it creates. I spent three hours today -- three hours -- in an Apple store locked out of an iCloud account that required a password that couldn't be sent to the account because it was, of course, locked.
Instead of Apple protecting me from myself, maybe it and all those other genius social media giants should work on getting rid of harassing hackers. -- thegamesmenplay.com
2
Anger as a child of fear is fancy prose and possibly insightful psychology. But not all anger should be brushed off as secondary.
There is the anger I feel when I see injustice, when I see corruption, when I see good people turn complacent, when I see them do the devil's work, blissfully and stupidly, when I see them shirk responsibility for their views and politics that brought us to that point. Is that anger based on fear?
2
Thank you for this thoughtful column. at the ending, you almost sound like ....well, Barack Obama (as in just "get stuff done"). . Too bad you chose to side with Rush Limbaugh (your "good republican who just wants to win") instead of understanding where President Obama wanted to go -- while you Rush cheered on the Tea Party. How did that work out for you? Would you now consider perhaps giving you moral support to a primary challenge to the GOP incumbent -- someone like, say, Larry Hogan-- or better yet, Charlie Baker!
So many conservatives jumped on fear bandwagon because it was politically advantageous. Spreading fear worked in part because conservatives are particularly vulnerable to it. They talked themselves into believing that fear was real to prop up their self-esteem and moral superiority. David Brooks was one of them.
However fear needs enemy and this together leads to hatred and divisions. Today we are seeing the fruits of of American conservatives selling their souls for money and power. Now they have money, they have propaganda and they are willingly turning this country into a swamp.
2
Our species is entering a new era of environmental devastation. It will be on a scale that is unimaginable. Climate change is what we should be worried about- and our nation should be preparing.
Instead we are importing the world and making the problem worse. These years are defined by fear- people all over the world are starting to see what is coming.
1
In his book "Age of Anger" Pankraj Mishra lays out the case for our age being defined by anger in reaction to forces of globalization that upset and disrupt the well being and livelihood of one another. Look at the rising protests around the world. From Timothy McVeigh to 9/11 to the trolling on twitter to the rise of domestic terror and from our own president - all part of a contagion of anger. Mishra maintains that the rise of nationalism around the world is all a reactionary fantasy fueled in anger by the feeling of impotence under the vast multinational corporate powers disregard for life. We are truly in need of a new vision for social justice and peace.
Kudos to David Brooks. Fear became the prime mover on October 26, 2001 when the Constitution of the United States of America was suspended. Since then, anyone can be sent to an overseas prison and tortured in the name of "national security." Warrants for arrest are not required.
You will not see such plain language from political "analysts," but you will in thrillers from writers like David Baldacci. Abrogation of human rights by government defines America today - an America that writer Lee Childs has correctly characterized as "a police state."
Fear did not originate with 9/11. What Mr. Brooks fails to acknowledge is the roll that the relatively recent proliferation of firearms in our nation has contributed to our collective and burgeoning fear. We have become a nation where we fear that no one is safe anywhere. We are victims of gun violence in schools, houses of worship, shopping malls, movie theaters and even in our gated communities. Gun related suicides have become a major issue. Civilians fear being shot by police and consequentially police fear being shot by the people they are pledged to serve. Like the wild western heroes we immortalize in movies, we shoot first and answer questions later. Mr. Brooks, guns are not making us safer. Indeed they are making us less safe and are the greatest reason we fear. That is not to exclude other causes of fear like economic uncertainty and lack of access to healthcare that deserve to be addressed. Eliminating fear is going to require sacrifices and compromises. Gun rights activists, must see that giving some ground in order to make us all safer is in the interest of all. Likewise, the one percent of top earners must see that paying their fair share in taxes benefits the whole and healthcare for all conveys benefits to the larger society in the terms of less exposure to communicable disease and loss time from work.
Another college shooting. Another day of shock. Or not actually, no more shock and little surprise. This is becoming an almost everyday occurrence. The NRA is yawning.
3
I agree with your general premise, but disagree that fear as all pervasive in our society is new. It isn't; fear has been around with us since our colonial days; people feared different things and different people.
Perhaps people seem more fearful because of the constant breaking news, the 24/7 news cycle, and the stories that 45 years ago would have strictly local that are now national.
The 9/11 attacks are this generation's Pearl Harbor. White Southerners feared Nat Turner's revolt, which was put down violently to show who was in charge and what would happen if another slave dared to revolt. Our history is littered with examples. But years ago there was no cable news, and if any politicians wanted to demagogue, they had to go from city to city, from town to town, to spread their hate and gin up fear. Television, the internet, and social media make it much easier for today's demagogues.
That doesn't mean there aren't crazies out there, bent on harming people. We see this every time there's a shooting, the most recent one at the synagogue in Poway, CA. We should take reasonable precautions, but at the same time not let our fears paralyze us from living our lives.
the Age of Anxiety prepared some of us for just about any eventuality.
David, for years since I left the Republican Party, I’ve been saying that the Republican strategy is, fear, lies, hate and division. You did t mention this truth in your editorial.
Now with the rise of Trump, the Republicans are on a tear with fear...beginning with the “invasion” at our southern border, stocking the flames of bigotry against “others” etc. Anyone who has studied the rise of Hitler, can clearly see the similarities between that man’s evil propaganda and the....fear and evil of Trump’s!
Please vote every Republican, we can out of office!
7
Potential subtitle:
David Brooks, cheerleader for the failed post-9/11 policies of George W., lectures us on how fear is bad.
2
FDR: We have nothing to fear but fear itself
Republicans: they are threatening you! (a sampling since my childhood): commies! blacks! welfare queens! uppity women! Muslims! immigrants and refugees!
5
David Brooks, our official "Conflater in Chief", is at it again. This time he's conflating fears generated by immigrants and fears generated by MeToo#. Quite a leap, even for him.
Every time I read Brooks (admittedly, only once or twice a year), it's the same slippery con of stringing together a bunch of unrelated half-truths to create some comfortable way to straddle the present ideological divide--giving hope (thereby) to his readership, which largely just wants to enjoy its privileges in peace.
Sorry David. There is no such thing as non-ideological politics, regardless of what victim-blamers like Nussbaum (and Daniel Boorstin?) would like us to believe. Fear is a tool used by the ruling class to incapacitate all resistance to its rule. Next time, maybe leave your corporate funded philosophers on the shelf and go instead with somebody like Machiavelli, who at least tells us the truth about the politics of fear.
3
When my father fought fascists in WWII, the slogan was, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
Now we have a bunch of fascists in the White House who express nothing but hatred and disdain toward FDR.
During that era, a Pastor Niemoller wrote this:
"First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.
"Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.
"Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
"Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
===
Review pending legislation.
Write your Congress and Senate.
Protest Trump and his GOP court jesters.
Petition.
Get out the vote.
Vote.
4
Fear the "domino affect" the Communists are coming. We need to stop them in Vietnam.
Fear "international terrorism". Terrorism is so attractive, you know. Who wouldn't want to be a terrorist? So, we need to stop them in Iraq and Afghanistan and everywhere, really.
Fear the socialists always wanting to take over the world. They are threatening America with universal healthcare and less military spending.
Fear the immigrants, the Muslims, the Chinese, the non-white, non-Christian weirdos of the world.
4
Admit it, Mr. Brooks, Republicans are masters at stirring up fear. From the sordid Mc Carthy hearings to Trumps outrageous and bigoted lies and utter soulless idiocy, saying both sides are at fault for the upscale in murderous hate crimes. Why you are still a member of the party of cowardice and fear stroking mania led by an unstable freak of nature? Your last sentence should be read by all the repulsive, do nothing but destroy, Republicans. How you people even sleep at night astounds me.
7
What a load of codswallop. Fear? You don't know the meaning of fear; try living during the Great Depression when feeding your family was fearful. Try charging across a barren landscape into the barrels of machine guns. Try being black at the height of oppression, lynchings, and random violence during Jim Crow. Try being any child in any conflict in any country where they live fear everyday and they don't understand why because no adult can explain it to a child. Fear is something that grabs your nervous system and marks your soul. Don't confuse fear with anxiety, depression or nervousness about everyday challenges. Unfortunately people like you with a platform progmulate this lie to sell yourself and your product.
4
" a moment when a nation that had once seemed invulnerable..."
Since when? When German agents blew up Black Tom depot even before the country entered WW!? When Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor? When German U Boats sank ships in American harbors with impunity during WW2 (which the Germans called the "Happy Time"). When we incarcerated thousands of Japanese American citizens (and a few hundred German Americans) during WW2 out of fear? During the Cuban crisis when Russian ICBM's were aimed at America? During the Cold War when Russia had enough nuclear weapons to kill every American 100 times over?
2
Social media allows people to hate with impunity. On Sunday, after a shooter sprayed bullets at a cookout in west Baltimore, social media incorrectly identified the shooter as a white man. It made international news. One person's hate became hate spread to the masses. Stop the madness. Social means face to face. Social media is anti-social.
2
"Make Politics Boring Again"
Yep.
4
i don't think we felt this fear under obama. there were some bad things done under obama but not this horrible fear of safety. it is trump who spreads fear to his uninformed supporters, and the media spreads it, as well. if the media would stopped covering trump's rallies, which are downright insane, that would be step one.
5
We have a president and attorney general that do not believe in checks and balances between equal branches of government. That is scary!!
4
The FBI Hate Crime Report shows there were 15 hate crime murders in 2017. Whites who make up about 76.6 percent of the population, committed six of the 15 hate crime murders while blacks, who make up about 13.4 percent of the population, committed seven of the hate crime murders. Three of the 15 hate crime murderers were Hispanic, but the report does say whether they were black or white.
There were 15,129 murders win 2017. So the 15 hate crime murders made up 0.099 percent of murders in 2017.
The FBI data shows some years have no hate crime murders while others have multiple hate crime murders, but despite the spikes, hate crime murder never rise above one percent of murders.
Americans are far more likely to be murdered by irate motorists in road-rage killings than they are to be victims of hate crime murders. About 130 American are shot or beaten to death each year in road-rage incidents.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-1.xls
1
There is only one truly evil group — the Republican Party. I feel like David Brooks’ recent columns are wrestling with his guilt in feeding the conservative beast that is ruining our country. But it’s too late for that unfortunately.
3
Judging from the comments, Anger is a close second.
1
Yep. Politicians of all stripes rose by stoking fear
OAC makes me fear Instagram
Warren makes me afraid to make more than a $million this year
Schiff makes me dread Russian Twitter bots
That Obama guy made me deathly afraid of tan suits.
David, please read Krugman's column today about both-sides-ism, come back when you have understood the thesis
David needs to remeber that his Republican party has come to and stayed in power for decades by fear-mongering, from Willie Horton to terrorism to migrant hordes to baby-killers. This is their M.O.
The media’s 24-hour news cycle perpetuates crisis as well.
5
David: It is indeed an "Era Defined By Fear", but do you really not see the correlation between this era and the domination of Republicans in government, culminating in the election of one of the biggest fear-mongers since Hitler?
There is one primary source of this fear, and it's in the tactics and philosophy of the party you make excuses for - the Republicans.
1
@Kingfish52 I bed to differ.
In the last 25 years, we've had 16 years of Democratic Administrations, a bipartisan consensus on financial deregulation, the War on Terror and the expanding surveillance of American citizens--so the problem is not just with the Republican party, the problem is with corporate control over our entire political system. Fear just happens to be the best way to engineer a 50/50 political stalemate on pretty much every issue spotlighted by our corporate media--ignoring gigantic popular majorities on issues that cut across the Blue/Red state divide...
The Republican Party is really based in Fascist ideology. And the cornerstone of that ideology is fear.
3
Divide and conquer. It’s an old saying but it is built upon fear as a tool for governing or imprisoning. Fear makes the world go around and stop simultaneously. The gift of fear is a book I read recently that examines smart fears vs dumb fears. The political fears are the dumb ones. However one needs fear more than ever in this increasingly complex world of click bait and pitfalls in front of everybody. Now it’s easier than ever to lose your life savings at your local church. Or have your reputation ruined forever. I you are a black man, your chances of getting a decent job are more out of reach than ever before. Thanks in no small part to that little tv screen in your hand that allows you to be stupid for eternity. I ain’t afraid of yo. But that thing in your hand or my hand whether a gun or a phone is scaring me to death.
Fear is the mind killer. Dune
The opposite of love is fear. Course In Miracles.
1
Brooks once again confuses categories.
Hate is a different animal from fear.
There is only one truly legitimate fear that overrides all else right now. This article completely ignores the elephant in the room, or should I say, the climate of our planet, that anyone with eyes can see is changing so dramatically and ruthlessly that ALL of us are affected daily and it’s going to get a LOT worse. Brooks writes about future historians discussing this era as if future historians will even be around in one hundred years. When will people stop watching the lies of Fox News and the GOP and take a look out their windows? Denying the real threat of climate change is denying your children, grandchildren, and even yourself (if you’re not old) a future that isn’t a hellscape. Take a look at this easy-to-read chart to put things in perspective: https://xkcd.com/1732/
I have o theory about why the Keystone state does not produce presidents. We prefer our politicians boring. Pa elected politicians are never chosen to be running mates for that reason. No one from Pa ever excites the base. We elect our governor to two terms then give the other party a chance. We hang on to our Unexciting Senators as long as they want the job. UNLESS the politician starts to get headlines and crowds of reporters. Then you are out. Ask Santorum and our last governor Corbett. Heck before the Penn state scandal the most controversy a former governor ever stirred up was to select colors for the terrorist threat measure. oh and thanks Trump for saving us the humiliation of having produced the worst American President. you own it NY
Whoa, whoa, whoa: "Muslims are disgusting. Immigrants are disgusting. Republicans are disgusting"?
This line would seem to support the twisted alt right narrative that conservatives are a persecuted minority in our country. At a time when Republicans own the White House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court, not to mention the banks, the oil companies, and most Fortune 500 companies, that's not going to wash.
Let's not equate "disgust" with someone's religion or national origin with disgust for someone's political positions. Political positions are choices that a person makes, and if someone makes choices that are disgusting (for example, supporting white nationalism) I reserve the right to be unapologetically disgusted.
1
Everyone is fearful. The difference is that one side is afraid of real threats. Such as climate change, student debt, healthcare costs, white nationalists terrorism, autocrats, when their next company buyout will happen, monopolies stealing their paycheck. The other side is afraid of false threats, people of color taking their jobs and bringing violence and small pox to the US., Muslim and Jews. Christmas stealers, the truth, etc.
2
Do you think the current situation would be this bad if it weren't for Trump, the angry, ugly, poisonous boil on the body politic?
4
Fear is driven by organized matriarchal sadistic ideological malice. When I was in eighth grade, we were compelled to attend a lecture by a woman with an affiliation with the school about which the teachers were oppressively unclear. It was an unusually grim atmosphere. Even the lights just outside the hall were turned off, about which questions were also suppressed. We were warned - and they were being aggressively open about the fact that that they were threatening us with real, if undetailed, horrors, - that we had better not only be intensely respectful to, and not question, the speaker, but also believe and self-inculcate, what she told us. What she said was that eighth grade boys had the mentality of 4 year olds - that is, of some theoretical 'normal' 4 year olds - not four year old girls, because boys were inferior in other ways. She'd brought stuffed animals to show her sympathy, which she knew we'd be interested in, since she knew our lives were ones of desperately staring around at a world we couldn't hope to understand. Kids' jaws dropped, shocked at the deranged level of insult. Afterwards she demanded letters of apology for 'whispering'- those not written in crayon had to be rewritten, being 'too sophisticated' to have been written without help. She was deep-dyed in sadism, of course, and this was a form of masturbation for her. She later changed her name and wrote a book, a superiority theory about the female brain. Too often, hate is subtler, more dangerous.
I think it was Churchill who once said and I am paraphrasing ' we have nothing in the world to fear, but fear itself. How true this is and how sadly it pertains to today's America. There can surely be noting more dangerous than a Totalitarian Government , drumming up fear, and making the populace fearful of their fellow Americans who may not look like , or worship like they do. They may say Be Afraid Be Very Afraid. I sat Fear Not .
@Brit It was actually FDR who made the comment about being afraid of fear not Churchill. It sounded like something Churchill might have said but FDR was also a great orator .
2
Fear you say Mr. Brooks? The very thought of the present occupant of the White House serving another term in office should induce droplets of a terror-induced sweat on the brows of every rational American.
The emotional undertone of "political conflicts" isn't fear. The emotional undertone of Republican politics, or more correctly, Trumpism, is fear.
Trump has an exquisite understanding of the use of fear. His incessant rantings against brown skinned people, or doctors "killing babies" are made for only one reason: to incite his base.
Trump wants the rest of us to fear his rabid, heavily armed base, and through them, fear him. He wants them primed if he loses the election next year. His incitement to violence is self-serving - with the inevitable violence of his base, Trump will declare martial law and remain in office indefinitely.
Trump isn't going anywhere. And he needs to have a rabid, angry base ready at all times, to instill fear into the rest of us. Trump's base loves it. They're salivating for a blood-letting. This is what happens when an ignorant, angry mob doesn't take responsibility for their own failings. They strike out at others. They falsely blame others for their own failures. And so these lies, to them, "justify" their violence.
Trump wants to be sure that we fear his base, at all times. Trump has had a heckuva hand. For two years, he had both houses of Congress in his pocket. He still has one, along with a toadying Supreme Court.
But his strongest card is his heavily armed base. They will continue to instill fear in the rest of us. Tree of Life. Poway. Charlottesville. We've shown we won't fight back. Our fear will keep us under this despot's rule.
1
Good perspective. Unfortunately, it will take more than good governance to turn the tide at this point. This said..."can do" plus good governance versus "can't do" and fear mongering will prevail in 2020. Just look at Quinnipiac's recent poll on what Americans want in the next presidency.
I'm not fearful; I'm angry. I'm angry that we have a political party that has most of the power right now constantly threatening to take away what little safety net we have. I'm angry at the Americans, who through their willful ignorance, keep voting those people into office. I'm angry that we do nothing about curbing gun violence. I'm angry that getting an education here is such an uphill battle from kindergarten through college. I'm angry that we are working against doing anything about climate change. I'm angry about our inhumane practices on our southern border. I'm angry that we help with the killing in Yemen so we can have cheap gas. I could go on and on, but I'll stop. I am retired and pretty comfortable, but there is an underlying feeling that the rug could be pulled out from under me at any time. Most of the rest of the world strikes me as a much friendlier place than my own country.
5
Fear is driven to a very large extent around the globe by a long standing organized horror - once described to me as maintained and passed on through an oral tradition and thus safe from accountability - although it turns out that that is often not true. I'm referring to organized matriarchal sadism, which drives child trafficking. When I was in fourth grade, the founder of my school gave a talk to my class. We had all been warned - threatened, really, with no explanation as to why, to not ask him why he'd founded the school. In his presentation, he went into that topic anyway. He said that as a boy he'd done something disrespectful to a girl, and had felt very guilty for a long time afterward, until he finally decided that it had happened because there was something inherently bad about boys, that needed to be crushed out of them - so what he'd done was the fault of this inborn aspect of his nature, an inheritance, something he hadn't been trained out of, so in a sense it wasn't his fault. Of course, what he was saying had more background than he was letting on. He'd been abused. What he described as his motive was an idea inculcated into him, a calculated cultural attitude, used for it's poisonous utility in manipulating society through psychologically degrading children - one of many such tools used by this matriarchal tradition. I knew many gleefully malicious female teachers. Obviously, boys try to create time to think about something else, and thus control the stress.
"But eventually you have to wake up in the morning, get out of bed and get stuff done."
And yet that is the biggest source of fear I see. The fear among everyone that somehow they are not getting enough stuff done, that they are missing out, that others are doing things better than them, that they are not optimizing their existence every day and not achieving.
I have no fear of sleeping in and not get anything done.
2
Finally, David Brooks has hit on a subject that we can all agree with. So, since it seems that many of us agree and there appears to be no political divide here, we can do something about it. We can and should "just say no" to politicians who wish to stoke that fire.
However, that does not mean that we should ignore those who would ie to us, no matter their political position on the spectrum.
Policy does matter more than political perspective. Once we start talking policy, we can find a way to compromise and create one that the majority can live with.
Thank you Mr. Brooks for your critical thinking conservatism, it is refreshing to see!
1
And how about common sense and a wish to see candidates for high office at least pay lip service to the idea of a balanced budget? That's not motivated by crippling fear, that's more like intense exasperation with highly educated and intelligent people who either do not think that bills will ever come due or think the public is too stupid to understand the idea that there's no free lunch.
And add to this my annoyance with the regular Progressive and liberal presentation of social program after social program whose expense are dismissed with a vague demand that the very wealthy will pay more taxes. As if their lawyers won't help them keep taxes within what they consider reasonable limits, or as if the whole bunch of the very wealthy could begin to pay the taxes of the formerly solvent American middle class. I'm not crippled by fear, Mr. Brooks: I'm capable of numerical realism. Now find me a candidate with the same ability.
1
Mr. Brooks in the midst of all of this someone did run a successful campaign based on hope rather than fear. Twice. Fear is a conservative narrative these days.
Hb
1
This climate of fear and loathing can all be laid at the feet of right-wing media, and the Republican politicians who distort and lie to achieve whatever dishonest. bad-faith political objective they have in mind (primarily, preservation of their political careers and prerogatives.) Listen to any of the right-wing opinionists on TV and radio, and I guarantee their talking point will be based not on truth and fact, but on cynical distortion, misrepresentation, and lies. Who on the right is out there touting facts? Not Trump. Not Hannity or Ingraham or Dobbs. Not Guiliani or Sanders or McConnell. It's just so... tiresome. We'd all be far better off if we just stop listening to their noonsense.
1
The only thing I have to fear is fear 'himself' (where "himself" -- though not Irish, thanks be -- is trump).
2
Anger under fear, fear and narcissism, yes and yes. My Mother was a hidden child during the Holocaust. She is the most frightened person I know, though she would never admit that. She is also a narcissist, unable to love her children, and emotionally abusive. It’s hard to understand how someone with a shattered childhood would not want to at least try to love their children. Then again, it’s not hard to comprehend, if that person isn’t your Mother.
I myself am fearful, I believe it got passed down in my DNA. The state of our nation now, of which I am very aware, is distressing. I want to stay informed and politically motivated, but lately deep dives into the news make me jumpy. Even just turning on the nightly news changes how I feel.
Mr. Brooks, your column ran parallel to Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein’s editorial, where he pledged never to be fearful, and to do what he can with his borrowed time. My heart both breaks for what he experienced, and takes in his utter commitment to rising above hatred and fear.
I wish I could emulate him, but I’m afraid to wear even my small Jewish star. I only began to feel like this in recent years. I can see that you too are trying to forge forward in a new way, it’s evident by your pieces this past year. Please, no matter who calls you a hypocrite because of your political past, keep writing them. We as a nation desperate in our need to be soothed.
There’s a hearty strain of proud, willful ignorance that has always pervaded the good ole USA. Ignorance tends to nurture fear of the “other” and the unfamiliar. And as Yoda pointed out, fear leads to anger and anger to hate.
2
Those of us older than 12 should be used to this by now, having seen the effects of Carl Rove’s daily manipulation of the national threat level for weeks prior to the Bush election. SO obvious to anyone with a brain but so scary to everyone else. Amazing that it stopped right after the election and few said anything about it. Well, welcome to Act 2.
We should have little to fear in this country except a grossly incompetent executive and treasonous Republican Congress. The rule of law is becoming a joke but has little daily impact upon the average Joe. Eventually it will - and a great one at that. Americans (except refugees from oppressive regimes elsewhere) have no idea what it is like to be subject to a Dictator like Madura, Putin, Kim, Xi or Trump (if allowed to continue his path toward autocracy).
Churchill was correct: We have little to fear except fear itself. Trump inherently knows this and he is using it to scare the populous into submission. When we are afraid we tend to seek stability and deny change. Sound familiar? So WAKE UP AMERICA and get yourself a government that governs for the people, a government that will keep you safe and not use you as tools for its own advancement.
1
Fear is the biggest motivator.
It can motivate people to do both extraordinary and despicable things.
Sadly, it’s the latter that’s become the modus operandi of the 45th and the Rep. Party.
Thanks in no small part to these hoodlums and gangsters masquerading as ‘patriots’, America is in dire straits.
That ‘shining city upon a hill’ is now teetering on the edge of extinction.
At times like these, the wise words from the 34th should provide some guidance:
This world of ours... must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect. (D. Eisenhower)
1
Well, FDR did say this is the only thing we have to fear, so we can't say we weren't warned of it.
Successful advertising makes consumer capitalism work by manipulating our emotions. Advertisers have been creating fear and anxiety so we will buy stuff 'now' for almost a hundred years and the internet has increased advertisers' power and pervasion. Fear has become a vital building block of our economy.
And leave it to the United States of Advertising to perfect the art of consumer manipulation
I fear going bankrupt due to medical bills. I fear I soon won’t be able to pay for my long-term care insurance because the rates are increasing exponentially.
I remember the start of this era very well. I remember watching as the GOP sharpened and intensified the fear people felt after 9/11. The warnings about Saddam's WMDs and the yellow-cake uranium hoax. People like me labeled traitors for trying to stop the rush to war in Iraq. Our skepticism about the claims that US troops would be greeted as liberators and that Saddam was stockpiling germ bombs and worse turned out to be well-founded. it didn't matter.
I recall the terror alert system and how it glowed orange and red throughout the 2004 election cycle--then seemed to vanish the day after the election.
This on top of the fear the NRA had already begun planting in the minds of Americans, with murderous marauders in every neighborhood, guns as the only logical solution and gun control advocates--like me--as anti-democratic elites plotting an unconstitutional power-grab.
And I remember John McCain's look of horror when he met the predictable result of all the fear-mongering: The elderly woman who whispered that she was afraid of Barack Obama because "he is ... a Muslim."
This was the GOP's crowning achievement: Ignorance, fear and bigotry, armed to the teeth, wrapped in a flag and afraid of its own shadow.
And it has only gotten worse since then.
3
@Bystander
While there’s a lot that I admired about John McCain, sadly the instance you quote, where he defended candidate Obama, he tacitly demonized an ethnic group.
In response to a woman calling Mr. Obama an Arab, he responded, “No ma’am, he’s a decent family guy... He’s not (an Arab)”.
Obviously, the implication there was that Arabs and Muslims are not ‘decent’ guys.
While this Arab/Muslim phenomenon may some new to some Americans, black Muslims were one of the first slaves brought to America in the early 18th and 19th century.
Of course, more recent examples of American Muslims include Muhammad Ali (boxer), Malcolm X, Keith Ellison (AG Minnesota, formerly Congressman) among many others including current Congresswomen.
As for Arab Americans, Casey Kasem (top 40 radio host), Tony Shaloub, Gen. Abizaid (retired US Army General Centcom) and the list goes on.
In this age of ‘fear, fake news, and misinformation’, every little bit adds to the mischaracterization’ and can thus lead to disastrous consequences as evidenced by the attacks in Poway, Colombo, Christchurch and Pittsburgh.
1
People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself.
1
Talk that talk David!
Bertrand Russell once quipped something to the effect that :
Americans approach knowledge by busily running around and trying anything. They succeed by finding what works in the world.
Germans on the other hand,(think Hegel, Marx) he said, pull knowledge out of their innermost selves. They then try to impose this upon the world.
Which is Trump? An American or a German?
(I would appreciate anyone who can come up with the exact quote. Thank you)
2
Trump ain’t no metaphysicist
@Christine There's a book called "Dark Star Rising" that puts Trump in the tradition of Norman Vincent Peale's "power of positive thinking," which itself has roots in Ancient Near Eastern esoteric teachings. Really helpful take on Trump and how he fits in with "The Secret" and other distinctively American get-rich-quick spiritualities... Not sure Russell's comment is too helpful...Americans have always had a clear ideological take on things, no different from the Germans...
When I see a comment posted in the NYT proclaiming that "If Trump loses the next election, I'm getting my musket out!" I am convinced that the fear is real, and backed with real reasons for its existence.
Fear as an emotion exists for personal protection.
I for one will not be visiting the USA in Nov. 2020. Sorry about that.
4
What I fear is what will become of the children Stephen Miller has taken from their families. And not just for the welfare of these kids--that would be too easy--but for what they will become as adults. We will suffer the effects of making America great again for a very long time.
3
When it comes to presidential elections, we're electing the head of an administration, that can be very boring. Or rather, should be very boring sometimes because your supposed to weigh evidence, do cost-benefit, and so on. Yes, your also supposed to weigh whether our values are involved and intact. But, to David's point, virtually everything is evaluated emotionally. I'm a liberal and my conscience is clear when I say that conservatives simply ignore the boring part of the job more often than liberals. Look at Paul Ryan - the ultimate policy wonk on budgetary matters... he just put an asterisk and said, "future cuts". Well damn, that's not digging into the details and having the courage to make choices. That mentality is why overwhelmingly Republican administrations have run up more deficit spending than Democrats.
"Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized."
-- Jim McKay
"The scariest thing you can hear is someone says to you, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
"The welfare queens and strapping young bucks are taking from you what doesn't belong to them."
David Brooks, do you think any of those words by your beloved Ronald Reagan might have had anything to do with this ratcheting up of fear and hate among US?
You long for someone to remind us of FDR and his words, "The only thing you have to fear is fear itself". Those words will not come from a republican. republicans have been fanning the flames of fear and hatred towards anyone who isn't buying their snake oil for decades.
I remember very well the 8 years where you pined for someone in the White House that embodied the qualities that were on full display by the current occupant of the White House. Yet, you couldn't admit that possibility to yourself. Or your readers.
Hatred for republicans, hatred for t rump supporters? No, what we hate is the hatred that is the bread and butter of those people.
When Bush Jr. was appointed president by his father's Supreme Court, democrats accepted the reality and tried to work with him and his/your party. Even going along with his illegal invasion of Iraq.
When Bill Clinton won two elections your party impeached him. When Barack Obama won two elections your party committed sedition by vowing amongst themselves to keep him from achieving anything. To the detriment of the Nation.
6
@Bob Laughlin:""The scariest thing you can hear is someone says to you, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
Here's a gem from a social justice liberal. In 1972 a desegregation order to the Detroit Public Schools, forced busing was implemented in Detroit, Judge Roth (appointed by JFK, you know "no price to great to pay" and all that...), who ruled on the case wrote in part:
“Transportation of kindergarten children for upwards of 45 minutes, one way, does not appear unreasonable, harmful, or unsafe in any way. ...kindergarten children should be included in the final plan of desegregation.”
This was a weaponized judiciary aimed at working class folks by liberals who for the most part had no skin in the game. Fortunately the cross-district scheme was reversed by the SCOTUS.
Unfortunately Detroit Public Schools were still forced to implement busing with a total white student population of about 26%. Each school was forced to have a student body that reflected the demographics of the city.
So yeah, a lot folks were hurt by the Feds "trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored".
Fear is a sad fact of life, especially life in the United States, where guns are everywhere and anyone could be shot just by walking out the door, going to a movie, walking into a school, etc.
The United States, with its gun culture, is an absolutely insane society.
3
Wow, it sounds like David Brooks has a huge problem with fear. What's he so afraid of? Everybody I know thinks things are going really well: best job market in decades and savings are making money again at last. He should talk to a doctor about why a rich, privileged guy like him is so fearful.
Fear broadcast to the masses is a specialty of Rupert Murdoch. Who happens to control Fox News, which is a blatantly hyper-partisan bullhorn for the Republican party in this country.
I'm trying to remember when Democrats in positions of prominence stirred the winds of fear and hatred. While I'm not a fan of their close association with neo-liberal policies that favor the corporations and already wealthy, I'm coming up blank. Obama, with hope and change and we're all in this together? Ads and talk show pundits demonizing immigrants, Muslims, and the whole shebang?
In a post-truth era, NYT Op-Ed writers should be proclaiming truth, not obfuscating it in a blatantly obvious and inept attempt at "fair and balanced" and "both sides do it" hypocrisy. Brooks can't help himself, he's nothing but a feckless shill for a morally bankrupt political party.
2
In my opinion, Fox News has been the greatest purveyor of fear. I’ll never forget being at my parents house and seeing a “Breaking News” banner and a musical fanfare that only seemed appropriate for the outbreak of World War III. This was back in 2005, and since then, all television news outlets seem to have adopted this fear-mongering format. But what makes Fox News different is their fear-inducing approach to every issue, as if every Republican idea will save and protect you from a horrible, terrifying fate, while all Democrats want to do is kill you. Immigrants will take your job, rape your wife and children, murder you, and steal all your stuff. Obamacare has death panels that will decide who lives and dies. Democrats want to take your guns and leave you defenseless against anyone “other.” Democrats want to cancel Christmas, abort children after they’re born, kneel during the Star Spangled Banner, take away our fossil fuels and give us all windmill cancer. Fear, fear, fear, fear. It’s no wonder Fox News viewers want nothing more than to hide under their beds with their guns, peering out at Fox News on their TVs, and only come out for Trump rallies.
4
It would help our country if the GOP would not nominate lunatic candidates like Trump - who instigate fear and corruption.
4
Fear has been seen as the Republican's strongest message for decades... Sorkin writing 25 years ago in the American President, words we knew then were aimed at GOP old school...
"Bob Rumson (R) ... is interested in two things, and two things only: making you afraid of it, and telling you who's to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections."
1
Heck, the Atlantic just wrote an article about how Dems may be failing once again to fear the failure to show fear when a hypothetical fearful situation is raised in the debates, e.g.
"If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered,' CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked the Massachusetts governor, 'Would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?'...…. Watching with the sound off, you’d think he was discussing an infrastructure plan rather than a loved one’s grisly death."
This was the Willie Horton election and the media were tasked with raising the spectre of an escaped criminal running amok in the neighborhood should Dukakis be elected President. Clearly this was not a case of there being "good people on both sides"!
1
@Excellency
link to the Atlantic article I omitted here
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/04/how-democrats-respond-boston-bomber-questions/588094/
Brooks is a good writer and solid thinker.
Sadly, 9/11 was our generation's greatest missed opportunity. How many times does one get to see an entire society put down its selfish impulses and come together united for something truly inspiring that can take civilization to a new level. This is what we had with 9/11. Yet, instead, we were told to 'go shopping.'
And so, politicians launched 9/11 into the gift that kept on giving. Just distract the masses with color-code alert levels and no one will notice that the back door has been opened to corporate gift giving. Throw some money at every small town law enforcement agency in America and have them fight over how much more important they are as a target for terrorist strikes and now you have the entire country convinced of WMD trained on America and Cheney can deliver on all those profits for his friends.
Of course, Fox News, launched in 1996 to be Roger Ailes voice of the GOP presidential politics, had time to hone its fear-driven messaging. Now, with 9/11, the new century is officially launched as the Republican takeover with the Propaganda of Fear.
This is nothing new. Imagine, however, if the country was warned about this before it happened. Then maybe there would be some value here.
1
I would like to echo Sarah's eloquent commentary, adding that the levels of anxiety and depression, even suicide among our children, adolescents and young adults is an exponential outgrowth of the pervasive fear that Mr. Brooks addresses. Sadly, those in DC that should represent national leadership do little to quell the resultant anger. This generation of youth goes into the future scarred by our lack of humanity, our lack of brotherly love.
Nice piece David. Accurate and not overblown. A little hopeful.
Agree, we need a steady hand to start to get things done without the drama or bluster.
David, when you say "It's been an era when politicians rise by stoking fear," let's be clear: The origins of the modern conservative movement are rooted in fear. That is well trod soil - no need to further trample it.
So while sentiment is valid, it's important that we recognize Trump as the inevitable result of thirty years of the GOP scaring the heck out of everyone in order to get votes.
Trump is the outcome of that.
2
The only fear I have is of all those fearful people willing to elect (and re-elect) Trump.
3
Fear is the most ancient of emotions . Primal and visceral it is informed by brain structures we are only beginning to understand fully . It’s antidote is a felt sense of being viable in the world and it is here that wildly accelerating information and highly competitive individualistic societies are removing us from that relaxed body state where our perceptions are balanced , our breathing is open and full , and our world , rather than destabilized and dangerous , is open to creative possibilities . We’re in our heads way too much . That’s a dangerous place ; vulnerable and unstable we look for reasons and solutions that only make conditions worse . Paranoia . Rigid social and political structures . Ancient tribal animosities.
Maybe the beginning of a way out is the acknowledgment of this state , a meta-awareness that we can move forward despite our fears only because we must .As other peoples in other generations have , it would seem to be the very definition of the heroic and meaningful and thus provide a balm to these fearful days .
I’m sorry Mr David Brooks, the US has sown its fair share of fear around the world long before 9/11 happened to the US. Some may say what is happening in the US is Bad Karma coming back to haunt us. Let us not forget the 3,000,000 Vietnamese we slaughtered in a needless war in which we lost 59,000 military plus hundreds of thousands injured physically and emotionally. How about 500,000 Iraqi children and women who died due to the US destroying their water and sewer infrastructure. Carpet bombing of Cambodia and Laos, the overthrow of the Chilean democracy by our CIA in Chile. Fear is what black people in this nation experience when police confront unarmed people. Fear is knowing that the deep state assasinated Kennedy, both John and Robert. Fear is what Native Americans experienced when they were slaughtered by the US government while stealing their lands. And how about our attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan that created asylum seekers because those countries were thrown into a state of anarchy by woefully ignorant US policies . The US has destroyed Central America because the corporations enslaved the poor indigenous peasants. We are fearful because the US is an Empire, not unlike Darth Vader aka Dick Cheney. Chalmer Johnson, wrote Blowback, an insightful analysis of just how destabilizing US foreign policy has been in the world.
I fear the militaristic totalitarian police state that Trump is trying to create in the US. That is what I fear.
2
Fear, not hate, is the opposite of love.
“Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.”
Anthony DeMello, "Awareness"
How can you write a column called "An Era Defined By Fear" and not mention Trump once?
It's like writing the history of baseball and leaving out the Yankees.
6
9/11 may have been the start of fear for white Americans, although I doubt it, but black and brown and red Americans have lived with it since generations ago.
90
@Pat Johns Actually, white Americans (and I am one) have been taught for generations to fear those who are not. While he may be in myriad other ways incompetent, Trump has masterfully sensed this and exploited this fear for years. And look where he landed.
8
There is one fear facing us all, a real fear that cannot be denied. It is a continuing fear in the United States because conservative politicians are refusing to do anything realistic about it -- climate change.
I agree with you Mr. Brooks that when the objects of fears are confronted and effective solutions attempted fear becomes transformed into action.
Climate change is one factor fueling conflict and mass immigration across the globe. Where resources are scarce populations engage in conflict. The longer we deny that citizens of the largest industrialized nations must take serious action the worse it will become.
4
Two ScFi quotes pretty much sum up this column: from the "Dune" series the mantra: "Fear is the mind-killer..." and from "Babylon 5": "The past tempts us, the future frightens us, and the present confuses us..."
It is the human condition that we are all subject to and it is very hard to overcome or ignore particularly when the 24/7 "News Cycle" that is more opinion than news pounds us daily.
Perhaps reading history is useful, not as an escape to the past but to the realization that humans have overcome situations just as bad, if not worse, than what we deal with today. To be sure we have to work hard to change and make our personal and larger worlds better. It is not simple but we must remember that others before us managed to change things for the better time-and-time again.
1
@George N. Wells
When we had only 3 TV channels and the Fairness Doctrine, there was a lot less free floating anxiety, racial angst, and much better politicians. For all we've "advanced" - we are certainly not any happier, healthier nor richer as a nation, are we?
Women protested being treated as "sex objects" in my youth. Today, a burka-wearing, presumably Muslim cover girl adorns the cover Sports Illustrated. Her face and form must still conform to impossible standards set by - whom? Laws may have advanced; culture hasn't.
I feel sorry for those growing up now without any community standards at all against which to protest. Those of us who grew up in a different era can't begin to understand them nor their world. Ours, a kinder and easier one to live in from day to day, is long gone.
Fear? TRUMP = be afraid... be very afraid. There Is no escape from him.
6
"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light".
Plato, ca. 2400 years ago and still applying to the world we live in now.
Trump and his family, as well as AG Barr and others in the present administration are afraid of the light.
Sunshine is supposed to be the best disinfectant for all to see the crimes, obstruction of justice, ad infinitum lies, hate mongering, racist and law destroying reign of DJT and his sycophantic cronies.
142
Unless you’re independently wealthy, if you have a few kids you live in constant fear that a medical emergency will ruin your family’s financial stability. The rest of the developed world doesn’t live that way.
7
One party, the gop, has made fear and loathing and suspicion, and hate the basic tenets of its scorched earth electoral policy for decades. They've turned their crowd into a frothing and churning ball of passion not well placed. It is good to see articles such as these pointing out our malady, but lets also look to a cure, and Brooks knows as well as any what that means. Leave the party man, they don't deserve you.
7
So David, you want a politician who is boring but gets things done? Well we had one like that for 8 years and could have elected another one. The Republicans spent the whole time bellowing about the monster in the closet. So now we have this.
7
And please don't forget the fear stoked by the medical establishment, to wit, measles. I have never in my fifty plus years on this planet encountered such an intense propaganda storm as the rebranding of measles as the next plague. No thanks to the New York Times which has, at last count, run over fifty stories (fifty!) this year about the "measles epidemic" which has not one single death in this country in the past five years. But the fear, the fear! Meanwhile laws are being changed, power consolidated, constitutional rights trampled, our very bodies handed over to our corporate overlords, all with the blessing of the Times and virtually every other media organ out there. With fear, anything is possible.
So what is the antidote to fear? Hope. To combat fear, there needs to be a reason for hope that actions being taken will prevent the feared scenario. There needs to be a reason to believe that things won't be so bad. So who is presenting a message of hope? Who is saying we can fix this? Yes We Can resonated with the electorate for a reason. Unresolved fear leads to exhaustion, apathy, and paralysis. To motivate people and keep them energized and motivated, there must be reason for hope.
4
@Nikki, excellent observations, imo.
I'm concerned that the Democratic candidate won't have a clear message that resonates with voters. And, that then Donald Trump will "win" again by default, by voter complacency and unwillingness to even mail in a ballot, and [of course] by the fact of the Electoral College.
Unfortunately, I'm too old to emigrate to another country.
2
@Nikki, excellent observations, imo.
I'm concerned that the Democratic candidate won't have a clear message that resonates with ENOUGH of the voters.
And, that then Donald Trump will "win" again by default, by voters' complacency and unwillingness to even mail in a ballot, and [of course] by the fact of the Electoral College.
Unfortunately, I'm too old to emigrate to another country.
@Nikki, excellent observations, imo.
I'm concerned that the Democratic candidate won't have a clear message that resonates with ENOUGH of the voters.
And, that then Donald Trump will "win" again by default, by voters' complacency and unwillingness to even mail in a ballot, and [of course] by the fact of the Electoral College.
Unfortunately, I'm too old to emigrate to another country.
eta: I hope that a moderate, rational, and qualified Republican "primaries" Trump, and wins.
Is it fear, or just a general sense of anxiety?
For me, it's the latter.
1
Having grown up during the era of Cold War, acid rain, drug gangs, the ozone hole and more recently Islamic terror, I can only come to the conclusion that the "danger" and "fear" the press ties to Trump is extreme hyperbole. Then I look at the economy, and my conclusion is confirmed. The fear mongering is by the press. Trump's challenging of "norms" is "dangerous" - what garbage. The press seems intent to manufacture and promulgate the very climate of fear they worry about.
2
@TL, actually, it's Trump's utter incompetence that concerns me.
Broadcast journalism is no longer journalism - it’s tabloid. The major networks no longer refer to the News Department - it’s “Infotainment.”
What used to be a concerted effort to inform the American public of the important happenings in the world is now a search for the most graphic, the most violent, the most prurient content, breathlessly soundbited throughout the day to collect viewers that evening.
In short, the purpose of the Infotainment department is to gain viewership, to improve ratings, not to inform. Why? Because increased ratings = higher value advertising space = higher revenue without higher costs = direct bottom line enhancement = higher stock price. This same process unfortunately applies to print media. We no longer have newspapers with advertisements sprinkled here and there - we have daily sales circulars sprinkled with news stories and I get the impression that many people glance at the headlines, then head for the Op Ed and the crossword.
This is why we’re fed a continuous stream of gunpoint robberies st the local 7-11, especially if someone actually got shot, instead of the latest climate change report, instead of what going on in France with the yellow vests etc.
Another issue is that the news that as it’s now presented is liberally laced with op ed content so seamlessly that it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other starts.
Anyone who thinks they’re truly getting informed by today’s news is sadly misinformed.
5
The US has a huge military!
But there is pervasive fear.
Nation of snowflakes.
3
We have nothing to fear but the exploitation of fear itself....FDR's evil twin.
74
@Rick Gage
FDR forgot to mention spiders.
2
The world, with the US leading the way, is using resources faster than the planet can replenish them. Now that is something to fear.
The solution to such dire consumption demands action and sacrifice, cooperation and trust but our instinct is to grab more for our own pockets and persuade ourselves it is okay because others are less deserving.
we turn to fear because it is satisfying. It justifies self interested behavior.
2
Conservatism is a political philosophy based on fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of change. Fear of the other. The Republican Party has defined itself by constant and incessant fearmongering.
7
" For my last column I went back and read some profiles of Joe Biden written in the 1970s and 1980s. I was stunned to see how free-flowing they were, how little the authors were tied down by ideological rigidity and tribal mentality. "
It was during the 1970s that my near eastside Detroit neighborhood blossomed into a war zone. My family and neighbors were very fearful.
Joe Biden's perspective does not define an era for everyone any more than Krugman's peaceful and pleasant run in Riverside Park proves all is peaceful in American cities.
NYT, you do have some high self-esteem.
2
My great fear is that societies usually don’t experience an awakening to the kind of malignancy that is spreading about the world without a great tragedy that forces an awakening. The Great Depression and WWII come to mind.
We had our Great Recession, but the soft landing seems to have spared us the introspection that we so badly need. If anything Americans are even angrier.
3
David Brooks - sounding sincere and concerned about our current situation today isn't enough. Deal with the demons you helped usher in, and maybe America write large could one day follow suit and confront its past sins.
5
David,
It seems that you have not yet found your knight in shining armor among the Democrat gaggle of Presidential hopefuls?
I do not expect that the NYT censors to post this comment since it does not fit their version of Pravda.
1
To peg the birth of this "age of fear" on the date Sept 11, 2001, reminds me again of the evil genius of Osama Bin Laden. Did he understand what horrific long term effects his attack on New York City would have on America? The beginning of a war that appears to have no end? With the arrival of a political class that suggests an oligarchy for our country?
And our response to 9/11, did we feed the beast? Could our response have been handled differently by those in power? I don't know, but Brooks reminds us that there was a starting point to the madness that seems to be building.
I'm 81 years old, and feel as though I'm saying good bye to the nation I've known and loved all these years. I guess all good things do have an ending. But I sure as hell hope, that I can outlive the currently Presidency !!
11
David, have you been reading my mind, (just a little paranoia there)? Politicians have been selling fear for decades. McCarthy and the "Red Scare", Fluoride, UFO's, John Birch, Scary movies (the Birds, The Blob, the Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Psycho, Orson Wells and War of the Worlds). Today's group peddling fear are primarily Republicans, and gun rights activists. Think NRA and the gun industry, how else are you going to sell guns and ammo if people aren't afraid of "THEM", the OTHER. After all they might want to come take what you have. Nevermind the facts that relate to your particular group of fears which we are busy fanning into full blown conflagrations, "Anti-vaxxers anyone". The argument over "Climate Change" is exactly the same as that about tobacco. We need science and reason to return to public life. If you don't like the facts, learn how to change the situation.
David, if this was a backhanded endorsement ot Senator Warren, I'm sure it is welcome.
1
David, Seriously? You have consistently championed the conservative values and traditions that have caused the conditions that stoke our fears – and then you have the audacity to bemoan the fact that we are afraid?
You champion the predatory free-market and small government that have driven our society into two camps: the oligarchs and those who eat their crumbs, those who pay taxes and those who don’t.
You champion institutions and traditions like patriotism and the false gods of religion, but then seem amazed when they fail and prove to be mere mirages on which to build a society.
You elevate the individual over the collective and call for small, local initiatives to address our massive collective problems.
You mythologize American history into an idealized triumph of abstractions like freedom, religion, and community, when real history reveals tribal warfare and the triumph of the powerful and privileged over anyone not in their tribe.
And in re-writing history you give cover to and enable those like the Republican Party who hide behind those abstractions and exploit them for personal gain.
And you have the unmitigated audacity (or is it hypocrisy) to invoke the spirit of FDR to be our current savior, the man who empowered government as the solution and who initiated social programs we still rely on, but which your side smears as socialism - the anti-Christ.
David – your ideological resistance to the collective seems to be on the wane. Why not just embrace it?
9
" There is nothing to fear but,
fear itself" FDR.
2
The Republican Party lead by Trump has incited fear as a means to win votes and stay in power, and it's working. Yet we all owe Trump an apology. Right, Brooks? Each of your pieces convinces me more that you're just here to make a paycheck and stay relevant. There is no consistent philosophy of accountability, just words and feelings and willful ignorance.
5
The point is that the shooter is not a lonely fanatic. He's part of a internet-connected, expanding network of fanatical white nationalists. Mr. Brooks does a disservice by lazily repeating the myth of the lone wolf in the very first sentence of his essay. White nationalist terrorists act after having been influenced by online ideological recruitment efforts that glorify the brutality of other terrorists.
4
Americans are fed fear 24/7 from the moment we’re born.
Ever watch TV?
The commercials alone scare anybody who’s not numb to the portrayal of omnipresent threat—of looking bad, smelling bad, losing out, not measuring up, not having the latest and greatest, getting this or that (chronic-or-not) disease.
Then there’s the news—Heaven help us and save us!
Not to mention Law and Order, CSI, Criminal Minds, Blue Bloods, Chicago PD (or whatever it’s called).
Ever gone to the movies?
And I haven’t even mentioned the fear plaguing high school students about college admissions, SATs, student debt, having to live at home for the next 8-10 years, having to make 6 figures by the time they’re 30 or be a nobody, and, of course, getting murdered in algebra class.
My theory: We’re on a constant war footing, almost deliberately.
1
We have a "president" like no other in our history. Scared to death abouth the truth about his past, protected by the awsome power of the presidency to lie ad nauseaum about it. A man who projects his fears on the entire nation and on the world. Who has weaponized the misery of the most vulnerable in our society and around the world with unspeakable cruelty. Who has diminished the moral stature of our country and has carried the greed of the "me" generation to its logical extreme. A man who is trying to convert "The land of the Brave" into the "Land of the Scared".
7
Only a racist draws an equality between oppression studies and white supremacy. There is no difference between there is bad people on both sides arguments and Trump’s “fine people” among white nationalists.
Heather Heyer was against oppression, she had more to fear than fear itself. She died because a white nationalist murdered her. She was not equal to her killer.
And that is the line David Brooks draws.
It is a morally repugnant connection to make.
4
Brilliant comment and pure...truth!
1
Interesting that Mr Brooks puts the start of the Era of Fear on 9/11/2001. No mention of earlier acts of terrorism (hijackings in the '80s/'90s, timothy mcveigh's bombing of the Oklahoma federal building, many other incidents). He also doesn't mention the rise of rush limbaugh and ideology driven talk radio (primarily conservative, right-wing), and the emergence of fox news - both purveyors of paranoia for so-called conservatives - followed by the internet platforms where paranoid fantasies proliferate. So now we are in an age where Americans are afraid of each other, and Mr Brooks suggests better governance is the answer. Sure, but start with putting accountability on news organizations that are spouting untruths, fear of 'the other', and a view that democracy means your personal ideology is the only valid one.
6
I agree fear is rampant in the United States, but fear exists when there is an absence of logical critical thinking. I, pesonally believe that critical thinking, now more than ever, is in serious decline. How else to explain the irrationality of Trump's campaign rally audiences, or the remarkable denial of the rigorous scientific basis of climate change.
Of course critical thinking is learned from many sources, but perhaps most importantly it is learned from a robust educational system. And from what I've seen of that system - "times ain't now, Charlie, quite like they used to be."
2
Fear and politics and economics in the 21st century?
There is a lot to fear in the 21st century, starting with the fact that all political systems throughout history and to present day have ended with the most materialistic, grasping, fearful, power obsessed people at the head of society. Look today whether at the U.S., China, Russia or elsewhere and regardless of political system: ruthless materialists have achieved power and hand in hand with their grasping goes their talk of needing to increase security, order and morality in society.
History's losers in society are those who are not focused all day on acquiring money, power, property. The losers in society such as scientists, artists, anyone really who spends more than five minutes not thinking about money, often end up making the most remarkable discoveries and creations, often prove themselves the actual best people in society, but in the end all their achievements are either tossed out or in some manner reinforce the ruthless materialist's power.
Politics and economics in the 21st century now has the typical grasping people evident in every society and age throughout history with immense technological power at their disposal, promising to keep history's sad pattern of these type of people ruling continuing indefinitely. We need to break this pattern somehow, arrive at a higher scientific, artistic, philosophical ruling of society, but this is difficult to do when faced with such ruthless, grasping, predatory people.
An era, or a political/economic system, defined by fear?
If one is poor and unable to see beyond the next paycheck, one is either full of fear, or will soon be.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
5
Danger, Fear and Hatred. The media feeds on these primitive emotions. Feminism or the Women's movement has been trying to change these cultural positions for years. But look at the media -- what sells, obsesses our young people -- the Hunger Games. The Game of Thrones, etc. As if the big media companies stoke and profit from the basest of human emotions, as if preparing us to roll backwards into the Middle Ages or forward into Oblivion. Can this be controlled -- not as long as the Almighty Buck is the super standard of American life.
1
Gardening, too. Gardening reduces fear and stress. Try it sometime. It's relaxing.
But yes, Joe's got that quality that when you hear him speak and see him on stage that says everything is going to be OK. Even if there are bad things happening and yet to happen. Joe's steady and a rock. He's been through plenty of bad things and keeps an optimistic demeanor. America could use some sunny optimism with a dose of regular joe common sense.
3
The American people have a whole lot to fear since the days of Ronald Reagan.
They are more insecure than ever.
And fears are being stoked to further divide the country so it can be plundered by the very rich.
Americans have been betrayed by unfaithful leaders, and no one is there to protect them.
The Rule of law must return.
9
18th-century explorer-naturalist Alexander von Humboldt wrote:
"The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those who have who have not viewed the world."
Those who have not viewed the good in the world are the ones who fear it most.
4
"I might agree or disagree with some of Elizabeth Warren’s zillions of policy proposals, but at least they’re proposals. At least they are attempts to ground our politics in real situations with actual plans, not just overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet."
Brooks could have substituted the name Donald Trump for Elizabeth Warren in the first sentence and have been just as accurate. Trump also has lots of "actual plans". But these days Brooks's examples are usually anti-Republican.
Trump sees a "monster in the closet"? So does Warren, with her rants against Wall Street and big corporations.
David Brooks might be mindful of the apt phrase - Democrats love employees, they just hate employers. Maybe 30 years ago Brooks would have worked an opinion piece around that truism. Nowadays, not so much. (And AOC's rejection of Amazon's move to NYC is the best example ever of that truth.)
1
@HurryHarry
Yes, Amazon, a company that pays zero taxes while it's founder, the richest man in the world, has been instrumental in destroying retail and with it the necessity to ever leave your home. Working as low-wage robots in their vast warehouses, now dotting the formerly industrial/agrarian landscape of urban and rural communities, must be a slice of heaven. This lovely monopolistic business surely should be granted all kinds of taxpayer-financed subsidies to grow their little enterprise.
We little people with a sense of shopping nostalgia really enjoyed AOC's giving them a well-deserved swift kick in the pants. Please don't deny us our fun.
@Quite Contrary - too bad there're a whole lot of people who would have appreciated the jobs more than your political blather.
The fear emanates from the GOP. Fear when they are in control, because of the ways in which they reshape our democracy, especially in terms of selling it to the highest bidders, lining the pockets of their rich benefactors, and attempting to pay for all of it by taking from those already struggling. And it emanates in the aftermath of a GOP administration -- any GOP administration -- whether because of the endless wars they rush into for the benefit of their defense contractor overlords, or their crashing of the global economy because of the reckless behavior of the "masters of the universe" on Wall Street, where they confidently privatize profits and impose their debts and losses on the public fisc, or because they're covering up and pardoning those involved in the Iran Contra scandal. The fear, exclusively, emanates from your side, David. And what would be helpful is a column, or two, or ten, or a thousand, that exposes them for what they are -- a bunch of craven, selfish, narcissistic power mongers who will take down our democracy if they think it might benefit them in any measure of currency or power. Some of the media have failed, utterly, to honestly assess the current state of affairs. Others reveal the truth, regardless of how it reflects on their own past judgments and allegiances. The current hair on fire fear is justified. It's whipped up by the fear monger in chief, and it is alarming to those who see what he's trying to wreak on our once enviable nation.
8
Whenever Americans, especially Republicans, feel compelled to invoke fear in order to grandstand what they want prioritized, they reveal more about what's instead a platform whence their denial unduly shortchanges far more pressing issues. Instead of frantically fleeing from anxiety, try embracing it. Self-help no contest save for the sacrifice, lest leads shan't ever follow too.
2
There is a contradiction of sorts here : while building up a first rate case of 'fear as motivation' the columnist suddenly goes on to focus on his individual response of 'going for slightly boring politicians' instead of 'politicians ... who treat each election as a clash of existential identities ...'
But what serves as a way out for the columnist hardly spells out how the rooting of fear in the country at large can be dealt with.
2
This is all the Republican's fault since that one actor took office in the 80s. Vote them all out of office in 2020 and never vote for any of them again.
6
Bravo, David Brooks, for this Opinion. Until recently, I thought that in addition to climate change, 'the refugees', was one of the world's most critical problems. While, I still believe that, 'fear', has infected our thinking, our well being and our ability to resolve crucial issues. D. Brooks has turned to Biden as perhaps a figure capable of turning down the temperature, at least in this country. Along with Trump's venom and the transfer of wealth in this country, technology and the Internet, in particular, have jammed up our systems as much as speeding them up. The loneliness, the isolation, the hatred, the violence and the barrage of info/media/games/stuff -- the digitization of our lives -- is replacing connections between us, a sense of place and communities of support. Tectonic changes make for disruption, instability and fear. David Brooks points to 'fear' as a force we must recognize and work to overcome.
3
Fear. It's what Ronald Reagan sold and Americans bought it. Fear the government. Fear your neighbor. Look out only for yourself.
Well, almost 40 years later, here we are. We live in the country Reagan created. The land of fear. The thing Franklin Roosevelt told us was our greatest enemy in the 1930's Reagan politicized in the 1980's.
Now fear is everywhere and a way of life for most Americans. The only question now is, when will this fear boil over into violence?
5
In my life, nothing reduces fear like friendship and community. The buddy or even community that really has your back. Maybe that is what we are missing.
94
@JK, so true!
When my career [mostly] ended, I realized how few contacts I had outside of work. This isn't good.
So, I'm considering going back to church, and might re-join our local Jewish Community Center for the excellent fitness classes and overall friendliness factor. Each of these fosters a sense of community, in its own way.
Also exploring various volunteer opportunities, that don't involve just working on the computer.
9
@JK. I think you’re on to something. Ihave lived in large cities and small towns. Large cities of course have their advantages but one thing I’ve observed in small towns is that the fact that most people know each other seems to influence the ways in which they behave toward each other. Maybe they were less likely to scream at the grocery store clerk, steal from the local drugstore or run someone off the road because they knew them or their families, neighbors or friends.
5
I think the idea that fear is neccesariy the root cause of the current problem may not be useful. Unlike other mammals human beings are capable of a vast variety of basic behaviors and hatred may be as basic as fear. Sociopaths may be quite capable of sadism and hatred without feeling fear. Let us not try to find the root cause of current hatred. In any population of humans there will always be a percentage which lean towards hatred. Society needs to function to minimize and control this behavior without over analyzing it.
identify fear as its own independent force and confront it with hope and optimism....
1
Yes, amen for the boring politician. Which is why the actual winner of the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, would have made a fine president (assuming a normal Congress).
The fact that Clinton won by close to 3 million votes should be the Rosetta stone for understanding why Brooks’s belief that we’re all living in constant fear is well-intentioned but off the mark. The real America knew perfectly well that Trump was a complete phony and disaster, and decisively rejected him. It’s only through cheating that the GOP’s fear-mongering agenda can possibly win, and they used the cheating mechanism built into the Constitution to do it. (Can you imagine where we’d be now if Trump had won the popular vote and Clinton the Electoral College?)
And the Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans now living in concentration camps at the border know that Trump and his MAGA hat-wearing base represent the worst people in our society, and that the real America is ready to welcome them, as ultimately, we always do.
No, the fear we’re living with is being injected into our body politic by one side, and one side only. Only the Republican Party and its filthy rich masters are responsible for this, and the good, decent America is there doing its thing, hunkering down and waiting for better weather.
Everything else is normal adjustment to change, and we’re adjusting fine. It really is their fault, and Brooks needs to shed the last of his GOP allegiance, open his eyes, and face it.
5
Mr. Brooks, you are clearly overwrought. You need a break. Take a vacation from the media. Yes, things seem somewhat more chaotic than usual, but the dystopian world you are portraying exists only in your mind and you are perpetuating the very fear you decry.
1
Hey-- no gaslighting allowed!
@Niki Cervantes I am not. I have felt that way too, just in different circumstances.
Let’s not forget loneliness, match that with a fabricated fear is a perfect match for white supremacy
3
@CathyK
All this mythology about loneliness is letting some very evil people off the hook too easily. I don't think any of these guys were "fearful" either. I think they were hungry for fame and imagined or real approval from other evil men and women, and the world at large. Also, probably trying to get revenge on teachers, parents and bosses that didn't accord them whatever they needed/wanted. I think they are pathetic creatures, but I find it very hard to pity them as "lonely" souls.
Mere anti-social behavior combined with the dynamic effect of bonding via virtual relationships/memberships/passive social media viewing is all we've seen in these mass murderers. Saying they're "lonely" contributes nothing to understanding how to deny them celebrity and thus stem the proliferation of copycats. Not giving them what they seek - attention and fame, also highly efficient weapons - will do more to prevent repeats than sending them a card on their birthday, or inviting them to dinner, don'tcha think?
Greed. Follow the money. When the $ is #1, this is what you get.
3
Uhmmmm...didn’t you support the Iraq war in which almost one million Innocent Iraqis died and the region was thrown into turmoil? Glad you decided to come out as our moral conscience!
2
"Muslims are disgusting. Immigrants are disgusting. Republicans are disgusting..."
Mr. Brooks, it's the Republican's who spout the first two! And those ARE disgusting things to say.
It's the usual False Equivalence. "Both sides do it."
Right, but one side does it with the organizational and propaganda equivalent of assault rifles, while the other side typically "shows up for a gun fight with a knife."
Guess which one is which??
But you don't care. You even said on radio that you don't read the comments to your articles.
Such a supremely well-educated and well-spoken shill and hack you are, Mr. Brooks.
5
@Ambient Kestrel
I know plenty of Republicans and I've never heard that Muslims and/or immigrants are 'disgusting'. I've heard quite often that Immigrants should come here legally, assimilate, and not receive welfare. And that we shouldn't have to change our cultural norm to accommodate Muslims, but those are very different positions.
On the other hand, I've had liberals scream at me and literally spit in my face when they found out I mostly vote Republican these days. The most ironic incident came from someone with a "Hate has no home here" sign in their yard, who overheard a friendly conversation I was having with someone else.
@IWantAnotherOption, my experience is the OPPOSITE of yours. It’s the Conservatives screaming against “others” ...example the recent arrest of a vigilante in New Mexico who along with his gang of vigilantes were arresting undocumented people! I was a conservative most of my life, I know Conservatives! Liberals rarely shout at another person with a differing view. You’re comment is not credible.
1
I am afraid because Republicans in power have forsaken Democracy, The Constitution, simple fairness, The Golden Rule, and The Truth in favor of retention of power.
The evidence for this assertion is overwhelming and it now culminates in behavior which protects Donald Trump, an obviously impaired and deceitful man.
Fear is appropriate to the reality.
3
HOW SAD. President Trump is the personal whipping boy of the paranoid left. He had no chance to be elected was the holy grail of the democratic party. The liberal establishment called him a buffoon and has demonized him every since he was elected by the populist of America who are American patriots and citizens of this great country. The liberal element is too crazed over the loss of the imposition of their misguided ideologies to recognize that they are their own worst enemy. Wake up and start being responsible and do your elected civic duty to represent all the citizens of America which includes the President of America. Learn to come to the "table of decision making and compromise" without the mind set of demagoguery.
2
Whipping boy? The man who has children in cages?! The man who promotes hate, fear and lies?! Donald is no victim!
The only thing to fear is .... Donald Trump. Cast him and his sycophants out of office in 2020, and let the country emerge from the nightmare of the most unpresidential president in our great nations history.
5
David’s column reminds me of the creepy but melodic ditty that was around in the early sixties.
“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
You step out of line, the man come and take you away”
1
David Brooks is usually one of the most conservative and wonky opinion at the NYT but over time he appears to be moving more to the middle and occasionally slightly left. His utter contempt for all things Trump may actually be playing a role here and we can only hope that more reasonable minded conservatives will follow. “They say that perfect love casts out fear.”
All We Need Is Love!
2
'All news is Breaking News!'
We listen to ABC news in the evening (the other one is BBC), and it almost always starts off with a grave voice announcing, ' another vicious storm brewing in the northwest, several inches of snow in ..., torrential rain in .... , '.
And that is year-round!
2
Do yourself a favor turn off the TV. Go for a walk in the park or better...forest.
Why did you bury your good opinion of ELIZABETH WARREN at the end of your column?
People, there is a DIAMOND in all this rubble. See it!
3
The Heritage Society, Cato Institute, Koch Bros and Steve Bannon, among others, have been working on fear mongering and the marginalization of any views other than their own for over decade.
With enough fear and chaos they are able to disassemble American institutions.
The evidence of their anti-American values is everywhere: racism, hate, denial of science!
4
Once again, Mr. Brooks is dancing around the elephant in the room. Both sides do it, he says yet again. By implication, he tells us that all fear is the same. Let's just sweep it all under the rug. And elect a pragmatist,
Sorry, but no. Only one political party has resorted to fear in order to seize or retain power. Only one party has used lies and demonization to gin up fear.
Obviously, the fears that many folks have are justified and real, e.g., losing a job; societal change; insufficient savings; unexpected medical bills; college costs; Republican threats to decimate Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; Republican attacks on health care; etc.
The fears foisted on the nation by the Trump McConnell Republicans are divisive, hateful, dishonest, racist, resentful. Invasions at the border. Muslims cheering in New Jersey. Mexicans are rapists. The world economy is controlled by George Soros and Janet Yellen. Democrats are murdering our babies. Hillary Clinton is running a pedophile ring out of a DC pizza restaurant. They're going to take away your guns, religion, hamburgers.
The antidote is love, truth, knowledge and bravery. Once again Brooks is skipping blithely past the last three. Senator Warren has proposed a comprehensive set of plans and policies that are clear, idealistic and workable. Senator Sanders has not. FDR's legacy owes a great deal to Eleanor Roosevelt.
4
Rear overcomes rational thoughts. It stops the ability to think things out. The fear area of the brain takes over the cognitive regions. The brain becomes very susceptable to people like Stalin, Hitler, Trump etc. whom build on peoples fear processes. It is no longer what is probable it becomes anything that is possible. We are in that stage as a country. Everyday more destruction of our accepted traditions and values are torn apart and even more insecurity and fear develop.
1
The era started long before 9/11.
3
I'd say the Oklahoma City bombing even though domestic was the start of terrorism fears. Maybe even the Anthrax scares, Tylenol cyanide poisonings, or Unabomber also. So many.
1
I spent a whole bunch of time canvassing for candidates in 2016 and 2017. I encountered fear at most doors. Fear that I had entered their property. Fear that I was at their door. Fear that I might engage them in discourse about politics or a candidate.
I asked colleagues in my activist group about this. They freely rant on social media, but they said they shared the same fear of face-to-face meetings. They told me they don't want to see people on their property or at their door. It is an invasion of their space. And it is scary. You don't know who is out there, they said. And you don't take any chances.
Growing up in rural America, front yards were for meeting people, for greeting the world. Now, they feel like the first line of defense from the world. Suspicion falls on anyone unknown who breeches the line. The look at the door says it, if the door is even answered.
The houses on the canvassing circuits are carefully screened so that we do not encounter anyone who does not share our views. The instructions are clear: for our safety, do not engage in discussion.
Fear isolates us ...from people, from ideas, from opportunities to grow and learn.
I no longer canvass for candidates, because it is a waste of time, an empty exercise. We fear engaging with anyone who does not share our views. We fear giving offense, we fear being offended. We retreat to our caves, circles and safe spaces, to a world where we are safe from having to explain, defend or consider our views.
4
It’s good to know that there are some verities in life that one can depend on. One is that the Republican Party, devoid of any policy except lack of regulation of large corporations and tax cuts for the rich, will run on fear. Another is that David Brooks will continue his bothsides act no matter how much of a stretch it is.
You want to end this atmosphere of fear? Vote Blue.
1
Freud (I think) said that he could conceive of a society founded upon love as long as there was an external enemy to bind citizens together.
Watching the recent PBS series on the Korean War, I'm reminded of the grainy news clips I saw as a child in the early 1950s that spoke of the Communist Menace which was threatening our country. We no longer have a systematic external threat like the Nazis or Russians to fear.
Now, as Walt Kelly's comic character Pogo has noted, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
1
We’ve slowly stripped our citizens of any kind of security. Proposed cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Virtual elimination of retirement plans. The gig economy with little job security. Income inequality with no real sustainable minimum wage. A ridiculous medical system which is bankrupting people and covering too few. A president who lives to create hate and fear. I could go on and on. Is it any wonder?
1
Mr. Brooks you say, "I wonder if we’ve fully grasped how fear pervades our society and sets the emotional tone for our politics."
Yes, many of us have. The media rants about any shooting or other act of terror - and shooting of law enfocement officers - ad nauseum 24/7. Television, movies and video games primarily foster war-revenge-hate-anger-fear. Social media spreads it like wildfire.
Hate-anger-fear-LiesLiesLies-death destruction-WAR-rape-pillage-plunder messages have been fosterred for the last 40+ years by the Koch brothers and their international democracy-destroying brethren.
You have helped them immensely by blindly supporting and defending them. Shame on you. Shame on every single person who would allow OUR United States of America to be destroyed for a few demented people who think they should contriol the world and OUR lives.
WE THE PEOPLE see. WE will stop you and your paymasters through citizen action and voting to preserve/restore/improve true democracy in America and the world - Social and Economic Equity for ALL people.
1
So far as I know Mr. Brooks is not trained as a psychologist. I happen to be a psychologist with over 30 years if clinical work. Mostly in the US military. Mr. Brooks seems to have a knack for instinctively dissect human behavior. The fact that he is a voracious reader with wide and deep interests doe not hurt any.
So where is the Roosevelt of our time, willing to proclaim “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
1
While both sides have used fear to motivate their partisans, it is very obvious that this is much more a GOP trait, and has been for many decades. Starting with Joe McCarthy (communists in the State department) right on through Trump (fear of immigrant caravans), terrifying the public is a key element of GOP messaging. As Brooks points out, people who are afraid do not think clearly and continually vote agains their own interests. They are perfect foils for a Republican party bereft of ideas, whose main selling point is that the "other" is coming for your guns, your religious freedom, and even your life. It has been a winning strategy so will not stop any time soon.
1
This is a very safe era. From 1945 to 1991, we faced war with the USSR, From 1955 to 1991, we faced H-bombs and universal death.
During the Missile Crisis (1962), I was crossing the Bay Bridge to San Francisco, when it occurred to me that although I had been seeing the towers and cables all my life, they would probably be gone in another week. I wasn't alone.
Almost 100,000 American soldiers died in the Korean together with the Vietnam War.
In 1965, half a million Indonesians were killed by our anti-communist army buddies.
In 1958-61, more than 40 million Chinese starved to death, thanks to Mao's pigheaded ideas.
The contemporary massacres are much smaller. And we've not looked WWIII in the face for 56 years.
We should have less fear than fifty years ago. We don't. We have more.
It's neither the world nor our situations that generates the inordinate fear we experience at present.
How about the media, cops, DAs, politicos, entertainment, and other fear merchants?
Murderers everywhere (there aren't). Rapists everywhere (there aren't). The campuses are especially dangerous (they aren't).
Your child is in great danger from school shootings (no: 7 times as many are killed walking to school). That food can cause cancer/diabetes/impotence/cardiovascular disease/etc. (stop eating?) You should think twice about that med (quack quack)
Well, fear sells papers, police/judicial services, candidates...
Sometimes it seems like it makes the world go around.
94
@alyosha
The point is that it doesn't matter whether the fear is rational or irrational.
2
I agree with you. But the change in climate we are experiencing and not enough being done now scares me the most.
5
No one chooses to experience fear. It's automatic in nature and arises unbidden. When fear arises, the tendency is to create a storyline about it. As if one state of mind is better than any other? The word "fear" is not the thing....it's formless, shifting and cannot be described and the answer to fear is in fear. The Narcissist defends it's separate position fearfully - that's it's whole life. Fear still arises when the big ME falls away, but it arises for no one. Talking about what one should "do" to be free from fear is unrelated to fear. The world of fear kept in past memory is gone, and what has truly gone has no effects. Remembering a cause can but produce illusions of its presence and memory can come with the causelless given cause. Fear memory is history that time has taken away. To move beyond fear is to move with what is arising in the present both bidden and unbidden. Get used to all states of mind - the verticalness of the "what is" will set you free. Remembering will become quiet to what has come to take its place.
Sir, you have raised a very important point: the role of fear in our ability to think clearly. Recent (pre-publication) research suggests that fear in the face of crisis (how many crises are we facing) is not negative if approached correctly. Instead of trying to still fears or define them as over-reactions, face them, dissect them, then channel the results of these examinations into behaviors that positively affect situations producing fear. Climate change produces fear. Why? What do our fears (economic damage, political damage) tell us about the situation? Does it reveal possible solutions? We fear immigrants. Why? Who are they? What do they want? Can we help them? If so, to what extent? What else do we fear? Sickness? Yes. Our response. Medical research. Often we fear each other? Why? Are we too focused on 'winning' and not enough on each other's situations and how we can witness and help? What else? Because you have raised the question of our fear, we can stop, look it in the face, invite it to create wisdom in us, wisdom that can allow us to move forward. Thank you!
Brooks and the Rs always expand these critiques to include both political parties equally, when they are not busy only blaming the Ds. Truth is all of this fear stuff comes from the Republican side almost exclusively because its all they have to work with, as their policies are bankrupt, and fear does a good job for them keeping them in power.
1
Humans survived by being fearful, but many are still anchored to their own sense of a safe, comfortable childhood world. There is nothing new under the sun, but there is more of everything, including the means and speed with which humans can be manipulated. And including the population growth that makes many of us close in on ourselves! Trump may be wrong in saying that America is full and closed. But we may have exhausted our capacity to adapt to living in awful quarters like Antarctica or North Dakota.
2
The fear factor is fueled by way too much news coverage which greatly magnifies each violent event. The synagogue shooting killed one person. As tragic as that was, it did not deserve the news coverage that it received in a country of over 300 million people.
1
Reducing anxiety and thus fear should be the goal ,
but it is unlikely to be solved with Donald Trump . Trump was, by any standard only a moderately successful businessman , and has shown himself to be a pathetically bad diplomat who will very likely go down in history as an object of ridicule and scorn . ALL people in this country matter , and in order to reduce anxiety in our country we need someone at the helm who truly understands this .
Donald Trump never has grasped this concept , and from everything we have seen , he never will .
1
9.11.2001 Wait a minute.
It will be the 18th anniversary of that terrible day this year.
It is almost a draw - the Republican Party will have been on power for 10 of them, the Dems for eight. So think about that David. Just ruminate on that for a minute and you decide who hs the best interests of "Joe Public" in mind. You get three guesses David, the first two don't count.
1
In our lives, what we feel is more subtle than the word fear. It is the strength of the ever present anxiety coursing through our bodies as we try to fall asleep, glance at headlines, or overhear the conversations of others. We live with our anxieties over how close we are to being out on the street without a job or a home for our children. The anxiety escalates when the prices of fuel, rents, food and health insurance rise, but our wages go nowhere. We feel the tensing of the constriction of our blood vessels as we catch the scent of the hatred of the other in our communities... are we the other that is scorned? Our anxiety increases as the loud drumming voices scream that our second amendment rights are being taken away even though we have no gun in our home. Do we need one? Is there terror stalking in the dark corners of the neighborhood? We are told that our schools are failures, our churches are hypocritical money lenders at the temple door, our politicians have all been bribed by pacs and lobbyists, our businesses are failing because a worker asks for too much, our environment is killing us with polluted water, air and food, our climate as we have known it has spun into an irreversible cataclysmic dissolution. Wheww... it is the ever growing sense of doom, the anxiety that is eating us alive. Basic fear would be a lot easier to deal with.
1
After the last horrific killing highlighting religious conflicts, my daughter asked me if a scientist could prove that there was no god and put an end to religion, did I think we would all be better off.
My answer was no, I thought religion reflected the complexity of human nature - the ability to be kind, generous and truly altruistic as well as the ability to be cruel, greedy and selfish. In the absence of religion, we would still have human nature to contend with and how we express it.
I told her that I thought all humans sought community for security, comfort and tenderness. And when those needs are met, it triggers the better impulses of human nature. But when community and security are threatened, people tend to fall prey to anxiety, stress and fear and that can trigger the worst impulses in human nature.
I told her I thought we are in a period when people feel threatened. And that during such times, leaders can encourage us to harness our energies and take concrete steps to strengthen our communities and ourselves - to release the power of our better natures. Or, they can choose to be demagogues, deepen our fears and encourage us to unleash the darker side of our natures - to attack the "other" and strengthen their own power and hold on our community.
I told her the choices a society makes about leadership are probably determined by deep cultural biases, but the choices she makes are up to her and which side of human nature she wishes to express.
2
"Muslims are disgusting. Immigrants are disgusting. Republicans are disgusting." Hey, you forgot libtards! I quite agree about the dominant sense of fear in our culture today, but let's remember that one political party weaponized fear in order to get people to vote against their own political and economic self interest. Clinton and Obama both ran on the triumph of hope over fear; it is our Republican friends who have cynically used racism and xenophobia to get people to the polls. Trump is just Republicanism with its pants down.
2
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Franklin Delano Roosevelt. It seems like fear has been around a lot longer than 9/11.
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. FDR was right.
Fear and hatred, stoked by Trump, freezes society. We
are in a tribal civil war. Trump is bringing out the worst in us.
He was elected to shake things up. Now we need someone
to calm things down. I hate to say it, but sleepy Joe is
looking better all the time. But he needs to do a mass
apology to all the women he cuddled over the years.
3
I have long thought of David Brooks as a pretentious mutterer who elaborately evades real discussion of the central question of inequality creep as a prime source of growing fear and pessimism and pessimism among segments of Americans who in my youth (I am a 93 year old child of the depression) were a hopeful backbone of the country for all their frequent bigotry and bitter populism. Our swoop towards vast inequality and hopelessness started six decades ago with John Kennedy's tax cuts for paper pushers in the top income brackets and accelerated when Carter and Reagan and their successors largely let it stand and grow. Trump saw what he could do with this gross dismissal of lower income working people. This sixty years of growing unfairness more than 9-11 is the source of our social mistrust, shakiness and penchant for "safe spaces". Brooks' words of interest in Elizabeth Warren's suggestions hints that he does see a role for government in reversing our decline of fairness and morale.
1
Well said, Mr. Brooks. I agree we have been crippled by fear. And yes, 2001 was the turning point and I've never understood why. As a country we have wrought miracles, starting from no more than one good idea from one leader. Then we made it real out of our boundless optimism and courage. How did we lose our way so badly? Why did Americans become such wimps? We used to be a strong people and we need to find that strength again.
1
I look forward to a campaign that will provide us reasons to hope again. Our country's been awash with fear, frustration and anger for too long; any more of it and we'll become numb, a feeling far worse than what we have now. The Democratic candidate who promises a return to decency, who promises America will be American again, who provides solid plans with a moral compass to guide their unfolding, ought to be welcomed with open arms by all of us who are desperate to feel optimistic again. But we can't just sit back and watch, our job will be to help the nominee get elected. Anything less, without a new Democratic president, without the current executive being held accountable, and we'll enter into a new era that will come to be known as "The days where nothing mattered, nothing at all".
1
We have two post-Millennial daughters, ages 22 and 19, who truly, explicitly and legitimately fear for their future on this planet. The younger one, in particular, is in that uneasy place where she doesn't even want to commit to relationships in the longer term, knows implicitly that our current economy will not avail her of the lasting opportunities that we Baby Boomers had back before the scourge of income inequality moved from fringe to mainstream policy, and constantly lets us know how she, her sister and their generation, and those after them, are staring at a dire outlook for quality of life, thanks chiefly to global climate change. We respond with lame apologies for aiding and abetting the rape of the planet, ask them to find a positive thread to cling to — friends, family, the blessing of America despite its current fraying fabric — and, yes, to vote, vote, vote for true progressive (read: bipartisan) change. And to not let fear consume their lives. It's a tough sell these days, but they do keep getting out of bed every day. To me that's a green shoot in the scarred landscape, and we must nurture it.
5
When humans sense danger, we release chemicals that trigger neurological responses. That occurs naturally, and it reflects how we are put together at birth. Some of us have a balance of chemistry so that our first impulse is to fight, to resist, to take action, to DO SOMETHING. Others are prone to turn away, flee, lie down, run away, fall into the fetal position, maybe pray. There are degrees of balance. No boxer, male or female, has ever had to combat depression in order to enter the ring, but people who are strongly disposed to action are good candidates for that activity.
President Trump presents himself as a combatant. He once said he'd "like to punch Michael Bloomberg in the face"...but he didn't. He posed as the tough boss who said, over and over again, "You're fired!" but he either asks the people who work for him to fire people, or he does it by tweet, or he waits for the person is on a trip and does it by email, or twitter. His appetite for direct physical confrontation is minimal. A real combatant would not have paid a physician to swear he had bone spurs to spare himself having to serve his country in time of war. A real tough guy wouldn't have settled lawsuits by paying damages, nor plead bankruptcy four times.
He'll continue to act tough until a few people in other branches of government show that they are not afraid of the consequences of impeachment or indictment, at which time he'll probably pull a Nixon, resign and get President Pence to pardon him.
2
President Trump’s fear mongering certainly rises to the top in our era defined by fear, but in more subtle - just as significant ways - there are other causes; namely media, marketing, advertising and technology.
Certainly technology carries the rhetoric of the President – not to mention extremists and hate groups – far and wide at high speed. But there is also – always – another subtler, just as damaging message beneath…the “I am not enough” message.
Long before 9/11 was the advent of the 24/7 news cycle. Since then, the media has been enslaved to advertisers for the creation of news to fill our 24-hour day...so there’s always a story of violence, disaster, or heartbreak available to stoke our fear and wear out our empathy.
Marketers and advertisers main objective is to manipulate you emotionally - right down to the specific music played in brick and mortar stores - so you believe you need their product or service.
Over-use of technology creates anxiety, loneliness, and misperceptions about what real relationships feel like; it has users believing they must constantly tend to their myriad technological communication channels…with their real relationships on the losing end.
All of this, and our inability to separate from it, has most folks feeling as though they are “not enough” and needing to belong to something, to anything…to anyone. Hence, Trump and leaders like him.
As the phrase goes, “I have seen the enemy and he is…us.”
81
@Kelly Grace Smith Perhaps the Best, first thing to do (when we get sane individuals doing the governing) would be to remove the tax deduction for Advertising.
Imagine just how much money would flow into the coffers of Government, and yes, it Would limit the amount that Advertisers spend, but they have taken something from being able to any person hang their shingle and their front door IS their sign and sole advertising other than word of mouth and your product.
Now advertising itself is a product, and yet it is a tax-deductible one, so it shorts us not only from profitable businesses using extra advertisement as a tax dodge, and some companies running only on advertising and holding a platform on which to advertise, and yet it is tax-free for them to do so aside from the standard business/income tax.
Remove advertisement as a business expense and make it taxable would limit a lot of activity.
It would likely increase the rate which folks like myself would have to pay for news services, or paying for those advertisement platforms without the ads.
Advertisers do NOT have the automatic free right to blast me and my mind-space with their inane drivel to make me buy the products that I can neither afford, use or desire.
With the Web as it is EVERYBODY, when they want something they look it up specifically, and will scroll through different lists and spreads looking for the exact product they Want.
Making susceptible people impulse buy overpriced junk is criminal anyway.
6
@Kelly Grace Smith
Wouldn’t it be such a beautiful, nurturing nation if all public advertising were banned! Look over there: trees, hills and sky!
Been to Europe? They realized that a longtime ago. Time we did the same.
4
@White Prius
Thank you for your reply. A funny story to that effect...
I frequently walk & hike at a beautiful, large, wooded local park. I am walking a couple of miles into the forest and I am passing by a small lake...
I walk by a little family and I hear the young daughter say, "Mommy, it smells like dryer sheets!"
And the mothers says, "No honey, the dryer sheets smell like the outdoors...smell like here."
1
I grew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, in the shadow of a soon-to-happen nuclear war, that would kill us all. We watched On the Beach and How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb. At the same time, we were cautioned never to say anything that sounded even slightly favorable to Communism or the USSR, or our own government would come and get us. So I don't see the fear as new. It's just that now we fear each other.
108
"An era defined by fear" is really an era defined by anxiety. For many, this anxiety does not lead to fear, but to working harder and longer hours, keeping a positive attitude and outlook, and welcoming immigration that supports growth. For others, anxiety leads to fear - afraid that their jobs will be taken away by others, that more factories will be shut down, that things will get worse, not better. So if we want to deal with the the real emotion, anxiety, we have to build a strong safety net that includes health care for all, no matter what the circumstances, home insurance that guarantees your right to stay in your home even if you lose your job, access to college without building up huge loans, and so on. Reducing anxiety will reduce fear, and would go a long way to helping to stabilize American democracy.
54
This one is not hard to grasp. After World War II the United States stood astride the world like a colossus. Of the 100 most important industrial products in 1946, United States was the lead producer of 99 of them. (In bicycles we were second to France).
By the 1970s, Europe and Japan had rebuilt with our help. The pressure of competition was exacerbated by the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and suddenly America felt vulnerable. Ronald Reagan came along with a solution that sounded logical to the ears of a public conditioned by the Cold War to believe the Left was always going to lead to Soviet-style authoritarianism: unrestrained capitalism, lower taxes and unionbusting. Just as the global economy was about to undermine the place of American workers, and the technology of the personal computer and the digital revolution that followed would displace many millions more, the United States embraced laissez-faire capitalism and completely walked away from the only kind of action, from a strong federal government, that could possibly protect the middle class in the face of vast global and technological changes.
Mr. Brooks seems puzzled by the rise of fear, just as professional economists seem puzzled by the lack of inflation. Why is this so hard to see? Ordinary people are frightened because they are on a 40 year losing streak. Workers in the most advanced economy needed nimble solutions from their government. They got animosity from the GOP and appeasement from the Dems.
97
@Pancho
"Workers in the most advanced economy needed nimble solutions from their government."
Some problems are impossible to solve with government policies. There simply is no way to stop the advancement of automation which is displacing many workers. Nor is there a policy that will stop the outsourcing of jobs -- although Trump is trying harder to do that than his predecessors.
2
@Phil Study German industrial policy. Imagine vast infrastructure programs creating good middle class jobs for lower skill workers. Think of how a labor representative on every Board of Directors might push for US-based solutions to global competition. Think of how decoupling health insurance from employment would ease the minds of the displaced. No one is saying the clock needs to be turned back, or advocating Ludditism. There is a lot policy could do to protect the middle class. The GOP took your view; the Dems cowered, and focused only on non-economic rights.
24
@Phil
Of course government policies can affect outsourcing of jobs! It just takes time when US policies over the last 40 years have been doing the opposite.
4
Fear is a natural by-product of change, and even though change pervades everyday life in ways large and small, it nonetheless has a disproportionate effect. Until it doesn't because facts have negated the impact of that fear.
I was once charged with leading a large organizational transformation and experienced this firsthand. Fear paralyzed most of the affected staff members -- who will be my boss tomorrow? will my chances for advancement be harmed? is this the beginning of a process to eliminate my position? and on and on and on.
I confronted this head on over the course of a year with a series of all-hands meetings, followed by sessions with discrete sub-elements of the affected organization, liberally infusing my comments with observations about change (my favorite from J. Edwards Deming to Japanese automakers: "It is not necessary to change; survival is not mandatory."). But rather than inflating their fears, openly discussing the changes ahead quickly calmed nerves and the organizational re-alignment succeeded.
What's different about the fear gripping our country, of course, is that it's being deliberately inflated and used to divide rather than unite us. And who has chosen to manipulate this for personal gain at the expense of millions and millions of citizens? The man who swore an oath to protect and defend us, who depends on lies to divide vice truths to unite us in common cause.
To survive this, it is necessary to change. Vote accordingly.
78
@Larry I agree. Change happens. We either embrace it and make the best of it, or we spend our lives in a state of constant frustration, opposing the unstoppable.
4
@Larry
Great statement until the final paragraph. Why does everyone think it all comes back to Trump? Is he not just a regular person that leveraged an already existing environment? Enough of the Trump this, Trump that, already.
@nonmoneyd
When discussing fear in the country I think people "always" bring it back to 45 because he makes so many comments and claims directly tied into fear. As an example, when trying to 'sell' the American people on the wall, he approaches it first and foremost from a "CARNAGE AT THE BORDER" paradigm. See his numerous comments about "Mexican rapists and drug dealers," "invasions" at the Southern border, "lawlessness" in Chicago, etc. Preaching fear is Donald Trump's political style, it is his go-to move. To not discuss 45 in a conversation about "An Era Defined by Fear" is a glaring determent to any arguments on the subject.
5
The overwhelming background fear bedeviling our world? Climate change.
Too many of us busily wrecking our glorious home world - the related fear? Not enough to go around for all of us, our children, their children.
What are all those zombie movies really about? An unthinking, consuming horde - a contagion that reduces all conscious existence to a perpetual death of insatiable, unsatisfying consumption.
Humans have to find our way to an economic and cultural model based on the lasting pleasures of social connection and meaning - not just consuming. As a herd, we all know this in our reptile brain - we see that our leaders are not addressing this crisis. Thus, the existential fear David is calling out.
2
Why no mention of the proliferation of guns and gun violence in this essay? Is the gun issue insufficiently political for Mr. Brooks? Let's ask the Parkland students and the Tree of Life survivors.
3
"They say that perfect love casts out fear" "They"? You might want to give an attribution: 1 John 4:18.
"Enough with charisma. Enough with politicians who treat each election as a matter of metaphysical survival, a clash of existential identities."
How is climate change depicted? How many articles and columns have appeared in the NYT describing climate change in the most extreme language as an existential threat?
3
If good governance is the antidote to the bushel of fear we consume daily, then why can't the author come out of his closet and condemn Trump for stoking the body politic with fear, the disease spreading like wildfire throughout the nation ?
2
The media thrives on stories like this. A shooter in a place of worship kills one and injures others.
How would the public interest be harmed had that crime not been reported? How is the public interest harmed by its wall to wall coverage and political weaponization?
I fear climate change. Some things should be feared. Deeply feared. Hello?
3
While there legitimate anxieties to living in the U.S. today, we exist in an environment seeded by our leading cable news network, the trusted go-to for conservative viewers. Their clarion call is that there is a physical and cultural invasion by the ‘other,’ who are diseased in mind and body, and that white Christian America needs to answer the call and fight back, lest they fail their God and perish. After decades of this message, we see the results in the rise of white nationalists, black church fires, synagogue attacks, all abetted by the president they adore (despite his occasional and weak statements to the contrary).
I wish I had some pithy advice, but I have no idea how we rescue these people from the cult they have joined.
2
Anytime I'm out of the country, I find my reflexes inappropriate. Where I get ready for a dog attack, others reach out their hand to pet it.
1
Why Marvel, superhero comic book movies currently rule the box office: systemic fear.
The New Dark Age. How many times to I have to say it. David Brooks skirts the issue time and again. Look at history, the Enlightenment had people looking out of themselves. The Dark Ages had them looking in.
A case in point. I argue with my friends that insist that they drive their young kids to school. They go on about how there are creeps out there that would prey on them.
The data is clear. A given child is more likely to get harmed or killed by their parents driving them to school than getting hurt or killed by some creep picking them up on the way to school. In fact the data is not even close.
So, why do parents who claim to be looking out for the best interest of their children do something that puts them in harms way?
Ignorance and Fear.
If the majority of Americans can not get it right and let their kids walk to school, like I did and perhaps David Brooks did, then why should anyone think that those same people will befined by anything other than fear in everything else?
1
I agree with David's thrust here but how in the world do such thoughtful, contemplative efforts compete with the endless, flashing red breaking news on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the broadcast networks and the obsessive attention given to every single Donald Trump, what was the phrase David used, "overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet"? We can't budge out of this vise we are locked in unless the media start thinking about the public interest instead of their bottom line profits and Nielson ratings.
2
@wjasonjackson
Well, put, but let me suggest that Democrats can fight back against the media to win in 2020.
The fear we now experience may be a prelude to a new democratic wave. Trump is creating a counter-current.
Take Leonard Cohen's "Democracy" song (1992):
"Democracy is coming to the USA" he sang.
I believe Democrats have the opportunity to fight back,
with a new democratic wave, if they work at it, constantly.
Perhaps Democrats can start by quoting the words of the
"Democracy" song; again and again...
Maybe, David Brooks can comment on "Democracy".
-----------------------------------------------------------------
I just don't see it this way at all. I don't mean to be snarky, but David Brooks has devolved from one of The Times' best columnists, to an amateur armchair sociologist who presumes to understand all of our deepest thoughts and concerns. His new book about leading a "moral life" is a kind of apotheosis to this holier-than-though attitude. We've actually pulled off a remarkable thing since 9/11. More people are traveling than ever thanks to our remarkable tracks record of keeping airports and aircraft safe. Rather than living in fear, people are on the move. We've had no major terrorist incidents since then thanks to our incredible first responders and intelligence people. Yes, bad things happen. But in relation to the kind of real fear most people had to love in literally since the dawn of humans, our society is incredibly well managed. Moreover, I'm a teacher and the kids I encounter are nothing like the over-protected coddled stereotypes Brooks propagates. Maybe he overprotected his kids; I don't know. But he certainly doesn't describe the ones I see year-after-year. Yes, broken homes are a real problem, but my understanding of the data is that this is getting better, not worse. To paraphrase Roosevelt, the only thing we have to fear are people like David Brooks, who make a living preaching about how bad things are. And if the comments in this column are any guide, he's speaking for plenty of people. That's too bad.
1
When googling for countries that have the highest ratings for social happiness,the Nordic lands seem to be high on the list. They have hygge or as the Germans say Gemutlichkeit. We don’t have easy translations but the words seem to mean a sense of intentional intimacy or joy of being with others. I think this countries strong sense of individuality gets in the way. We have many different religions,races, ethnic groups but have not learned how to ignore our differences and find a common ground with hygge.We abhor the word socialism. In too many aspects of our lives it’s every man for himself. David Brooks my not agree with the Elizabeth Warrens of the world but I feel her ideas may bring us a little more hygge or as the Germans say Gemutlichkeit.
4
Fear, anger, blame - The three cornerstones of propaganda, known for millennia, but heretofore mainly associated with the Soviet Union. One political party and an associated media universe has depended on inciting their supporters . Now joined by Pres. Trump, they are pumping up the volume to increase rage and further insulate their supporters from the rest of the country.
Another assist? The fourth estate which is increasingly focused on ramping up fear as a way to increase ratings and revenue. "ALERT!"
To believe that politicians will stop using fear to motivate the public or that the media will stop using fear to motivate readers or viewership is silly. To believe that people do not need and desire it is to ignore what they do
The solution is simple enough. Turn off the news or at least limit it to 15 minutes a day. Ignore all politicians and their rants and tweets at least until ten days before the election—you have no control anyway
And spend all the hundreds of hours of freed up time to actually do something yourself
If this piece got us to do that Brooks will certainly be fired but he will have done a lot of good
Tellingly, David Brooks snatches our attention from the pettiness of media news filtering and points us toward Elizabeth Warren who singularly presents an ever expanding platform upon which she stands. I await the DEBATES!
1
I thought the giant Women's marches all over the country after the election of 45 were very optimistic.. Lets do more of that..
Lets do more voting for people who are not interested in fear-mongering or manipulating the system to remain in power.
Vote 2020!
1
I can't understand when these shootings take place and a clear connection is discovered between the shooter and white supremacy that he's still described as a "lonely fanatic?"
America needs to wake up to the fact that white supremacy is an ideology, not a psychological disorder. It has a history, a philosophical outlook on the world, a collection of pseudo-scientific ideas and a political mission.
The fact that this or other shooters may be mentally disturbed doesn't change the fact that they are encouraged to carry out their carnage as part of a broader ideology.
This doesn't mean that we abandon our First Amendment values to combat this menace. It does mean that white supremacy will foster and grow if it is not countered by an equal and opposite force.
This obviously isn't happening. And it's time to call out the president for his not so veiled support for this world view.
The numbers don't lie. Since Trump's election there has been an increase in hate crimes as measured by FBI statistics.
The media can't continue to avoid this issue. Doing so is costing lives. And the Democratic hopefuls must make the argument and back it up with the facts that this president has encouraged and supported white supremacy. And they must be willing to say what they as president would be prepared to do about it.
There are answers and there are ways of going forward. But so far this energy is coming from private individuals, not our elected representatives.
4
@Drspock,
I believe insecurity is the basis for white supremacy. But it's not so much that insecure people need to feel superior; it's the stoked fear from the outside that the "Others" who are easily identified by the color of their skin, are coming to take their stuff, and will end up marginalizing them.
Donald Trump, banking on these fears, had, in essence, throughout his campaign, proclaimed only he alone could protect white people. And thus, the most fearful among us voted for him.
@Drspock
Never mind that anti-Semitic rhetoric is coming from Democrats and this paper (but I repeat myself), and not President Trump.
Unfortunately some fear is necessary, like from climate change. And some fear is merely stoked for selfish ends, like every thing single tweet by our opportunist in chief.
5
David Brooks' tone is often that he is speaking for all of us, when, if he were honest, he would claim these feelings as his own. Rooting fear in 9/11 because our seemingly invulnerable nation suddenly felt tremendously unsafe? Good grief! Maybe for a wealthy New Yorker like Mr. Brooks that was the case.
When I lived in Virginia in the 1990s, it was still a felony to be queer and the law of the land was that lesbian moms could (and did) have their children taken away from them because courts found us inherently unfit to be mothers.
People who still live on the margins, or on the streets, keep company with fear on a daily basis. Safety outside the ivory, doorman-protected tower is a luxury and an illusion.
I recommend Mr. Brooks (and anyone else who thought this column was pitch perfect) read Audre Lorde's poem "A Litany for Survival." And then get out and spend some time with people who are struggling to meet their most basic needs. Or volunteer in a prison, where we're warehousing hundreds of thousands of able-bodied poor people for nonviolent crimes. Or volunteer with a group that provides services for trans people.
If you can't do that, at least own your own naivete about fear being some sort of 21st century phenomenon. If anything, this political era has awakened privileged white people to what those on the margins have been living with for centuries. Welcome to our world.
3
"...In the years since [9/11] the shootings have been a series of bloody strikes out of the blue." No! The FBI and local law enforcement tell us this is not correct.
The experts who track white supremacists say that the recent synagogue shooting is no surprise. There is a subculture of internet websites dedicated to whipping up hate and encouraging violence against Jews, Muslims and immigrants. Of the 50 acts of terrorism last year in the US, all were attributable to white supremacists.
Uniquely, this form of terrorism does not attract the presidential rhetoric and national security resources to extinguish it. Jews, Muslims and immigrants see this and they are right to be fearful.
1
Everyone in the comments doesn't understand that this is a fear of YOUR VICTORY.
Forgive the sports analogy but the collective angst is watching the progressive team marching down the field, up 2 scores with the clock winding down.
Progressive ideas have won. Across corporate America, universities, primary schools, the news media and TV/movies.
Everywhere you look are stories about minorities succeeding, glowing (some would say deceptive) praise of all manner of progressives are now enshrined in children's books, freshman seminars and mandatory corporate trainings.
To say you support capitalism is something of an embarrassment not just in Manhattan but in Montclair, Macon and Midlothean (just a few suburbs that fueled the 2018 Dem wave).
The fear is of the new world, and its attendant cultural mores and attitudes, that is being foisted upon the U.S. Its march is irrevocable and irresistible.
Its obvious why 47% of the country fears it but for its liberal denizens where does your fear come from?
2
Thank you David Brooks for calling out the disease that plagues us all that pay attention to the media and world events.
I've become a political junky and have very recently assessed my mental wellness and see that it has changed me. I'm more meloncholy, less optimistic and easily inflamed by some ridiculous action by our present Republican led goernment. Therefore, I've stopped watching news in the morning and only an hour in the evening. I wish you and all the news commentators would get off Twitter and stop use it to guage how much you are loved or hated. I feel like only the most fearful and angry people are on that platform. Why would anyone continue to be abused by these lonley despots?
Lastly, I send you parise for raising the issue that fear is the weapon that will destroy us. We cannot sustain this level of fear, hate, murder and meaness. It must end or it will destroy democracy.
Stay the course. Keep speaking. Many of us are listening.
Are people really fearful? Or is it the political hacks that pervade the media trying to tell us how to feel? David lives in a bubble. He tries to get out of it and he does once in a while. But, he always ends up where he started, back in the bubble.
1
The GOP has relentlessly and openly pursued racial bias for decades with its Southern Strategy dating back to Richard Nixon when he pledged to fight Civil Rights in exchange southern state loyalty. Nixon turned them from Blue to Red.
President Obama courageously bore the heavy burden of being the first black president in America, a country whose politics still display the scars of the Civil War. The GOP then paved the way for Donald Trump who built his career on his relentless racist Birther attacks on President Obama.
Trump has attempted to legitimize racial hatred and has built a devout following of like-minded people. This voter base is critical to the political power of the Republican Party that has no shame whatsoever!
1
Once again Brooks traffics in false equivalencies... "All politicians run on fear." But the Repulican party for generations has used fear to get the votes of working and middle class whites who would not support the party's economic pocket-picking policies alone. Over the decades they have peddled fear of communists, activist college students, womens' rights, blacks, gays, immigrants, transgenders, muslims, Jews, and socialists. They stoke these fears with crude stereotypes and lies. Trump rode these fears to the presidency, but he followed a path laid down by generations of Republicans. Democrats have their own issues, but presidents from Roosevelt to Obama have run on a platform of hope. Brooks is right to call out the politics of fear, but let's pin that tail on the Republican party, where it belongs.
3
David Brooks stops short. If the purpose of terrorism is to terrorize, then on September 11, 2001, the terrorists won when we collectively surrendered to fear.
1
Trump peddles fear "....caravan of criminals, MS13 etc", GW Bush peddled WMD's that didn't exist and killed over 5,000 GI's, Reagan peddled "welfare queens" which also didn't exist. One party, the GOP, has used fear successfully to get elected because they couldn't get elected otherwise. I also blame an ignorant, fearful, dumbed-down electorate putting these phonies in office, thanks to the press also abdicating their jobs; focusing on everything but the policies and issues before an election.
Many fears have grown from: the virtual elimination of any pensions for retirement, the reduced existence of having a job for 30 years, increasing healthcare costs with no end in sight, 47% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck such that a $400 emergency would be out of reach, both parents having to work to support a family when only one parent worked when I was a child, and most families on a perpetual financial brink of bankruptcy. These are solvable problems. The greatest disparity in wealth since the gilded age has resulted in the flocking of support to the more socialist candidates. How could it be otherwise? Our government is now responsive to the highest bidder, NOT the electorate. This will have to change...now.
I don't think it's mere coincidence that a sense of fear has risen as society places less value in history, and only values NOW. If nothing else, knowledge of history teaches you that you are not the first to face human struggle. In one way or the other, your (and your generation's) struggles are not really unique. Instead, your struggles are as old as history. Just like all the people who came before you, you'll likely find your way to muddle through. Heck, a little knowledge of history might teach you that you might actually have it better in some ways than all those who came before you and faced similar struggles.
1
"...not just overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet."
But we can't pretend the monster doesn't exist either.
The illustration was perfect for a column about fear. Yves Tanguy has been always been one of my favorites. The Fellig work to illustrate Krugman's column was also perfect. Outstanding art and choices by the NYT.
1
Fear is so endemic and all pervasive in our society that we barely notice it. As you say Mr. Brooks fear creates its own moral blindness. Fear is not new to us, but our response to it is. When FDR spoke of fear the people could listen and work together to overcome that fear of invasion or subjugation by a foreign power. Today we withdraw into our separate camps and often live in denial. We just had a foreign power invade our political process and what is done at least by those who only look to their own political power? Deny it all and do nothing. Fear if it is to have any positive affect must bring us together to take action. Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell take action in a positive way. We no longer need your fear mongering and useless denials.
As usual, loyal member of the Professional Republican Commentariat David Brooks never mentions that the current era of fear-of-everything-different has been brought to you by his Republican Party. He never admits that Trump is a fellow Republican, never mentions that Republican Party operative Roger Ailes is responsible for the all fear all the time fake news at Fox. Never a mention that his Party’s leaders have been caught saying to each other that keeping the base afraid is the best way to herd them toward whatever cliff the Party wants lead America over any given day. Apparently, the particular flavor of Christianity Brooks is converting to to please his daughter-wife doesn’t stress honesty.
1
9/11 was definitely a negative catalyst. To that I would add the financial crisis and the government response thereto. The crisis added to the fear. The response averted disaster but ended up helping the investor class much more than the working people. As a result many Americans became pessimistic, resentful and looking for scapegoats.
Fear is an essential emotion. Without it, we would but out lives in harms way continually. There are times, of course, when we must conquer our fears and accept danger. Parents do this instinctively to protect their children.
Soldiers (and law enforcement officers and firemen, plus others) do it because they have to.
And while some fears are irrational, others are not. What I see now is an all encompassing national epidemic of fear for our future: for our country. This fear is not confined to one side of the aisle, as Congress divides itself. The right is afraid of losing their power, the left of losing their freedom.
2
This is the first opinion piece I’ve read in...literally, years...that actually gives me a glimmer of hope that we might overcome the seemingly universal social phobias dividing and diminishing us all. Maybe if we recognize the insidious pervasiveness of fear we will be able to rise above it. Thanks, David.
1
I like the premise of this article, but middle class wages are rising? Really? A slight uptick, maybe, but nothing to overturn the imbalance of the last 40 years and the jobs being created are certainly not high paying on a large scale.
1
@Ron Cumiford
"the jobs being created are certainly not high paying on a large scale"
That's the inevitable consequence of automation and globalization. Any high paying job that can be automated or outsourced, will be. The job market is now global: American workers are competing with those in Mexico, China, and Vietnam.
1
Are there more reasons to be fearful today than 20 years ago? Is "fear" a greater political "weapon" today? I totally agree with the general tenor and warnings in this article. I too am impressed by Warren's relentlessness to "make things better". That is the known antidote to fear. Maybe it is time to begin to judge candidates on this criterion - defeat fear - and not simply on "who can win".
1
Just arrived back in the Pacific Northwest after six months in Mexico and hit the disc golf course immediately. For me the only improvement the US has to offer over life down south is disc golf. Walking in the beautiful woods, I passed the practice green where two young men were engaged in shrieking threats and obscenities at each other. This went on for five minutes. I can assure everybody that one would never ever witness such a scene in Mexico. The US may have more material goodies and choices, but the current atmosphere is toxic, angry, fearful, hurried and harried, overly busy, less social, and less family oriented. The list goes on and on.
4
This may be an era defined by fear but for me it does not hold the dread of my childhood.I was just starting school when the Second World War started.We had to do air raid drills as first graders.So many fathers of my friends were overseas and in danger.I feared the Germans and the Japanese and realized that their gunboats were off the coast of our country.I was certain the Germans were coming to get me-they had taken over all of Europe except for Britain which was waging a frantic battle.There was no internet or TV but movies, radio and newspapers broadcast the ghostly stories.Fear did come in the night but we did pick ourselves up and go on.Despite my deadly fear of the Germans , our family had a German exchange student just six years after the war.The friendship with her family exists today.
4
Fear is such a useful tool to herd the masses to accept what is good for the Establishment and its status quo.
Certainly fear has been useful in promoting the ever so popular Endless War.
And now there is the heavily promoted fear of Russia.
A better educated citizenry might be able to see through the heavily promoted fear, but with most media totally invested in the values of the Establishment and its fear promotion, a better, more peaceful and sustainable future seems difficult.
The idea that the profit motive of capitalism could ever create long term decent human community is mostly unquestioned because of fear of change.
Relative to providing for the basic human needs such as healthcare and housing, the profit motive has been a failure.
But the Establishment and its status quo, need, promote and protect the fear of change.
3
I am reminded of this , written by Edmund Burke:
"I was persuaded that government was a practical thing, made for the happiness of mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle of uniformity to gratify the schemes of visionary politicians."
2
The party of "good government" trying to do things "for the people" is not the Republican party. I think you're making the case for Democrats. Finally.
9
"Anger is the child of fear," you say -- no, anger is the child of cheating, of stealing, of a rigged system. We live in an era of economic injustice, not fear. Fear has little to do with it. Fear is is a condescending way to shame and belittle those that seek, demand, protest and fight for equal access and equal pay.
10
The reason why people who were mayors and are now governors tend to make better presidents is because they had to accomplish something for their fellow citizens. It is not enough just to take positions or make speeches.
5
"Fear runs ahead of the facts and inflames the imagination. "
And I think fear is the logical follow-on to the American penchant for catching wrong doers: not necessarily criminals, but those others who are always causing trouble. We must be watchful (fearful) lest they get away with (fill in the blank). How can we be relaxed and happy with so much catching to do?
Watch "Bowling for Columbine" for what it shows about the deliberate cultivation of fear in American culture, beginning with the Nielson rating system. Pretty interesting, and underscores your argument.
10
@Dana Stabenow
Cause someone to be afraid and you reduce their ability to be rational; and so you increase your ability to manipulate them for your own gain.
More than any one person or political party, the media, nearly without exception, knows the psychology and uses it to one degree or another.
Michael Moore does a good job of exposing them.
Yes, but I think our fears are related to perfectionism, today.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our computerized society demands perfection and speed.
Thus, we easily reject imperfect people. Trump uses this, well.
I suggest that Democrats have to counter Trump's rejections.
Comedy can be used. Trump imitators can be used.
And, I hope the US House will not be afraid to impeach Trump.
I hope that Democrats will use humor and song to fight back.
(See "Democracy" song: "Democracy is coming to the USA.")
"Democracy" by Leonard Cohen
3
Writing as a citizen of Canada I would suggest that the "fear" Mr. Brooks is writing about is uniquely American. Citizens of other western industrialized countries, particularly those in Europe and here in Canada go about their daily lives without the degree of angst that your citizens do. But then we live in countries where if there is a problem we try to fix it. We do not fear being killed by a random bullet because we have sensible gun laws. We do not fear going bankrupt when faced with a major illness because we all have universal health care. We do not fear being unemployed because we have a social system to protect us (and we are quite happy to pay for that in our taxes). Need I say more? And lastly, when we return home from traveling in your country and are questioned by our own customs officials we say to ourselves "great trip, had a great time, met amazing people etc. and thankful for having made it once again".
27
@J. David Burch
Yes, and the excessive fear of unemployment that results from the lack of universal health care and lack of an adequate safety net results in an economic sclerosis in which people cling to jobs that should be eliminated to deal with issues like climate change or a military-industrial complex that creates political crises overseas to ensure a continued demand for weapons.
3
@Robert That too.
1
An insightful, albeit grim, op-ed on our nation’s state. FDR: All we have to fear is fear itself. And his campaign song was Happy Days Are Here Again. We could use a good dose of that.
7
@robert zakin Right on. And what ever happened to "live and let live"?
1
@Robert zakin
According to the GOP, FDR is the Great Satan himself, all his policies will bring Soviet Union style government to the USA, and Democrats are totally responsible for the downfall of all of Western Civilization. I learned this from Conservative media. And I only watch Fox News by accident. I need to vote GOP always or all these things are inevitable. Fear? The GOP stock in trade.
1
Very well said Mr.Brooks. One thing I would like to mention is the biggest of fear mongers , the NRA. If we allow laws to be passed , such as bump stocks, assault weapon bans multi clip bans even sensible wait periods for purchasing a weapon, the gun police will be at your door taking away my legally purchased shotgun.
6
When I was a young ensign assigned to a destroyer in the late 80s, my commanding officer was what we called a "screamer". Intimidation and fear of his authority was his default leadership style. One day I overheard him talking to the ship's XO, who was trying to explain why morale was so low. When the XO gently tried to suggest that leading through fear was not working, the CO snapped: "Fear turns people into sheep, and sheep require a shepherd." I often wonder if my old CO is working for Trump.
11
"The Era of Fear" would be the perfect title for a history of our times. I agree with starting it in 2001. When will the era of fear end?
3
@Jason Galbraith
I'm not sure it started in 2001. Fear was used to great effect in Yugoslavia during the 90s to give NATO a continued reason to exist just as fear of Russia is used today to "manufacture consent" for aggressive militarism. This and the September, 2001 terrorist attacks have been quite effective in increasing weapons spending which always seems to ratchet up and never down.
@Jason Galbraith Reagan used fear of big government, socialism, crime, etc. effectively as well in the 1980's. It's a well worn political tactic since fear can override a person's logic and reasoning thoughts to produce votes against a person or political party,
1
Fear is real for everyday Americans. Las Vegas was booming recently, now the economy there is taking a huge hit. MGM is laying off hundreds of employees. Tell these workers not to fear, tell these workers how to make a living. I was. Liberal American now 86 years old and a veteran. Jobs were plentiful but now they are gone America was a wonderful place to live, now I wonder what happened. Can these Las Vegas casino employees continue to live on pennies while the workers owners reduce the work force. America just closes factories, industries and our country suffers. We won WW 2, but we lost our economy and make our enemies wealthy. Let’s tamp down our
expectations as a great nation until we find a solution to our unemployment crisis. We won the wars but lost our economy. Trump is correct in one respect, Jobs in America are for Americans. Blow these Casino owners away. No more lay offs. These “moguls” are greedy they are the root of our decline. No more immigrants. No more layoffs. Trump is correct America is for Americans.
Fear and anxiety have their root in insecurity. Most animals in the wild live in fear; the fear of being their predator next meal. In embrassing forty years of Republican economic policies favoring survival of the fittest, are we destined to imitate the animal kingdom? If so, I am afraid that we are going to need a little more than a Roosevelt to bring us back to being human beings. What we are going to need is a total and utter rejection of Republican economic policies.
6
Blaming Republicans, or even the economy, for the spread of fear ignores the much broader context that Brooks is laying out. Do the people who harp on this actually believe that electing Democrats will solve the problem? In fact, those explanations minimize and narrowly politicize the problem, which is actually not all that new. There are multiple sources of the insecurity that now pervades the world, and not just the United States, and technology has served to exacerbate it. Those institutions which ought to have the responsibility to deal with it, most notably the public schools, the political establishment, and the media, have failed to do so. I have no easy solutions. Perhaps a total transformation of all these institutions is necessary, however unlikely. But I will say that getting rid of Trump, which I certainly favor, won't change anything at all. He is a symptom of the epidemic of fear, and relieving symptoms does not cure the disease.
7
@Michael Engel
He is indeed a symptom but also a cause. I believe it's a vicious circle that needs to be spun around in the opposite direction - a job that will require effort by all of us to reduce our always-to-be-with-us fears (of death and the unknown, among others) to a manageable level.
3
When fear and hatred are strong, the prefrontal context goes off-line and reason is not available. Thus the proliferation of irrational responses in crisis situations whether real or imaginary. People in this state are easily led, and not in a good way.
We are being played by those who know how to push emotional hot buttons in order to get a response which furthers their interests. We need to get much more resistant to manipulation of this kind.
Time to grow up, humans.
7
I agree.. But, he walked past the overriding fear that we all live with daily that is less political than it is rationally grounded...
Go walk the shopping mall or sit in a movie theater....Look around your church during services. We all know where the exits are and we all fear the guy with the gun who has issues not dealt with.
Until we face the anger and the hate, the mental instability, we cannot fix much else. Our denial becomes our own sickness. Time to face that fear down and actively handle it.
1
One of your best! Thanks Mr. Brooks, we need more clear-headedness these days.
11
It is pretty incredible if fear is really the dominant emotion. Compared to 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, we are on easy street. Wars where most able bodied fought, disease, threat of nuclear annihilation, few treatments or preventions for chronic diseases, those were real threats. While the writer may be accurate that many Americans seem consumed with fear, those Americans need to get a grip. Now we have people upset that their lives are not as good as they thought they would be. While many other emotions may cover those situations, calling it fear cheapens the really dangerous things our ancestors confronted, with better attitudes than we evidently have.
3
@Michael Blazin
Fear is an emotion which can't be cured by telling people to "get a grip."
It is not an "Era". A far more accurate title would be, "A Political Movement Defined by Fear."
It has been the modus operandi of the Republican Part and right-wing media to stoke fear for over a decade. You reap what you sow and the whole world is now suffering the consequences.
14
You wrote a lot of words about "fear," which supposedly is the " tone" underlying all of politics in this moment. OK, you made a few good points. But you try to paint this fear as overblown and irrational, especially in connection with our current economic situation. You managed to sneak in one particular statement that I won't let go unchallenged: "We are in the middle of one of the longest economic booms in our history, with wages finally rising again for the middle class." This is hardly an indisputable fact, but I keep seeing some version of it repeated, over and over again, as if it were. By what measurement? GDP? Stock market? What is " middle class? " By how much have their wages risen? The biggest source of fear, and it's not irrational, is economic insecurity. Can I support my family, today and tomorrow? Can I provide my kids with an education that will give them a future? Can I expect to retire or face some medical situation without becoming destitute? I don't see answers provided by our current " economic boom. "
14
You did not mention the fear caused by economic insecurity that permeates most households in this country. Generations are growing up with family members working 2 jobs just trying to survive. Children are sensitive to the abundance of stress that causes on a daily basis. Depression hits earlier in this dark age of greed and injustice.
11
One more hit from Brooks. This essay styled opinion piece can lead us to the home of our heart. One thing is that, true, the today’s world is in a fearful condition. Apart from random killings at any place, there constantly exist non-violent terrors on civic levels, which may desensitize one’s alert, for the tightly woven phenomena are into every day. On the other side, that we’re ok and forgiven, because love (in an un-specifically generalized form at maximum) can save us is rampant at this and that corner under lofty roofs. Brooks made a bit of flight, that is right for his chosen topic. I do the same. Plenty of clichés can enhance all familiar fortresses. Within, your own enemies, masked as friends, always smile and give you a hug.
1
You shouldn't fear fear. Some sorts are useful and even necessary, but fear - like any political tool - must be managed intelligently. In the right dose, it can spur needed change; when it's overdone, it can tear society apart.
2
David writes: "Everybody is a broadcast journalist now, competing for ratings and page views. The sure way to win is to ratchet up the crisis atmosphere. All news is Breaking News!"
Why, he even mentions Elizabeth Warren's vociferous "ready, fire and aim" proposals to lessen our fear. And CNN reporter Blitzer is still locked up in the "Situation Room."
Disdain trumps our fears as no one is able to dream better dreams and turn them into a political reality because no one can practice politics any longer.
It's not fear that has us stonewalled, folks, it's our mutual disdain, driven by our "starz upon thar's" and whose turn it is to stonewall.
2
Not sure when I began to turn toward your writings with such welcome anticipation for your even-handed assessments and hopeful, clear-eyed encouragement. But you have become a God-send Mr. Brooks, a voice in a wilderness of journalistic "sound and fury". Thank you for the regular respite of your hopeful words.
6
I just returned to my home in Europe after an extended work assignment in central Michigan. The huge sense of anxiety I felt radiating from my American family and colleagues is gone. Living in the U.S. is an exercise in avoiding huge TV screens in almost every public space blaring FOX news, fear-mongering propaganda. It's listening to my colleagues talking about bringing their sons and daughters out to teach them how to use a gun to "protect themselves." Americans are constantly worried about their health care coverage, its cost, its complexity and its obvious unfairness. There are military recruitment billboards everywhere. All I could think of was that Americans (at least Michiganders) were itching for another war with someone (anyone?). I'm not a psychiatrist, but I'd be willing to bet that a lot of Americans are suffering from a form of paranoia. It seems built into the very fabric of much of life there today. Very sad indeed.
343
@mrfreeze6
So so true - after I moved to Switzerland after the Trump fiasco began I noticed right away over here that the fear was missing. I have heard zero accounts from anyone about bankruptcy due to health care nightmares. This is a well-run society that places care of its citizens above all else. There is no national debt and the politics are mostly local and quite sensible.
Very sad and if Trump is elected again, terminal.
155
Your comment is my experience too, except I live here. I returned from a week in Europe and honestly felt safer there among diverse and vibrant populations than I do at home where the fear machine is running full bore 24/7 from NY and Washington DC. We overreact to just about everything. Paranoia is deeply set in us.
41
@mrfreeze6
Couldn't agree more. Kudos on returning to a sane place. As someone who has lived here most of my life, I can honestly say I don’t recognize the state anymore. The rural areas have become radicalized and Trump is their beacon. Cities finally saw the light during the midterms and returned a sane, compassionate person to the Governor’s chair. Unfortunately, a Republican led senate is doing their best to stop any progress unless it involves tax cuts and a conservative agenda. Even the richest among us have bought into this insanity, because it ushered in tax cuts. That fact that our education system and infrastructure are a mess is incidental. When the governor proposed a tax increase on gas to repair the roads, our Republican “friends” decided this was time for a recall. It is impossible to reason with these people. Mention climate change and they will show you a snowball as proof that it doesn't exist. I pine for the state we used to be.
62
No mention of Climate Change in this opinion piece. I've changed my lights to LEDs, insulated my house, put solar panels on my roof and walk to work. I compost. I grow fruit trees. Yet I still have the fear that we're not doing nearly enough to address this Climate Crisis.
295
@A Stor mo Chroi
I've changed my lights to LEDs, insulated my house, put solar panels on my roof and walk to work. I compost. I grow fruit trees. Yet I still have the fear that we're not doing nearly enough
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Did you feed your neighbor?
Visit the poor and imprisoned?
Build shelters for those with no shelter against the elements?
Or did you just care for your earthly treasures with no heed for teh life surrounding you today?
5
@Midway Of course! I just sent a donation to Mozambique which suffered from Cyclone Kenneth - the strongest tropical cyclone to make landfall there ever. It's a humanitarian crisis. Please donate if you haven't already.
The cyclones and wildfires and droughts etc are going to keep getting stronger and longer unless we all simplify our lives and not consume as much as well as invest in renewables.
26
@A Stor mo Chroi ~ It is good of you, of course, to think of others in their time of need. However, I submit that we have lots and lots of need in our own country! Every time there is a free health fair (dentists, physicians, nurse giving freely of their expertise to a particular poor spot in our nation) they are deluged with people in desperate need and can never possibly serve all who show up for critical care.
If the storms and fires continue as we think they will, there won't be enough money in the world to deal with it all. So sending your small cheque to Mozambique may make you feel good, it's hardly the solution. I submit that what you're doing at home (solar, LED's gardening, etc) are much more valuable to the planet as a whole. You set the example -- stick to it. Everyone else .... get on it.
4
As long as we're on the topic of fear let's look at the very real fears many Americans are facing that have, on their face, nothing to do with politics.
Finding and keeping a decent job, especially after the age of 50. Or, to put it more realistically, not having to worry that one's age is more of a determining factor than one's skills when it comes to finding a job after being "downsized". Lose a job today and, if you're over 50 you have to worry about never finding another decent job and becoming impoverished.
Medical bankruptcy: even though we pay monthly premiums those aren't enough. We have to pay high deductibles, co-pays, out of network costs, and fight denials.
A lack of affordable housing which correlates to a lack of decent pay for a decent day's work and a long commute to boot. That ties into our school systems: some communities with the best schools are the least affordable. People shouldn't have to spend a fortune on housing to ensure that their children get a decent education.
Our shredded social safety net. People no longer have defined pension plans from their employers. Employers prefer to "hire" temps/contract workers. This change in the job market called the gig economy, makes it hard to plan for any future.
America has changed into a country where fear is the only logical response to have. There is no longer a community. We elected people who decided that these things were okay.
4/29/2019 10:05pm
671
Exactly these factors are causing a spiraling deterioration of the mental health of the population with no help in sight. Thus Trump. Thus fear. Thus guns. Are we already beyond the point of no return? I'm praying for another FDR too.
87
All true, but I would add lack of affordable child care and upcoming shortages of medical and health care support personnel.
39
@hen3ry
Is it worse than 1933? That's when FDR told us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself. FDR understood that stoking people's fears, making lists of them, as this comment does, just makes things worse. It's not a question of whether there are things to fear; there have been and always will be things to fear. The question is how do we move beyond those fears?
.
The key is to elect leaders who wish to put aside our fears, to work together despite them, rather than leaders who inspire us to vote for them with ever more fearful visions of the future and of our political opponents. Which of Trump's possible opponents is working to put aside fear, and which are working to make us fear Trump more than Trump got half of America to fear us? Let's elect the former, not the latter.
42
Mr. Brooks is half right. Yes, there is an abundance of fear. But no, the solution is not in granular politics, it can only come from a broader visions from our leaders. The persons we as a nation look to and rely upon. And that is the current crisis.
Mr. Brooks invokes FDR who noted that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If FDR were president today, this would be among the most famous of all Tweets. And Trump is no FDR.
So I don't quite understand how he goes from FDR to just boring and uninspiring minor policy proposals. Trump, in his unending need to consolidate his base, has embraced white nationalism and has done so by embracing fear mongering. Trump has unleashed on our nation a never-ending campaign of peril if we don't embrace him. Trump has inflicted on the world the value of tyrants and their hold on their own power.
Mr. Brooks menions 9/11 but we were attacked by foreign advisories prior to that. Mr. Brooks notes the latest synagogue shooting but doesn't mention that unbridled gun policies and blundering comment from Trump have combined as a fuel source for those whose views are at the extreme end of his rhetoric.
The change that Mr. Brooks seeks can only come from the harshest of possible denunciations of Trump ... a complete trouncing of his run for a second term. No other event would do more to help shove fear back into the box.
10
Much of the fear and anxiety in America today is generated by the news media. We literally have Presidential candidates saying we will all be dead in 10 years if you don't vote for me. We have 2 years of fake Trump Russia collusion. We have the best economy in the world right now and the media is suppressing the happiness we should all be feeling. You never see stories of legal gun owners protecting themselves and their families only victims of horrible shootings. Instead of a congress pushing to create laws to benefit Americans all they say is get Trump, get his taxes, we need to get him for doing so many wonderful things for Americans like better trade deals. No wonder there is fear in America.
2
@P McGrath - you mus be taking lessons from Trump.
1. Just because Trump and minions were too incompetent to further their intent to collide with the Russians does not mean we should give him a pass. And what about the obstruction of justice?
2. Where is your data or reference to show "We have the best economy in the world right now? Gdp growth under Trump averaged 2.6% per year. China's rowth during the same period was 6.75%. India's was 10.39%.
3. You never see "stories of legal gun owners protecting themselves and their families" because they are way fewer that cases of stories of legal gun owners killing themselves and their families. The ratio has been reported as ranging from 4.5 to 1(eliminating suicides) to 43 to 1.
6
I agree in principle, not in timing. 9/11 might have been an accelerant. Fear and flight are baked into our neurons in a more intense short-term survival way than hope, generosity, and tolerance. It wasn’t that long ago that FDR was exhorting the nation to the long-term aspiration with, “The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” But all-in-all a great, David Brooks reminder of its own. Thanks.
1
Thank The Times Mr Brooks for stirring the pot and exaggerating conditions. Case in point the political cartoon printed on Passover showing a blind Trump being lead by his dog Netanyahu.
Give credit where credit is due. The liberal media has made demonizing Trump its mission in life. The articles written are devoid of objectivity and instead are Op Ed columns passed off as journalism. The media admonish Trump for bypassing them and going directly to the public. You cannot have it both ways. Why should Trump hold a news conferences and deal with the endless rants of journalist likeJim Acosta ? Stop playing the victim when you’re the villain!
1
I'm going to start begging now for news purveyors to stop lengthy stories about mass shootings. This last one was clearly inspired by a previous shooting and I believe many other shootings were inspired this way. I know it's news and you must report it, but make it short, bland and with no photo of the perpetrator - ever. Many of these shooters want to be noticed as they are not in life. Don't give it to them. Don't show the next shooter that he will be on TV, in newspapers and his face forever on the internet. Report the story, yes, but bury it on page 4 or in the least effective time slot on the evening news. If even one future shooting is reduced to nothing, it will be worth it.
3
@Linda,
News shows are driven by viewership. Advertising profits are a factor of viewer population ratings. "If it bleeds, it leads". As Pogo once explained "We have met the enemy and it is us". "Breaking News leads in on every channel except Judy Woodriff's PBS evening news show.
So, to end the hype, we need to stop watching. It's just that simple.
Today's Democrat progressives seem to be more tense and less happy than they've been for a long time;
therefore, Congratulations, NY Times, CNN-FakeNews and old media! This was exactly what you were shooting for with five thousand or more attacks on Pres. Trump and the American people each over a two-year stretch.
Expect more attacks on Christian and Jews as your agitation works its way into the country. Pretty soon we'll be like Nigeria with 900 churches burned.
You actually went to college to learn to do this?
Why is it that Brooks's columns of late seem like someone is trying to get us to forget his facile accommodation of political degeneration on the right over the last twenty years?
3
David,
I'm an early riser, so I usually find time to check into the Times before breakfast. Thank you for your position on Fear. I am 86 and my husband is 95, so we know what it felt like in earlier times to follow the news for information rather than Breaking News. Every Broadcaster these days seems to need to speak faster, and sometimes inaudibly with that basic push to get us to feel tense and waiting for the next bomb to drop. Your articles are ones we appreciate. Some over my head, but we often learn from your wealth of information you have either read or taught to your students.
Wish I was one of them. Thank you and for Brooks & Shields
Anne Pedersen
4
We gave into fear. After the events of 9/11, Congress passed laws infringing on our privacy rights and we started two wars which may not end in my lifetime. One failed shoe bomber many years ago, and we still have to remove our shoes to board a plane. Everybody and his brother now think they have to be armed to go grocery shopping.
Trump stokes fear on a daily basis with his unhinged lies and rants and lies about Muslims, Democrats, the news media, and black and brown people.
When we finally part ways with Trump, perhaps some of the fear and loathing with go with him.
9
Our country is being cynically played by "conservative" politicians, corporate interests, religious groups, and media outlets. An ideology based on lies, greed, and inhumanity is no true ideology - it is poison.
The threat is real, and the threat is from within.
8
David, you failed to condemn one of the biggest promoters of fear, the NRA. They market guns with fear - everyone, even teachers need to carry a handgun for protection against the boogyman around the corner. When I was a youngest we would play hide and seek after dark in our neighborhood, running through neighbor's yards, or crouching behind a back porch. Now in several states those neighbors can legally shoot a child that steps into their yard after dark. You're correct about fear, I just wish you would point your finger toward the primary sources.
8
Turn on any media and all we see, hear, and read is fear. Especially TV. I don't have TV at home, yet I watch it a few times a year in hotels. Channel surfing only yields violence and fear. Police, murder, rape, violence against women, robbery, accidents, fires.
And we wonder why this country is violent and fearful?
3
The experience of fear is clearly important for survival. However, one doesn’t appreciate that from this column in its all-or-none fashion. In fact, vulnerability is basic to the human condition, which the experience of fear acknowledges. The presentation of fear in this column seems to suggest that our pervasive national problem presently is fear. I don’t so. I think it’s the lack of courage ... and with that the distortion of legitimate threat ... “fear” in false form. Trump seems to understand that very well ... which he exploits. He knows very well what cowardice is!
1
Politicians love and embrace fear as if it were mother's milk.
The fears of Nazi invasion in the 40's, the fear of Russian invasion, in the 50s & 60's, the duck and cover drills that made us fear a nuclear attack, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Willie Horton, and on and on.
Having lived through this fear misama for all of my life the current use of fear by the Republican Party and it's fear mongering clown in the White House just ratcheted up the ante. (And no, I am not forgiving the Democrats for the anti-Barry Goldwater nuclear attack ad).
Even when there was a man in the White House who tried to calm fears, (yes I am speaking about our last President) the Republicans used fear and hatred to block every attempt he made.
I don't expect things to change.
3
The origin of fear is the attachment of worldly object - physical and mental. As civilization progressed, physical objects increased. It is said that at the time of Jesus Christ, in the market of Jerusalem there were few thousand items on sale, and today at New York market few billions of items on sale. This change has consequence, and top of that Internet is creating every day new virtual objects in billions. We learned to protect us from bugs and viruses, but we do not have any protection from objective world. Our culture is totally ignorant about this nakedness of human existence. What we need is protection from attachment to this monster of objective world - our family, school and government do not train us to get this protection. Today, the world is sitting on a mountain of fear - any time this can explode like a volcano and destroy the human civilization.
Great human lovers told us how to overcome fear - detachment. Jesus said it, Buddha said it, Krishna said it and all lovers of human race said it. We do not listen - the golden shield of glittering objective world blinded us. We are roaming like a fearful dog whose eyes are covered. Let us open that covering.
2
This article’s attempt to conflate fear and disgust is wrong. These are two very different feelings. In some ways, they are even opposites. Disgust is what people feel towards cockroaches. They aren’t afraid of them but they still want to kill them.
Problems in society are caused more by disgust than fear. Aggression is caused by disgust, not fear. In fact, fear can be good as it often causes timidity or appeasement—most people’s instinct is to crush a disgusting cockroach but run away or hide from a frightening bear.
Minorities’ resentment towards majorities is often based on fear. To them, the majority is like a bear that must be appeased or cowered from because if it really wants to kill you, you can’t fight it. Majorities’ resentment towards minorities is more like disgust. To them, minorities are more like a cockroach that could never actually hurt you but nonetheless triggers the instinct to crush it because it might contaminate your living space.
In search of false equivalence, Brooks puts "oppression studies" at the same level as populism and white nationalism. It isn't.
Although it's seldom actually called that, the loose assortment of things that sometimes get dismissed as "oppression studies" is an academic framework. It has next to nothing to do with electoral politics. Occasionally a specific item of oppression (police brutality, voter suppression) might be of interest to both academics and candidates running for office. But that doesn't mean politicians and academics are the same, or that anyone needs to be worried about voting rights activists.
Meanwhile, populism and white nationalism have taken over an entire political party, and have enough power to destroy large numbers of lives and possibly the planet. Fearing them is reasonable.
3
And it's all the fault of the evil Trump!
Lots of Democrats here who don't seem to own any mirrors.
By the way, what did all you leftists do with all of the "smash the final glass ceiling" articles you had prewritten before Donald Trump confronted you with reality?
3
@JND
Mr. Brooks needs to write a column on hatred.
Fear and hatred are partners.
@JND
Let's just stop with Trump-as-victim speech for a minute, because we all know that's the card he plays whenever he's not bullying everyone around.
And just for the record.
It will hard to find any president in recent living memory who has done more to divide the nation than this one has.
That's the reality.
5
Its not all his fault. Trump is aided and abetted in his racist presidency by the Republican Party.
1
Trump uses fear and hatred of "the others" just like his historic despotic predecessors. White supremacists, anti-Semites, violent fascists will continue to come out of their hiding places because Trump creates an atmosphere that welcomes them.
3
"Fear comes in the night."
But fear also comes in the early morning and in the afternoon and any other time Trump tweets it out from his pathetic, sociopathic mind.
2
Humans are terrific liars. Animals cannot afford to lie. If an animal doesn't figure out the hard facts soon, then it becomes somebody's lunch. This formula also works in the human world too, but we also lie about that.
The lies are constant; "It'll be done on Tuesday!", or "Gee..... That dress makes you look like a teenager again". These then run up the damage-o-meter with, "Exxon! Helping to save the planet", to "Mexicans are coming to kill you".
This is what happens when steroids are introduced and tolerated in our games. The liar always wins the trophy.
Cheating has become as American as homemade microwave apple pie. "Trouble in River City!"
Truth is the only way to stop fear. Can we imagine a government elected on - and run on- truth and facts? Ha Ha! We get the government we deserve. If I told Trump that he has the body of a teenager, then I would have a job as a White House aide in five seconds.
I'll deliver the truth by next Tuesday......I promise. That's the day we all celebrate that great war hero, John Wayne.
If you are not afraid, you are not aware. Harbingers of mass extinction abound and it's clear that climate change is real and that it will be devastating to species of animals we rely on for our own existence.
It may be too late to do anything meaningful about it now but if there is still time, we are not well-positioned to use it. The most powerful country in the world has seemingly lost its collective mind - who will lead the enormous effort required to save us?
3
@Bob Sorry to spoil your "what, me worry?" state of mind.
Not only do politicians use fear, usually coupled with hate, to arouse the public, the commercial news media must take a fair share of the blame. While fear and hate is a sales pitch for politicians, it also sells media space for commercial TV. The invention of the video tape has contributed to the frequency that viewers are "treated" to frightening scenes of crimes and accidents. The more gruesome the better. Watch the evening news and calculate the time devoted to crimes, vehicular accidents and disasters, all of which made more vivid by video tape from a cell phone or one of the many surveillance cameras that are everywhere.
Real stories that affect the lives of the public give way to sensational car crashes and violent crimes. Producers of these commercial news programs have discovered that not only do people want to watch them, but that video tape is far cheaper that paying a salaried reporter to flush out a real story.
No. It is not fear. It is the lack of love and compassion that informs much of our politics. We should be fearful of our politics, division, the attraction to lies, the utter manipulation of politicians, insidious corporate welfare and above all our complete denial about environmental collapse. Instead arrogance, addiction and hatred infests our politics- sowing more division and a spiraling downward. Cowardice without love anchored in fear- this is our current collective state. And that there a few brave, a few compassionate a few principled is only slight consolation.
1
This was one of the best and most incisive columns that Brooks has written in a while.
1
Fear is the catalyst that propels the Trump Presidency. While praising the intelligence of the American electorate, he secretly knows that they can be led around like a bulls with nose rings - only instead of bull rings, he uses their beliefs and prejudices to lead them wherever he wants.
If DJT doesn't destroy our fragile democracy, he has published the blueprint and playbook for some other demagogue to do it later. If a democracy like America's is going to exist, there will have to be a paradigm shift in human thought throughout the world.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds see the survival of a particular belief as more important than the survival of us all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
I agree that anger is generated by fear. But people are fearful with good reason: they feel that their representative democracy is slipping away. The middle class has been under siege since Ronald Regan stated that “government” was the problem and undid the Fairness Doctrine that opened the floodgates to right wing radio personalities like Rush Limbaugh, who spew purulence daily. I thought that I had seen the worst president in my lifetime with W, but I thought too soon. Even the lie of WMD, the invasion of Iraq and the 2008 economic meltdown can’t compare to the Republican endorsement of someone as immoral as Donald J. Trump. He is a narcissistic, pathological liar who has managed to make facts irrelevant; in other words, he has killed the truth. The Republican Party is fully responsible for this cancer that has metastasized within our society and feeds on those who lack the ability for critical thinking or are drawn to hate.
3
Still can't bring yourself to point at the cause, eh David? The GOP has pulled us into this darkness. Look at your "president". Look at your congress.
5
Bellowing about the monster in the closet? If only the monster was in the closet.
Brooks once again swims in circles of false equivalence. Trump and his merry band of liars create fear that infants are being slaughtered, that caravans of immigrants are attacking our southern border, that Muslims are terrorists, that Democrats want to take all the guns away . . . and more. What false fears to Democrats incite? Name one, Mr. Brooks. The fears I feel are real, not vicious manipulation of the truth.
Trump is the monster in plain sight. Fear of Trump is there in the morning and through the day. This dishonorable, dishonest, ignorant man is putting our great democratic institution at peril, bulldozing norms, defying constitutional oversight, crudely insulting everyone in sight, inciting violence among his supporters, offending and distancing our traditional allies and getting nothing productive done for the country.
And Brooks would have us stop fearing, wake up in the morning and "get stuff done." There is only one "stuff" to do. Remove this cancer from the White House.
3
Someone wrote recently in the national media that current troubles stem all the way back to Reconstruction after the Civil War. Yes, victory for the North left a huge part of America smouldering. White power mongers long waited for someone with evil intent to rise from the ashes. That someone, obviously, is Donald Trump, a hate-filled kid with a pocket full of matches.
The fearful person doesn’t see particular individuals, just hateful shades who arouse disgust and can be blamed. Muslims are disgusting. Immigrants are disgusting.
People like limbaugh and his ilk only speak in this manner. In the "us vs. them" world, every one of his programs tries to gin up fear in his listeners about the topic of the day. I wouldn't call fox news a beacon of sunshine either...any topic or idea is bad if the "them" group proposed it.
Who stokes fear?
Republicans.
Your failure to clearly acknowledge this simple truth is shameful.
4
Fear and Loathing, Mr. Brooks. The illustration accompanying the article should have been a Steadman.
2
I fear, as does many of my friends that we have a would-be dictator bigot who believes like the rest of his administration and many republicans that he is above the law.
I fear that our democracy and constitution is done for.
I fear that while attacks by white supremacist has grown in the past 2 years, the bigot in the whitehouse refuses to blame those white supremacist, HIS supporters.
I will not forget, “Very fine people”. the bigot declared, after the Charlottesville anti Semitic marches.
2
Mr. Brooks,
There is a good-people-on-both-sides message in your meditation on the “era of fear,” as you call it. Your literary and historical references are dandy, but you fail to identify the Fear-Monger-in-Chief. Why is that? I’m really asking.
As a staff writer at the Times, you have a unique opportunity to speak truth to power and yet you stand idly by. Your folksy philosophizing aids and abets the criminal dismantling of our institutions, our values and our American civilization.
Roll up your sleeves, David. Show us a little backbone.
3
Buck up, David.
Coming out of the Bush and Obama war years, of course fear is a fallout factor. So are the refugees on the run. So is the toxic politics.
Take a lesson from the Christians? Don't overreact? For every synagogue shooting, hundreds of Christians across the globe are killed.
For every Draw Muhammed cartoon, or black person depicted as an ape, or Jew drawn as a dog, hundreds of Christian white politicians are accurately spoofed for their actions daily.
By wanting to be treated specially, you likely make people more fearful. Life is hard. Life is deadly. Life has the United States and Israel locking refugee children, and their families, into cages for generations.
That should scare people, more over the past decades than it does. Think about what is coming... no wonder you have trouble sleeping at night.
"overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet." The very real monster that you helped to elect.
3
When any person or entity kills anyone because of the religion of the person, it is an outrage.
3
Fearful? Move to Florida. Get a gun. And a license to carry.
Fear no more. Easy as apple pie and just as tasty.
5
Fear and insecurity are rampant in America because we have shaky social support, a riddled safety net, and few consumer protections. Rational fear begins in the womb and ends with the settlement of the estate, if any.
Each stage of life in America has its own special fears. A pregnant woman fears her health care insurance, if any, may not cover pre-natal care and delivery. Parents fear they may not afford safe, reliable child care. Parents fear they may not afford comprehensive health care insurance for themselves and their children. Parents fear they cannot afford tuition and living expenses for their children's college education. Everyone fears they cannot save enough for retirement to supplement the paltry Social Security income and pay the Medicare premiums and co-pays.
American life is fear, worry, and stress, punctuated with merciless commercialism. Our web sites light up with pop-ups ads like pinball machines. Our sports and entertainment channels are riddled with extra-loud commercials. Our telephones jingle with robocalls from scammers.
For the average American, the lottery is the path to wealth and security.
There is another, calmer way of life. My European friends don't worry about health care, child care, college tuition, disability, retirement, and their children's inheritance. It's covered. That's what governments and taxes are for!
4
It's easy to be distracted by Mr. Brooks' windup and miss the
pitch coming straight and true, right over the home plate.
Good politics really is about getting things done, something for which America is famous. But this "fear" thing: how much is real and how much has been manufactured by journalists? Or if not directly by them, perhaps by influencers in the background? Religous leaders, perhaps?
David, I agree that the level of fear has been ratcheted up. It would be wonderful if it could be tamped down. Media companies (esp. TV and radio) actively contribute to this problem in order to increase the size of their audience. While I laud your support of good governance by Democratic candidates, it won't be a cure. Recall how the Republicans treated Barack Obama. Good supportive op-eds such as you have written won't cure the problem either. But your op-eds help, and I thank you for writing them.
2
An essay about fear that doesn't mention the NRA? Is there any other organization, with so many followers, that so ruthlessly and effectively spreads the gospel of fear in our country?
6
We are certainly not in the time when a politician would say in the darkest of times "We have nothing to fear, but fear itself" and the population would respond to it. Now we have a president so far from FDR that he struts and rages across our country and enough respond that he keeps it up and doubles down. I don't find all Republicans disgusting but they have been subtly and not so subtly peddling fear for well before 9/11. Think back to Nixon's Southern strategy or Reagan's welfare queens riding around in Cadillacs.
I agree with you when you say let's get back to getting things done and stop the histrionics. A neophyte in office doesn't know how to get things done. Trump only knows about executive orders and privilege not about working with congress. I remember a quote from a citizen of one of the Scandinavian countries who said 'I don't want to have a beer with my representative, just fix my health care'.
You paint with a broad brush. Trump is unlike anyone we have encountered in decades, and he's the president with the full support of the Republican Party. Full stop.
2
"The fearful person turns asocial, rejects any compassionate response to social problems and instead lashes out."
Indeed, and that very "intensely narcissistic" asocial person lashing out with sometimes up to 30 misspelled twitter-storms per day currently sits in the Oval Office.
#45s possible reelection frightens the bejesus out of me.
3
One day changed our world and that day was 9-11-2001. Since that day fear became the primary motivation for Americans. It is an angry nation because it is a fearful nation. We defeat the Taliban but they are back in business and will likely again rule the nation in which we fought to drive them out. Fear/anger led our nation to destroy Iraq for no apparent reason. Trump parlayed fear into victory. Social media has played a role in stirring up an already malevolent pot. Politics have become a blood sport. My liberal friends have disowned me as fear and anger have allowed us to hold our fellow citizens in contempt. How can I possibly trust the media which has sold its soul by resolutely choosing political sides? The terrorists won. They changed us.
2
Folk of he Global South are reproducing recklessly. Waves of immigrants are headed North. Killing them is unacceptable. Allowing them to overrun Europe an USA is equally unacceptable. This issue has taken over our politics. Bad things will happen, more bad things.
2
"The shootings have been a series of bloody strikes out of the blue," says the supporter of the party which won't even allow gun background checks.
"It sometimes seems as if half of America’s children grow up in strained families and suffer Adverse Childhood Experiences... Depression rates rise... Collegiate mental health systems are overwhelmed," says the supporter of the party whose entire platform is based around eviscerating funding for all areas of public welfare .
"But now grand ideologies clash by night: white nationalism, populism, oppression studies," he says, describing the agenda of the President which his party supports.
"I’ve developed a hankering for slightly boring politicians who just get stuff done" says the supporter of the party which doesn't admit climate change or evolution, believes the answer to gun violence is to increase gun usage, taxes the poor and gives to the rich without even attempting to justify it anymore, wants to repeal health care and replace it with nothing, and stands silently by as a wanna-be dictator does his best to destroy the American system of justice and democracy.
6
I think isn’t just fear that hasn’t wrapped its tentacles around us, it is our inability to listen to this all alarm and to now how to overcome it.
If you anesthetize fear with medication and Netflix bingeing and staying constantly busy which we all need to do to survive in the US workplace, then it will only worsen.
I returned to the US for a year, having lived away since 2010, and have been utterly dismayed by what I have experienced and noticed.
As an educator, I rest my hope on young minds and ears and eyes to learn how to navigate this present situation! and how to lessen it. it is up to all of us, no matter the age, to deal with how fear expands in a world whch moves increasingly faster with more and more people.
we can oversome it, but let us not rely on the next shooting to bring us together.
It will take each one of us to do it, the belief that we can, both individually and collectiveñy.
I may be living in some sort of bubble, but in my fairly large family and circle of friends in this small New Jersey town, I don't know anyone who is living in fear of anything except that Donald Trump will be re-elected.
3
The article does not mention "change". The rapidly accelerating pace of change is the matrix that spawns our fear. The world keeps shrinking and we're interacting with everyone and everything all at once. The complexity is overwhelming, and nobody seems to have a grip on where it's all going. Government response just spawns more complexity with legislation that adds hundreds or thousands of pages to the tangle. With a void of rational direction, we revert to the normal irrational response --- fear.
Just give me a simpler life,
Ray
1
Fear isn't restricted to Synagogues. Fear also comes in the form Church bombings by Islamic extremists leaving hundreds dead, or attacks on Mosques with the intent to kill, or in the arson of of three Black churches burned to the ground within 10 days by a white nationalist.
Fear is what pushes people to undertake such heinous acts.
Namely, fear of "the other".
Fear shows no mercy. No tolerance.
And it shows no sign of abating.
It's in the world. And it is here.
But this is not the kind of America that will ever be great again.
2
Americans have become cowards, and they are afraid of the wrong things. I was at the Capitol on September 11, 2001 and did not feel particularly afraid. The odds of dying in a terrorist attack or a mass shooting are about the same as being killed by a shark or by lightning. What am I afraid of? Taking a shower. By statistics, taking a shower is about a thousand times more dangerous that any risk of terrorism.
2
Fear sells. Fear bloviates. Fear distracts. Fear confuses. Fear entertains. Then there’s dread, of course.
The new motto might be: “If it screams, it leads.”
Thanks for a timely, thoughtful column.
1
My sister sent me a MAGA hat, which triggered a moment of shock and nausea. The hat remains in the box in its clear plastic bag. After a few days, I thought I might do a little undercover work and attend a Trump rally somewhere in the red-state Central Time Zone where Trump's support is rabid. My plan is to walk among the crowd and thank each man for his combat service. My guess is that it wouldn't take long for these fake patriots to stomp me to death for calling attention to their cowardice, and their leader's cowardice. The members of the Republican base hate their lives. They hide their fear and self-loathing under self-righteous rage. In reality, I fully expect to die in the crossfire between FBI agents and MAGA-hat troglodytes. I'll fall proudly and without fear, wearing my Earth Day ball cap.
5
This President is masterful at exploiting fear, but he did not make America fearful. 9/11 did not make us fearful.
We have been fraidy cats since the late 60s. Fear of The Black Panthers and drug-crazed hippies gave way to motorcycle gangs and Satanic cults, gave way to serial killers and airline highjackers from the PLO, gave way to urban crime and drug dealers, gave way to bin Laden and immigrants.
We are now a small, fearful people. We are wimps who carry guns in our homes (join a gun forum and you find out how common that is). We put our children in 3-ton rolling 4WD fortresses chauffeured by mom, rather than a School bus. We spray and drench our yards with chemicals likely to give us cancer and kill any beneficial insects, out of fear of ticks and mosquitoes. We whip our kids up the ladder out of fear they will not get into a good college, creating neurotic wrecks who collapse at the first setback. We watch zombie apocalypses as our form of whistling in the dark, or we fantasize about superheroes saving the universe instead of uniting to stop climate change, because we fear losing money.
We deserve to fall. We are wimps ruled by fear. Is that how you want to be remembered, 50 years after Apollo 11?
2
In Jan 2018, if you know what i mean, Brooks thought Trump might be way beyond compare. Brooks was not quite sure if he would dance with another, when he heard about White House meetings with Trump over there:
Brooks NYT Jan 8 2018
"Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:
First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by."
I guess if you subvert the Constitution in ways like quashing the Supreme Court Garland nomination, with Brooks pal McConnell doing the USA trashing, it's Ok! And Brooks of Jan 2018 forgot (we hope for his sake) what Trump "gets to do to women...because he's famous". Yes we are glad David came out (since Jan 2018), came out as decry-er of Trump, a little late. The Ok! legacy of pre-Trump GOP dirty tricks non-decry-ing, like the Garland nomination, slowed him down. Depends on "the Era" David wants to speak of.
1
“The only thing we have to fear.....is fear itself”.
1
Donald Trump is the Pied Piper of fear. In one of his early interviews he was asked about what his political strategy was and he answered, fear, one of the only truthful things he has said as lying is the other part of his strategy. He is a very paranoid fearful person it is the engine that drives him and he projects his psychosis on the public every day. Fear will always be part of politics but Trump is fear on steroids and the county is being exhausted by fear. This country was always defined by truth, courage and bravery and now we hide under the covers and yell at each other when terrorized women and children come to our door step for shelter and assistance. We are so much better than we are today.
1
Do you remember President Obama’s motto? Hope and change. Now compare that to every Republican.
2
The era could have started in several places (Oklahoma City, first WTC attack), but the moment that seemed to permeate into American day-to-Day consciousness was Columbine. 9/11 perpetuated it to a scale no one thought imaginable.
1
Fear also breeds hate. Hatred is the call to action.
We worked at making ourselves hate the Nazis and the Japanese in WW2. That was defensible. Democracy and freedom were at stake.
But the use of fear and hate by the GOP is widespread against fellow Americans. That is not simply politics as usual. It is indefensible.
The hatred of Obama and Hillary, Pelosi and Ried, Ocasio-Cortez and Warren (And whoever else you might add,) has substance only in the hatred. It is the hate-tone brought to the political forefront by Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh and Pat Buchanan. It led us to President Trump and the Roberts Court.
Fear of the GOP is warranted. There is reason to fear what it has become and where it leads the nation. But that fear lead to action - political action: showing up at the polls, volunteering, talking to your neighbors.
Anger and hatred are emotionally wearing. They have taken and continue to take a toll on our nation.
If we follow the conservatives down their path of loathing, I fear our democracy cannot long endure.
2
If we have nothing to fear except fear itself, then trump is a terrifying fear monger to those with small minds and insecure egos, which encompasses millions of people. And why? Ignorance, limited education andpropaganda from the radical right.
1
David, David, David! I am a loyal reader who loves your wrok and often agrees with you. How could you write, "They say, 'Perfect love casts out fear.'"? No they don't. It is a Bible quote from First John. One of the greatest problems in our country today is cutting ourselves loose from the moorings of faith. You agree with that. So it is okay to quote the Bible. I'll give you a pass on this one and assert that you didn't know that was a Bible quote. Next time Google something you cite. Let's give credit where credit is due, namely God.
2
Here is an idea for you, Mr. Brooks. As one with somewhat of a megaphone in the party that peddles fear like a candy shop peddles sugar, how about taking the lead in calling out the skillful manipulation of people using fear by Republican politicians and media - your peers, in other words?
The tragic events of September 11 seemed to be a critical point in applications of fear methodology to control thought and reduce freedom (wielded by - guess who! - republicans). September 11 had huge impacts in a few particular areas - and it was indeed horrendous - but the vast, vast majority of the country was unaffected -yet due to screaming chyrons and screaming politicians and screaming right wing hate radio, most of the country was A-OK giving up freedom that will never be regained.
I posit this - the real antidote to fear is self-confidence, critical thinking, and....truth. Not money, not TV, not ads, not politics, but belief in one's self, acceptance in the vast diversity of human beings, and working together to move forward together. But, how could I expect you, a republican, to understand such progressive concepts.
1
Fear? An appropriate topic? You bet! A lot of us are afraid for our country for the very first time.
3
Third clause in Brook's column: "Another lonely fanatic."
This is what I fear the most, people like Brooks, willful deniers of the source or true evil among us. Like him, they belittle and dismiss the venom and infection coming from their ideological 'family album.' How many degrees of separation are there between the likes of Brooks and Bannon, Iowa's Steve King, and the bright minds at the Heritage Foundation?
Those are the things and the people who frighten me.
2
let's get real. the fear of a slave insurrection has driven much of US politics since its founding.
3
The Russians hacked our election.
Kim is blowing up things.
Putin is acting with impunity.
Parents are being separated from their children at our border.
A journalist was killed and sawed in an embassy in Istanbul.
Over 187,000 students have experienced shootings since 1999.
Climate change is real and we're not doing anything about it.
The president of the United States is fanning the flames of hate and racism, every day. He started this years ago with his racist birther lie.
The Republicans are allowing the president to run slipshod over our constitution and norms.
What's not to be afraid of, Mr. Brooks?
2
We must have all read the same piece, (I just can’t remember which one) but I had the same “put the monster in the closet” thought, too. And the same after thought - tired of the nonsense. And fear - fear paralyzes. And the a Rabbi at the synagogue, once again I am awestruck with the Jewish faith. And David likes Elizabeth —Yes!
1
You're right, fear has taken over politics, just as it has for thousands of years. But that fear is stoked by one side, and has been forever. It's called different names at different times but the common denominator is always the same; the "other" is coming to take your rights away, your jobs away, they're coming to rape you and rob you, they are not like you, they're alien to our way of life. If any of this sounds familiar it's because we hear it almost daily from our President and his acolytes. As long as he, and his party, are in power this divisiveness and appeal to fear will not end.
1
In case David forgot, It was FDR who wisely said,
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
After that republicans took their cue, beginning with the red scare and McCarthyism, and moving on to the southern strategy, stoking racial fear, (remember Willie Horton? ) to garner votes. And then came Trump with “the Latinos and Muslims are coming” scare tactics. 9/11 may be a player in fesr, but all in all a minor one given tne sweep of republican fear mongering since the 50’s.
I challenge you to name one corallary from democrats.
2
Fear is a terrible and corrosive emotion, which has any number of second and third-order effects on people and society. But, from my perspective this current climate of fear got it's start during the Clinton administration when his Republican opponents made it their goal to get the nation to hate and fear him. He and his wife were said to be murderers of their friends, crooks, perverts, etc. At the end the Supreme Court decided to give the election to the Republican challenger, once again denying the American people their majority vote. Since then the Republicans have only amp-ed up their rhetoric. During the Obama administration every act, every piece of legislation was an existential crisis for the party of no. And at the end of the day, this strategy has been enormously successful for the Republicans, and I predict no end to it. The rhetoric has now been increased to include allegations of coups, and a deep state when their own Republican party investigations fail to reach pre-determined conclusions. There is indeed too much to fear from nearly half the country, if you value our Constitution and democracy.
1
OK, let’s talk about fear.
Do “overprotective parents” contribute significantly to our generalized fears? How about Democrats who don’t like Republicans? How dangerous are they on a scale of one to ten?
Fine. Got it. Liberals can be scary.
And what about a dishonest, infantile, narcissistic, self-inflated, ignorant, hate-mongering President of the United States who is currently shouting out lies to excite his audiences, refusing to answer requests from Congress, tearing up arms treaties, rubbing noses fondly with murderous demagogues, insulting our allies and destroying our alliances, fomenting racism for his own benefit, filling high government posts with greedy lackeys, and erasing regulations that protect our air, water, and land?
Nothing to fear from him?
Mr. Brooks, you’ve written yet another messy, preachy stew heated by false equivalences and your own conviction that the country was better off before the 1960s.
Climb out from under your blanket. Look at what Trump and his GOP enablers are doing.
They must be feared. They are terrifying. They threaten our democracy and the well-being and security of millions of people on this continent and others.
If you’re not yet much scared of them, then I wonder how you would have acted during World War II, in Germany or England or France. Would you be writing that everybody’s kinda bad?
Be scared, sir. It’s time.
2
Mr. Brooks, why don’t you just say it? Your beloved Republican Party has become unfit to govern.
2
Republican fear mongering is not new. It’s the way that party has operated in modern times. The only thing new is the disgusting crudeness with which the current crew of GOP thugs express themselves. Let’s hope that their brazen impunity brings them down for good in the next election.
1
Fear leads to demagoguery. which breeds more fear, which creates scapegoats (immigrants, Jews, etc), which can only be stopped by strong positive leadership. Waiting.
We're indeed in fearful times. Fear illness, since medical care is becoming more and more expensive or outright unavailable.
Fear job loss, since that medical thingy is tied to a job and of course the gig economy. You know, the one where everyone is suddenly a contractor and the employer provides nada.
Fear the random acts of violence directed against the "others" which just might include you.
Fear a president who loves him some violence and talks about his police, his army, his bikers - the ones with the guns.
Fear religious zealots who want to control women, GLBTQ people, and of course non-Christians.
Fear white nationalists - they are bigots with the tacit support of one political party.
There is plenty more to fear, most of it coming from the Right. That is what they do best.
1
Dear Mr. B;
"bellowing about the monster in the closet."Kee phrase, direct your attention to Conscience. While this area is not in peace,almost always Fear will be in the entry door . best regards .
Poor David. He just can’t put the onus where it belongs, can he?
2
"Governance" is absolutely not the cure!
In my lifetime there's only one fear I am conscious of being generated, fed and exploited by a US President - W, Cheney, Rumsfeld and 9/11.
They, the ones who opened the floodgates of world-wide religious "anti-ism" (Muslim) are the ones I hold responsible for the horrors of today's massacres across the globe.
How those 3 sleep peacefully at night is beyond me.
A crime was committed.
We, our nation, responded by declaring war on an entire religion.
Sick, self-serving, misguided response. And the world pays many times over.
This is the latest version of your Republican Party, Mr. Brooks. Granted, lies and bigotry were always there - they've just been pushed past what some Republicans like you can still accommodate.
Remember St. Reagan announcing his presidential campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi, a dog whistle to bigots who knew that was where Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner had been murdered by the Klan?
Or how about the corruption and illegal behavior to hold onto power? Recall that George W. and Jeb Bush sat during an interview in early 2000 during which they laughed that W. would carry the state of Florida in the election - where later, election irregularities forced a recount of ballots and the election got tipped into the heavily conservative Supreme Court, which annointed W. president, although Al Gore won the popular vote?
Not to mention Mitch McConnell vowing to make Obama a one term president by obstructing all his initiatives - this carried on far into years that Mr. Brooks still defended the Republican Party and GOP Congress.
Mr. Brooks thinks things have finally gone to far and the tone coming from the White House and other GOP embeds has now turned downright now scary and corrosive.
Mr. Brooks is very late to the party.
1
Okay, I see your point, David. But let’s be clear, Republicans, especially during the Trump era, really have been “disgusting.”
1
We have a president who loves the poorly educated, and fear is predicated on ignorance. What did anyone expect to happen?
Too few people say it allowed, but it’s true: Trump supporters are ignorant people whose fear of Other is ruining this country. That 35 percent who fit the description and worship Trump will end up wrecking everything for all of us.
This world has existing in eras of fear for centuries and religion and politics have been its fuel, for the benefit of those who would rule.
Before this phase of white nationalism in America, before the Nazis in World War II, before American slavery, before American genocide of Native American tribes, before the pogroms in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, before the Inquisition, before the fall of the Second Temple, before the fall of the First Temple, we had fear.
As we've grown more knowledgeable, we've grown more sophisticated, as a species, to fine tune our tools of fear mongering.
Fear has always been with us. It will remain with us until we resolve to banish those who spread it.
Choose wisely. 2020 is the last redo.
So long.
---
Things Trump Did While You Weren’t Looking [2019] https://wp.me/p2KJ3H-3h2
2
It is a struggle to remain calm while formulating this response. Mr. Brooks is a well known conservative who has spent his career defending conservative ideas and politicians. Listening to him bemoan the fearful atmosphere of today's America is extremely aggravating because it reveals an appalling hypocrisy. The Republican Party has spent decades perfecting the art of pitching fear to their base for electoral advantage, which they then use to further enrich the wealthy. For Brooks to cry wolf now, because the policies of his party have led us to this inevitable paralysis, is disingenuous. Brooks and Wehner want to dissociate themselves from the anti-intellectual Trumpian Republican Party without taking any responsibility for laying the groundwork for Trump's ascension. People aren't that stupid, Mr. Brooks. This mess is partly your fault. If you want absolution, man up and admit that you helped pave the way to the current state of fear.
Much of the anger today is based on hard facts. Amazons , many big corporation and many billionaires are nothing but free loaders on hard working Americans.
Much of the fear is also based on hard facts, one job glitch, or health care issue and you could be on the street.
Some of white nationalism fear crimes and mass shootings may stem from these vulnerabilities. As usual this author has things backwards.
1
Mr. Brooks timeline is a bit off. Americans have been fearful a long time, from the dark forests of Rip van Winkle, to the native americans referred to as savages, the black man, immigrants in the 1800's, the hun, the commies, the gays, the liberals, Clinton, more immigrants, etc. etc.
Fear has been a political tool forever.
What is new is hate for fellow americans generated at the highest level of our government.
Fear and hate gets money and votes in this age of no reason, unenlightenment and greed.
David, I suggest you read Paul Krugman's column today if you want to know what really frightens me: zombie politicians that keep lying to be reelected and destroying our beautiful country thanks to pundits in denial like you.
2
And which political party uses fear to scare voters into voting against their own economic interests??? Oh yeah, yours Dave
I think it's time to stop reflexively hating on David Brooks all the time for being, ahem, "well healed" and for his past support of dubious economic policies and the Republican Party.
Until recently, I was never inclined to even consider reading anything that appeared with Mr. Brooks's byline, but despite myself I find myself recently finding his analyses the most cogent and interesting on the NYT Op-Ed page.
Think about this. Who else is actually doing this on a daily mass media platform? No one is. The rest of the NYT's Op-Eders are either writing about very specific issues that we may not be aware of (and I appreciate these very much also), and the rest are just barking as loudly as they can in support of one or the other party in this hopelessly dysfunctional 2-party system we have.
All of a sudden, I find David Brooks being, refreshingly, the one NYT Op-Ed columnist who's not hopelessly beholden to one or the other of these two self-appointed ridiculously out-of-touch self-serving political parties.
Plenty of ink has already been spilled about the transformations that Mr. Brooks has undergone in his personal and spiritual lives in recent years, and those are irrelevant to me, but I am glad to have one NYT Op-Ed columnist who seems to spend all of his time lately thinking deeply about the human condition and the evolving American experience.
Do yourself a favor. Put aside your biases and give this man's work a fresh look.
Fear is the cement for collective recognition of ignorance .
Mr. Brooks makes an important point that we now often think in a binary way- this one option or that opposite option. I believe that many of us grew up to work on multiple possible solutions to fearful problems.
I find one major point incorrect. Fear is negative force if the fearful person or group does not/do not feel a way out- that there are no rational ways of dealing with the problem at hand.
Societies and individuals under attack can and do show great strength when mobilized to fight the source of the fear. Those who do respond and fight usually do not show or feel anger.
I also do not see the President as necessarily stoking fears. That may be how his words are interpreted by some, but he is often pointing out issues to be solved, such as un-vetted immigration.
When I first came to live in the USA in 1993, and, after the thrill of arriving and settling had died down, I began realized how fearful and 'sold' the American people were. There was little use of the language of criticality and little use of irony. The supremacy of the 'sales pitch' and the constant leading you to a 'point of sale' was also very ubiquitous.
However, the fear that that was infecting society over here was the most conspicuous difference to the social atmosphere I had experienced when I lived in the north of England. I could not understand why the most powerful country in history was full of frightened people. Now I do. The education system is geared to fulfilling the fantasy off the American Dream - an inchoate, irrational and unfulfillable ambition. That would scare anybody.
2
We, each individual, have to put aside the weapons we’ve picked up in this age of fear. Hyper-partisanship, good v evil worldviews, all-or-nothing demands. We need to stop listening to the voices in the media, on the internet and among politicians who are selling this arsenal for some imagined coming apocalypse.
Sit down, take a breath and take a fresh look at those around us. We just might find the human beings behind the absolutist labels we’ve tagged them with. We might find others not so different from ourselves, pretty good people just working to get through each day. Pretty good people who themselves might have listened to the fear mongers a bit too much.
1
Is it fear that I feel, or is it despair because I have lost faith that the majority of our citizens will exhibit the love necessary for a successful democracy? One can argue about the proper role of religion in modern society, but we are losing something fundamental in setting aside the cardinal theological virtues.
I want to agree with you about governance versus the clash of existential identities, but I'm not as hopeful.
There is a clash. Each side of the clash is multifaceted. On the "right" there's religious sectarianism, guns, isolationism, and eviscerating the public sector. On the "left" there's secularism, gun regulations, globalism, and expanding the public sector. We cannot escape that clash. And we cannot mitigate it when our discourse is diseased with lies and false propaganda.
It's more than just fixing things and getting stuff done. While I urge the Democrats to first undo the damage to the public sector before they expand it, what comes next is a massive re-engineering of our means of and infrastructure for energy usage.
It's huge. It's an effort that will demand as much from the public sector as the private sector, and it will demand a lot. It will take unprecedented global cooperation. America is in no shape to lead this.
Not until we have clashed and good has prevailed.
1
9/11 was exploited to foment fear of fear. The war on terrorism is a war on war. It is a perpetual war. It creates terror. The fearful cannot distinguish between real threats and manipulation. Racism, fear of immigrants, fear of job and wealth lost, fear of government, which of these have Republicans employed to incite fear and panic?
Fear and hatred and greed rise from the same emotion. Reason has little impact on the terrorized. Using reason to provoke fear is the ultimate betrayal.
4
I grew up in the era of the cold war, race riots, and anti-Vietnam protests. So, forgive me if I don't think fear and anger are anything new. To me the difference today is that the news media tends to amplify the fear and anger, and more of the angst is turned inwardly against our fellow Americans.
1
@Dave
I grew up in the same era. Another major difference is that the current President of the United States is a mentally unbalanced, shameless serial liar who manipulates fear, anger and misinformation in order to wreak havoc and further divide the country. That's what's new. And no, President Obama most definitely did not do this.
2
Wow David, I think you've nailed it today. This is an excellent piece. Everyone is really anxious/scared these days.
3
Let's broaden our time horizon a little: fear surely is a permanent part of our DNA without which we'd never have made it up the evolutionary ladder. It has its uses -- many of them good ones (what to pay attention to, what to get out of the way of, etc.). What turns it on in a particular instance is another thing altogether. And that's worth talking about. But banishing or eliminating it as a general matter? Fuhgeddaboudit!
1
“Fear comes in the night. But eventually you have to wake up in the morning, get out of bed and get stuff done.”
The fear that comes in the night is most often irrational and paralyzing, and upon waking we are quick to cast it off, but fear can also be rooted in real problems and highly motivating. It can drive us to fix stuff that complacency had allowed us to ignore. Such fear motivated millions on Election Day 2018. I trust it will be even more of a motivator in the months ahead.
1
Well Mr. Brooks if anyone should know anything about fear it should be you, one of the leading public apologists for 40 years of Republican fear inspired politics. From Richard Nixon and the Southern Strategy to Saint Reagan and the Welfare Queens to that great patrician paragon George Bush and Willy Horton to George Bush and his Axis Of Evil, fanning the flames of fear is a Republican specialty and you, Mr. Never Trump Brooks were there every step of the way. Far from tie political aberration you pretend him to be, Trump is the epitome of what the Republican Party has been all about the past forty years: the demonization of opponents, debasement of our political culture and rhetoric (thank you Newt Gingrich), the equation of compromise with surrender, ruthless expediency, relentless obstructionism, shameless public hypocrisy, disrespect for facts, and shoveling money to their owners, the Koch Brothers and other assorted corporations and plutocrats. And now that the consummate Republican is running our country, the Republican brand of fear is coming full flower.
I’m not surprised you are afraid Mr. Brooks.
12
This essay has a veneer of reasonableness. But basically it just purveys a bunch of stock mainstream cliches and disparages those of us who don’t accept them.
Those of us who want to reduce immigration into our country are “afraid of immigrants.” There is no sense that there might be good economic, environmental, or social reasons for doing so.
And after all, why would anyone be afraid of their maids or gardeners? They must be racists!
Or take that thoroughly conventional statement: “we are going through one of the longest sustained periods of economic growth in our history and middle class wages are starting to rise.”
I have some economic news for Mr Brooks: “we” aren’t going through good economic times, because when it comes to the economy there no longer is a “we” in America. Any recent economic gains among the middle class are minor and are subject to revocation by a powerful economic elite with zero commitment to sharing the wealth with commoners
Americans know all this. They aren’t stupid. They know how precarious their prosperity is, they know that neither party has stood up for the common good or the economic interests of the majority of Americans in recent decades. It isn’t unjustified “fear” to acknowledge all this. It is our national reality.
5
"Another lonely fanatic."
He had friends. He has friends the same way so many people do now, on line.
Those are real friendships. Witness what came of them spinning each other up on this -- that's evil, but it is real.
To dismiss him as a lonely fanatic is to overlook the handle by which this can be reached.
It also plays to fear. Ravening mad loners are not out there like the zombie apocalypse. That is giving way to fear.
2
A pervasive climate of fear has dissipated once in my lifetime, although my personal recollection of it is a bit second-hand, having been all of 7 years old in 1960. When you are in the midst of it, you simply can't imagine how it will ever go away, and then, suddenly, you can't even remember what it felt like.
This is what it was like when the exuberance of the 'Sixties arrived to replace the fearfulness of the 'Fifties.
So what was the driving force behind this change? Political leadership? As much as I admired JFK, I think he was more an expression of a transformation already in progress than its cause.
No, I think it comes down to something more fundamental: people eventually get tired of cowering, especially young people.
You can tell this is happening when the fearmongers lose their potency. Trump knows this is happening, which is why he keeps escalating his rhetoric, but once it happens, he is finished.
The truth is that time is moving on. We are a generation removed from 9/11, and we are about due to come out of our crouch.
2
I think you must have meant to write, "It's been an era when Republican politicians rise by fear." Remember "No Drama Obama"? The false equivalencies have gotten very, very old.
4
Right wingers stoke fear, we know that is true. Look at Trump's entry into politics - a speech about fear. Democrats stoke fear of Republicans because Republicans are deplorable. See the connection? One side is evil, the other side warns of the evil side.
3
Fear in these times was realized when I watched president G. W. Bush mockingly peer under his desk in the Oval Office during a press interview and declare, "There must be WMD's under here somewhere".
A savage oligarch bent on control through lies against evidence and reason. There s a connection of dots between his action and Trump and Sri Lanka and Pittsburg and Charleston and...
1
Trump the demagogue understands -- as have Republicans since "The Southern Strategy" -- that fear works. The important thing is to direct the fear to targets that suit the demagogue and his bankrollers.
But, we have a lot to fear from Trump. He is a malignant narcissist who must personally win at all costs.
The destruction of our democratic institutions, domestic cohesion and world reputation are just three cracked eggs on the way to Trump becoming "Dear Leader for Life".
2
The emotional undertone of "political conflicts" isn't fear. The emotional undertone of Republican politics, or more correctly, Trumpism, is fear.
Trump has an exquisite understanding of the use of fear. His incessant rantings against brown skinned people, or doctors "killing babies" are made for only one reason: to incite his base. Trump wants the rest of us to fear his rabid, heavily armed base, and through them, fear him. He wants them primed if he loses the election next year.
His incitement to violence is self-serving - with the inevitable violence of his base, Trump will declare martial law and remain in office indefinitely. Trump isn't going anywhere. And he needs to have a rabid, angry base ready at all times, to instill fear into the rest of us.
Trump's base loves it. They're salivating for a blood-letting. This is what happens when an ignorant, angry mob doesn't take responsibility for their own failings. They strike out at others. They falsely blame others for their own failures. And so these lies, to them, "justify" their violence.
Trump wants to be sure that we fear his base, at all times. Trump has had a heckuva hand. For two years, he had both houses of Congress in his pocket. He still has one, along with a toadying Supreme Court.
But his strongest card is his heavily armed base. They will continue to instill fear in the rest of us. Tree of Life. Poway. Charlottesville. We've shown we won't fight back. Our fear will keep us under this despot's rule.
3
What disturbs me is that if I want to engage Trump supporters and Republicans in general, would I be able to have a good faith conversation with them. I can't understand how decent people could support this man other than as a means to an end.
But what means? And what end? I don't understand the values driving that other than resentment, fear, anger and bigotry. But more than anything a lust not so much for "power" but for "winning." Trump is big on winning. And to them, he wins. He doesn't, in the end, matters what is one; it only matters that their side wins. And when it doesn't matter what you're fighting for other than the bald fact that your fighting for you "side", you will fight for anything, no matter how horrific.
2
And, as Peter Gabriel sang way back in 1978, fear is the mother of violence.
HA! Yes. I like this write-up. Put Fear aside. It accomplishes nothing, nada, zero, zippo.
In the context of today's world it is a ridiculous waste of human energy. It's time to get over it, and ourselves, and settle into the hard work of cleaning up all the messes created over the last half-decade or so.
We've let our governance house go, and become slovenly as a people from all the various excesses we have indulged in. We have allowed belief to hold sway over reason, which has lead us to this dithering and equivocating state of being.
Aren't you tired of it? I am. Let's wake up, shall we? Let's take a good hard look around ourselves - as well as in the mirror - and start doing some Spring cleaning. We'll all feel better (later) for doing so, starting right...now. Here's a bucket, mop and broom. Let's get to it.
John~
American Net'Zen
We’re Catholic, but our 12 year old daughter attends a Jewish summer camp. It’s an amazing organization and wonderful community. My heart physically hurt when their building was vandalized with swastikas earlier this year. Tonight our daughter asked if she would be safe at camp this summer; she “didn’t want to die or watch other kids die.” This is our country now: children thinking about summer camp worry about gunfire. How did we get here? The president refuses to condemn Nazis while retweeting (with a wink and a nod) material from white nationalist websites. Hate speech percolates unchecked on social media platforms. Members of Congress won’t disown those playing footsie with white supremacists. And so hate crimes begin to rise as racist organizations feel emboldened. Until America votes out of office those who look away from bigotry’s deadly consequences, the fear David Brooks references will continue to be part of our daily lives.
1
The fearmongering began earlier. We've had lots of demagogues over the years, but three in the last half-century's line of Republican presidents mostly shaped the obscene near-anarchy of reactionary vigilantism and financial looting and kleptocracy we find ourselves in today.
First, Richard Nixon with his cynical, racist Southern Strategy and harping on the social-change fears of the Silent Majority, and putting conservative extremists on the Court.
Then we had Ronald Reagan with his uber-cynical, racist dogwhistling about "states' rights" - advocated in Philadelphia, Mississippi, no less, to commence his general election campaign - and harping on the evils of government, and putting conservative extremists on the Court.
Now we have Donald Trump, no further explanation needed.
Their prime target for fear? Disenfranchised blue collar and middle-class and poor whites. Does fearmongering work? Look around you. This is America in the Reagan Restoration. How's it working out for "Morning in America?"
Their prime target for deregulation? The 1%. Does greedmongering work? Look around you. This is America in the Reagan Restoration. How's it working out for everybody in trickle-down Reaganomics, which became Cheneynomics and now Trumponomics? Seems to me like it's trickling down on the faces of most Americans.
Then there are the complicit centrist "Democrats," some of whom are running for nomination now.
Wake up, America. It's getting late and there's an awful lot to do.
“I wonder if we’ve fully grasped how fear pervades our society and sets the emotional tone for our politics.”
Seriously, Mr. Brooks? I haven’t wondered for many, many years. Think McCarthy and his witch trials in the Senate. Think Nixon and the Southern Strategy. Think Reagan and Welfare Queens stealing from you and me. Think Bush 41 and the Willie Horton ads. Think Clinton (um, and Biden) and the regressive 1994 crime bill they passed. Think Bush 43, Iraq and its (now totally disproven) WMDs. All fear-based—every single one of them. And that doesn’t even begin to describe what Trump has done to us and the country.
David, I know you’re a deeply religious person as well, and so I’ll leave you to ponder this. The Bible (among other texts) speaks over and over and over about the connection between embracing God’s love and letting go of, or overcoming, the natural human tendency towards fearful thinking: “Yeah, tho I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I shall fear no evil, for the Lord my God is with me.” And so on. It’s not that any of us *don’t* feel fear, but rather, how you deal with it. Do you let it rule your life, or not?
My question to you, then, is please help me understand the 80-90% of so-called “Evangelical Christians” who embrace, support, and promote Trump’s fear-based approach to the world and our nation’s governance. What happened?
2
Those who planned and executed the attacks of 911 succeeded in their mission. They killed thousands, but that wasn't their most important objective.
The objective of terrorism is violence toward a political end. Osama Bin Laden and others knew that they could provoke over-reaction from the United States. Once the US invaded and occupied countries that weren't even responsible for the crime, we would be seen as the aggressor, and violence against us would rise.
They also knew these wars would bankrupt us and divide our people, as it has. They knew that terrorizing our people wouldn't unite us against a common enemy like Al Qaeda; it would create fear and demonstrate the failures of our own government and security state. It followed, that Americans would fight among themselves as our society fell into deeper violence.
Now we are here, and the result is that we vomited up a demagogue who peddles fear as callously as he peddled fake educations.
Trump is the caricature terrorists hoped we would turn to out of fear. He represents our worst inclinations. He speaks only of violence, not love and peace. His hatred is directed toward the most vulnerable and powerless people on our continent, because he is a predator himself.
Since rule of law does not exist anymore, and congress won't impeach him for impeachable offenses, and the special prosecutor was too feckless to indict, we are left with one option:
Vote him out of office or lose our country's soul.
1
American citizens fear began on 9/11? Really? Fear has been the main pitch of the GOP for a half-century. How did David's hero, Ronald Reagan, stoke fear? He said in the 1960s that passing Medicare would create a socialist dictatorship where citizens would tell their children "what it once was like in America when men were free." He launched his presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the scene of the murders of four civil rights workers, as a blatant appeal to racist fears.
Actually, Reagan was partly right. We're close to having a dictatorship, but it's not socialism that got us there, it's the right-wing fascism.
2
Those who planned and executed the attacks of 911 succeeded in their mission. They killed thousands, but that wasn't their most important objective.
The objective of terrorism is violence toward a political end. Osama Bin Laden and others knew that they could provoke over-reaction from the United States. Once the US invaded and occupied countries that weren't even responsible for the crime, we would be seen as the aggressor, and violence against us would rise.
They also knew these wars would bankrupt us and divide our people, as it has. They knew that terrorizing our people wouldn't unite us against a common enemy like Al Qaeda; it would create fear and demonstrate the failures of our own government and security state. It followed, that Americans would fight among themselves as our society fell into deeper violence.
Now we are here, and the result is that we vomited up a demagogue who peddles fear as callously as he peddled fake educations.
Trump is the caricature terrorists hoped we would turn to out of fear. He represents our worst inclinations. He speaks only of violence, not love and peace. His hatred is directed toward the most vulnerable and powerless people on our continent, because he is a predator himself.
Since rule of law does not exist anymore. Since congress won't impeach him for impeachable offenses and the special prosecutor was too feckless to indict, we are left with one option:
Vote him out of office or lose our country's soul.
Simple, powerful action by Biden would be for him to select Anita Hill as his Vice President. The shifting of the women's vote for Biden would be significant and for the Black women's vote unbeatable.
Bob Woodward's "Fear" chronicles how terror comes not in the night but out of the austere rooms of Trump's White House. Populism and fear are stoked on social media by Italy's Minister of Interior (European version of the US Department of Homeland Security), that had the bright idea of posting a photo of himself handling a machine-gun on Facebook on a blood-drenched Easter Sunday where 253 Christians in Sri Lanka were massacred by suicide bombers. That's how dark forces advance and stop at nothing; malevolent fear for fear's sake.
Yeah, David, when people go to the mosque or synagogue or Black church, that person shouldn't be afraid that some unhinged individual armed with an AR-15 will come and shoot them. That doesn't happen, right?
There are real things to fear. And instead of background checks to make it less likely that irresponsible people buy weapons of war, you talk about "fear" as though all fears are equally irrational. They are not.
1
Donald Trump should start thinking what will happen in SECOND WEEK OF NOVEMBER IN 2020. And after that what will happen on January 20, 2021, if he is no longer POTUS, Feds in SDNY are waiting. Guess who will be more thrilled? His personal lawyer MICHAEL COHEN.
"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." --Yoda
2
Fear is Trump. If he's elected again say goodbye to America and then the world. Trump likes to rile things up. Boy will Trump be happy.
Donald Trump understands the fears and anxieties of his “base” and stokes and strokes them.
But fear is not the only emotion he manipulates, it may not even be his most effective tactic.
Trump is a bully’s bully; a guy who dominates his prey and unrelentingly vanquishes it. (In reality, some of that bullying is merely rhetorical, and the real Trump often fails to act on his threats or avoids confrontations, especially if his “mark” is stronger than he is). His bullying bluster gives the powerless, those who have been on the wrong side of income inequality, globalization, automation the vicarious thrill of being winners. They see Trump as their bully, the guy who takes on all of the powers who look down on them, who have neglected them, who underpay them, who flaunt their successes. It isn’t fear that pervades the once thriving rust belt towns that Democrats and Republicans have ignored for decades as their communities descend into opioid addiction, continual yard sales, and 200,000 mile odometers. It is despair. Trump is a liar; they know that; he may be in it for his own financial gain, they are ok with that (who isn’t); Trump may not even be that smart, but they believe his street smarts made him rich and he will take their cause to the streets. He stokes long lost hope that their self esteem may be restored, and they will be winners again.
1
"wages finally rising for the middle class"...
Getting out my magnifying glass, looking for the middle class, finding it finally hiding under a dust mote in the corner of the living room.
Mr. Brooks, please read Mr. Krugman's piece also in today's paper.
1
An Era defined by the fear by the right, by David Brooks, Brett Stephens and the Reverend Douthat. As the holy trinity pontificates about morality and politics, each has had a roe in the fall from grace.
Gentlemen: separation of church and state.
Supply side economics is a smokescreen for theft not creating jobs.
Corporations are not people.
You broke it, you pay for it. A little humility David.
3
There was a lot more ground-level fear in the 70s. 80s, 90s. I was certainly afraid after being mugged in New Haven in 1984 at twilight on busy Whitney Ave. I met a prof from NYU the same year who had been mugged in the NYC subway, was slammed against the wall and suffered a skull fracture and hearing loss. I don't need to mention any more grisly details. That was gritty, day to day fear, fear to leave the house, fear of the next phone call whose purpose was to determine if you were at home (or preferably not).
the only thing I fear is that our country will not regain any for of unity in my lifetime. And who is the great divider?
I think historians will define this era as one of lack of respect for those in political office whatever party they affiliated with. They will also mark this era as the death of journalism in the rise of tabloidism.
Responsible governance is a solution to fear, but the flip side is how many leaders use fear to tighten their hold. People can’t think rationally when they’re afraid. Nor can they look at the deep flaws in someone they perceive to be a protector.
And don’t hold your breath for this cynical use of power to stop any time soon by itself. We have to resist being conned entirely. That means we have to find the courage in ourselves.
Tanguy- one of my very favorites. 'Fear' - my favorite Tanguy. Thanks for using it. It's a chilling dreamscape, but it encapsulates aloneness and fear. These days, we have much to fear from a growing ignorant mob, not an empty landscape.
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It does seem that the usual term for acting out of fear has fallen right out of our cultural conversation. We've ennobled the act of irrationally shaking in our shoes, as long as "we" are the ones doing it. We coddle anti-vaxxers who compromise our herd immunity out of fear; we coddle police officers who "fear for their lives" out on America's mean streets and therefore allow or even encourage them to treat their fellow citizens, and especially people of color (who always appear "threatening"), as potential foes; we coddle religious bigots who tremble at the word "muslim," fearing for their future and their children's future in the dreadful shadow of the Other.
There are reasons for fear, sure-- it's not like slipping from majority into minority status doesn't come with any dangers. But when we act out of fear, we stop acting based on what "is" and start jumping at shadows-- sometimes with tragic consequences.
There are precious few people anymore we ask to be brave. When's the last time you heard the word "cowardice" applied to someone who wasn't in some way "the enemy"?
1
The event that changed everything for me came a couple of years before 9/11. It was Columbine, Apr 20, 1999. I had two sons in middle school at that time. Columbine changed everything.
Again only being partially correct. ALL politicians are not inspiring fear- it is the Republican politicians of this country, especially the flawed leader in the White House,that are fearmongering. Brooks- try to be more complete and truthful.
4
I was caught saying things like, "I'm King David" and doing things only kings and those close to dying do. To no avail.
Now I have to actually let the model flow. It is difficult for me to believe that people don't know how to deal with this stuff.
Krugman knows almost everything I know, why can't he create this model?
It is confusing to know who I am and who I will be. Oh well...
Always thought this fear era began on September 11th. In a real sense the terrorists won. Their attack, carried out so easily, “cured” us of our smugness about our vulnerability, and, for what seems like an instant now, brought us together as a country. Then, slowly, our national psyche changed and here we are. Trump is the embodiment of what the terrorists could only envision, the end result of their unspeakable crime who has succeeded it tearing us apart.
1
Scary article. Fear in times of hate requires a healing force and building bridges. I reminded me of the "Guernica" maybe because I am not familiar with Yves Tanguy who I already Googled. And, because the Guernica is so graphic. It makes me cry each time.
As we assess fear and anger, let's not forget their inextricable link to the extremism that is plaguing our world's civilizations regardless of tribe. Tone it down. Calm down. Look for the kernel of rational belief in your adversaries world view (it might not be there, but at least look for it), and in doing so reevaluate your own views for the stone in your own eye.
1
The prevailing chief pontificator seems to embrace a political message of "I like fear!"
His unkind words and overbearing attitude of intimidation and prevarication ooze menace and fear over distraught and distracted citizenry.
This is a dangerous and unhealthy game being played.
Are we still capable of recognizing sincere trust and authentic benevolence in our public responsibility?
Fear engenders false victory wherein everyone loses.
I don't want to play this game of fear.
1
The US should not be in a position of fear.
Our system was superior, and everyone knew it. What did we do?
I know a lot, but few people listen. Reality is kind of bleak if you let it be.
What is the point? I pose this question to Xi and Putin. What is the point?
My point in the US is to emphasize how the US domination policies following WWII were wrong.
But how do we meet? I have a working model. Will you work with us on this? I can provide the starting place, and I can pound US economists into place!
But are you in with us? We're arrogant. You followed us. Ok, this is complicated, and I can't blame you. Let's work this out!
Everyone agrees that fear is bad but this article lacks context and tries to substitute individual actors for longer term trends. Fear-based dissemination of racist politics goes back to he 19th century and the invention of nationalism. Check out Niall Ferguson's lecture on American populism which demonstrates clearly how the racist, hysterical demagoguery of Trump is basically a trope of US politics since not long after the revolution. Since the 1920s the establishment has also tried to use the techniques of modern psychology to "hack" public consciousness through propaganda and advertising by eliciting emotional reactions instead of discourse and reason.
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David needs to be more honest about the source of this fear. Back in the 1980's, Reagan eliminated the Fairness Doctrine, which paved the way for non-stop right-wing hate radio on the AM dial. There are dozens of radio fear mongers and conspiracy theorists, 24-7, across the country. Decades of nonstop fear exploitation have thus brought the predictable results David laments. He also needs to stop with false equivalencies: there is no left-wing counterpart--no equivalent entity spreading fear. It has been entirely one-sided. It should be no surprise that recent acts of domestic terrorism all come from right-wing zealots.
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Fear is part of the human apparatus which ensures our survival. Our biological heritage is short on tooth and claw, but big on fear response and thinking, so we depend on the latter two for survival. Predators are all around, being hit by a car is a possibility, and, unfortunately many many things which politicians can talk about endlessly to stir up our fear response. In my view the best politician now is one who can calm us, not by false reassurance, but by speaking about approaches we can take to solving big problems which inspire fear, and speaking in a manner which is matter of fact and reasonable. In the 1920's there was a "red scare" inspired by the Russian Revolution which, in turn led to the Attorney General to recommend rounding up "communists" and shipping them to Russia. He actually succeeded in sending about two boatloads of these Americans off to Russia. Warren Harding, he of bad fame, did something very wise. He shrugged off the problem as a non problem and the deportations ceased along with the fear of communists, at least for many years. Of course that old bug a boo was resurrected during the New Deal by the opponents of FDR and later as we all know. Now is the moment for the calm approach of wise politician. Let the scoundrels eat their fear and, pray god, we ignore them.
Mitch McConnell's solution is to shrink the time it takes to confirm conservative judges to next to nothing, at the expense of deliberation and respect for others. Just gettin stuff done, he might say.
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I fear the failure of the government to protect us from our own citizens.
I fear lying politicians that encourage supremacist thinking in religion, gender, and race.
I am encouraged that fear and hope cycle over time and eventually we make progress. Today's fear will be replaced by tomorrow's hope.
Yesterday's fear of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare have lead to a far richer and accepting culture the then fear mongers never anticipated and now would never give up.
Irrational fear will fade away. It may take time but hope and reason will prevail.
Isn't fear the great telling of the soul? An internal alarm, profoundly effective at altering the mind from what it wants to do, to instead, what it must do, protect and survive? What we protect is a value that can be taught, but the instinct to do so is biophysically compelled, no? Groups who have faced mass displacement, imprisonment and murder also know inherent fear. A first base starter, still, Mr Brooks seems to have no concept of fear, can't understand its depth of soul origins but that doesn't make fear narcissistic. Only the powerful men who have driven such fear, who have profited and prospered from fear, the wars and the reshuffling of land locked assets, would suggest ego drives fear. The fear felt since 9/11 is exactly the fear intended, a slow death of America and all she stands for. Even the date, its numerical significance, was meant to invoke fear, a foretelling of destruction to come. Fear, manufactured. Fear, manipulated. All to pressure and push people to preemptively move, change, and ultimately conform to the will of the Powers driving the fear. No day of Generation Fear was more telling than when Mr. Obama spoke of chirping birds, as people were being slaughtered across America. Wars, the will of mostly men, doing little to curb institutional murder, still. This ignorance, as with Mr. Brooks here, is why Fear persists. In the face of evil, pretending it away, calling it narcissism and making it political is almost as evil as he who ignites the flame.
In the face of challenges much more monumental than we face today, FDR wisely counseled, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
With regard to the habitual liar who simultaneously claims we're living in the best of times (tax cuts, economy, judicial appointments, deregulation) and we're living in the worst of times (infanticide, immigrants, terrorism, socialism), the advice that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself still resonates.
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My reaction to this was to point out how obvious it should be to everyone that the Rs are the culprits. Then I read Krugman’s article. And he does a great job of laying it out. Great 1 2 punch of factual analysis. Fox News, Republicans and DJT would have nothing to sell if it weren’t for fear. Why isn’t this obvious to everyone who cares?
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I am sorry, but for me the era began with the Oklahoma City bombing. I was in high school and remember watching the news coverage and feeling utterly shocked that there were American terrorists who would kill Americans over anti-government feeling. It was concurrent with the take off of Rush Limbaugh's radio show and an angry white male culture that suddenly seemed like a real threat to the whole nation. I remember the preschool children being carried out- those who survived- and thinking that this was the most horrible thing I had ever seen or had happened to my country as it was self-inflicted. We have to dig deeper to understand our homegrown white nationalism. It was not 9/11, it was already there.
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@momma4cubs
Thank you....very much in agreement that 9/11 was not the watershed moment. You may be right about OKC. Since then, Republicans have tried to dismantle the government by either not working with Democratic presidents Clinton & Obama, or simply not filling positions of government.
David always thinks there is an equality of blame/responsibility for the two political parties. Fence straddling is what gets him through his day.
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Fear is opposed to facts. And fear is the fodder especially of the right-wing. The Republican brain currently feeds on it and thus looks to god, guns, or hatred of others to mollify or make sense of it.
As usual, Brooks makes a reasonable point but, yes, fears to investigate systemic causality. He has a good sense of the surface, but very little understanding of depth.
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The fear we face today is something different from other eras, such as Cuban Missile Crisis of the 50s, when we didn't know if we'd survive on this planet.
Today's fear, rooted in nothing but stocked by outrageous lies from the very top of government, is amorphous and projecting--what will he do next? What will happen next? Is Civil War about to break out?
I kid you not--a recent survey showed that respondents felt the nation was 75% along the way to violent conflict.
One can turn off the tube and go about daily concerns, but unless you want to lock yourself in a rubber room, you're bound to face the fact of how unstable we are as a country and a society.
Bob Woodward even wrote a book about fear and how the president uses it as a favorite tool to get his way.
Today's fear is different from the Cold War. It's a hot war of lies and conspiracies deliberately sewn and stoked by a man who has no shame.
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Trump is the poster boy for fear. He stokes the fear of his supporters and he invokes fear in his opposition. Voila! Everyone no matter who feels angry, fearful and powerless. He will be really tough to get rid of. However, when we do, we’ll all feel a lot better.
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But does Mr. Brooks think our fear is irrational, a passing phase that will go its way and be replaced by more secure feelings. Mr. Brooks reminds us of FDR's famous "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." But is that true now? Are there no real dangers, existential dangers to our democracy and government with the advent of the new administration based on lies and ignoring laws (e.g., not responding to legal demands for documents by the House committees)--where hatred and distrust of "others" becomes the accepted truth. Trump does not say, "We would like to help these desperate migrants who are running for their lives, but we do not have enough resources to take them all in." Instead the says, "These caravans are evil people--murderers and rapists--who come to kill you." It is the stoking of fear based on prejudice towards other ethnic groups that inspires Trump's rhetoric. And do we not have to fear--if we are not very wealthy--a government that seems bent on taking away the traditional safety net that has protected us in the past. We label welfare programs such as Medicaid "socialist" and people worry about their old age and medical care. These are real fears, engendered by the growing divide in our society and the real hatred between the different divides--where each side sees the other as evil and dangerous.
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Very well said. I'm always taken aback at how angry Americans seem. It's evident throughout comment threads, it's in the mouths of every politician, crowds seethe with it, any slightest slight triggers it. (One of many examples: kneeling for the national anthem. The reaction to that was incendiary. Why?) It's palpable. When I visit after being away for a while I can feel the tension in the air. Americans have to be the angriest people in the world. Are things really that bad there?
This is good:
"I was reminded how much we’ve all clenched up, how much we all now seem to be members of this or that cult — fearful of saying something “wrong,” fearful of provoking a Twitter backlash, mindlessly repeating the clichés that signal to others that we are faithfully staying within the barricades of our tribe."
The key word is "mindlessly." I'm tempted to add somewhere in there "intolerantly."
"I might agree or disagree with some of Elizabeth Warren’s zillions of policy proposals, but at least they’re proposals. At least they are attempts to ground our politics in real situations with actual plans, not just overwrought bellowing about the monster in the closet."
Great, David. Maybe you could drop, then, the mildly ridiculing word "zillions." 350+ million Americans led by a buffoon deliberately sowing fear -- deliberately, mind you -- as his way of maintaining his ego-bitten powerlust, merely to keep sowing fear while selling the entire globe downriver, could probably use a zillion alternatives addressing real situations with actual plans.
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My stars, David Brooks, look at you! Nice Republican boy, citing FDR as a model savior - what's going on?! Are you having a midlife crisis? Or is it a crisis of conscience?
Would that more Republicans (and centrist "Democrats" complicit in the Reagan Restoration) would have one.
Let's hear more.
Uncertainty.
Will some tomorrow come (although I suspect it is already here) when America becomes Amerika under an iron-fisted rule of white supremacy and white nationalism, legally voted in and maintained through the Republikan party?
Will some tomorrow come (although I suspect it never will) when America reasserts its core values founded in a fair and just system, despite never having realized that dream, that puts the Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness of ALL its citizens above all else, regardless of race, creed, color, religion, ethnicity, immigrant status, orientation, and gender?
It is this binary uncertainty that leads to the fear facing our country today. I write this at 2:25 am, unable to sleep because of fears: will I be able to pay off student loans when I retire (right around the corner)? Will I have health care; will the dental implants that are not going quite right leave me with a debt burden I can't afford because my dental insurance doesn't cover the expenses required to set things right? Will I have a roof over my head in a comfortable house, or will I spend my retirement years with a bridge over my head? And the panicked fear rises.
But in several hours, I must "get out of bed and get stuff done."
One more thing to fear is the retreat into apathy, the overwhelming sense that what I think and do will not make a bit of difference because things in the nation are so out of control--the federal government, corporate greed, spiritual decline, and so on. After one of the recent mass shootings I caught myself decrying the fact that we now live in a violent society and then quickly correcting into an affirmation that we live in a society with infinite opportunities for good, in which twisted individuals sometimes turn violent, especially when provoked by irresponsible demagogues.
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One fortune creates a shelter where fear seem magical.
Another's fortune is a homeless shelter where everyone is in high pitched hysteria, so worn out that only the instinct of fear survives where the rest of their being once was. They snap.
200 mental patients sleep in a single room on hard cots, forced out into the drug infested streets at 6.00 a.m. before any warm place is open. Everything they own will be stolen if they set it down. No bathrooms so they can be arrested at any time. Constant trauma.
We, in America, know how merciless we are to people who hit the bottom. How cruel we are to the convict, the addicted, mentally ill, intellectually disabled, how we have a subculture of untouchables who live terrified below our streets and in our prisons.
We all know that the bottom could be unimaginably worse, because we see around us, unimaginable deprivation and suffering. We see our own cruelty and are frightened of it.
If we cured these extremes of misery, of the horrors of the helpless and broken, we would not be so frightened of what might happen to us, because we would be part of a society that was decent to everyone.
Amor vincit omnia. Love conquers all.
Fear is hardwired into our psyche. It is a survival gene that makes us apprehensive of change and fearful of "The Other" who ipso facto threatens us.
The antidote to this is, for me, Christian Love:
"Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."
As Christianity is a universal and eternal faith then neighbor includes everyone borne and to be borne.
The decline of Christianity in recent decades in the US has let fear develop and it is now in the saddle. Unless this decline is reversed we are looking at catastrophe.
"I’ve developed a hankering for slightly boring politicians who just get stuff done"
Nice to have you join us David. This is exactly how I felt in 2016, which is why I voted for Hillary.
40% of Americans do not have $400 in ready emergency funds. Approximately 50% of Americans are not involved in the market.
The constant nonsense of "economic booms". Rising wages?
It doesn't apply to the people who need it.
Wake up dude.
America runs on the mammalian or what is also called the emotional brain, specifically on the Amygdala - the fight (violent media, sports) and flight (unending hyped up news alerts). Give students a choice to attend an after school physics tutorial or a fight in the parking lot and we know where the crowd is going to go. Brian capture is the ultimate goal of the capital class because it creates nearly permanent customers. It explains the ubiquity of the click culture, breathtaking greed of the Sacklers and the election of Trump
The Prefrontal Cortex or the human brain is the site of impulse control, stress/mood regulation, reason, logic. It depends on a calm, unaddicted brain to function properly.
America is losing its humanity and is becoming more and more governed by animal instincts. This is by design.
"When historians define this era they may well see it above all else as a time defined by fear. The era began on Sept. 11, 2001, a moment when a nation that had once seemed invulnerable suddenly felt tremendously unsafe. In the years since, the shootings have been a series of bloody strikes out of the blue."
David, nothing comes from nothing. What we face is what we have invited. There were clues, signs before 9-11. But our gossip loving culture couldn't get enough of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. Post 9-11 GWB team did what their scant brains made them do, lie, fool the entire world and create an excuse to display heavy duty missile power, to shock and awe the world. Show offs. Iraq and Afghanistan began the endless bloody strikes, tit for tat, culture-religious extremism wars.
Any one grown up with a sliver of brain, can see, how much of this is our own doing.
1
"Every day of every year, innocent, good, defenseless people are beaten, bloodied, robbed, raped, and murdered … When a criminal attacks, politicians aren’t there to protect you. Their laws can’t protect you. And the media’s lies can’t protect you, either. You’re on your own. But you know what can protect you when no one else can, when no one else will? The ironclad, absolute safeguard of the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”
– Wayne La Pierre, Executive Vice President and CEO, National Rifle Association
This type of fear mongering is rampant in today's political discourse and is powerfully employed by organizations like the NRA who successfully create a reality of fear where millions of Americans are convinced that they need guns for protection in their homes, schools, and churches to defend themselves from any perceived threat. Simply put, people have to have guns because they live in a constant state of fear of one another. Only in America. Our society is in a state of broken human connections and heightened anxieties where often the only antidote to our fears is found in the consoling ownership of a gun.
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Fear can be mollified or it can be exaggerated. e.g. Fear of learning how to ride a bike, once conquered opens up a whole new world to a child. Fear of the other, exaggerated, can lead to a whole slew of bad consequences. And fear sells (Breaking News), it stimulates the flight or fight response. That is why leaders matter and in Trump we have a fear monger in chief, supported by a cast of sycophants, who spew his lies and alternative facts. Fear seems to work very well for authoritarians.
Congratulations Mr Brooks. We are finally getting to where you and your Republican Party have been pushing this once great nation for the past 30 years.
You were right on when you stated how the media has grown to love fear and market it for their ratings while railing against the way things are.
1
Yet again, Brooks at his best. He even bridges some of his major themes: culture, social science, and of course politics. He's right about most of this. Excess fear is corrosive and explains a lot. But he also shows his typical blind spots.
For someone critical of "binaries," he sees "ideology" as all bad and "practical" as all good." Not mentioned in this column, but he often sees community as all good. And the article is about "fear" as all bad.
Yet, certain kinds of ideology, not the blind, "If you disagree with me, you're wrong" kind, are necessary in order to interpret "evidence" or often what are seen as objective "facts" or "data."
Being practical needs to be hybridized with its apparent opposites, idealism or vision. Otherwise we may succeed--but a level far below what is needed to address society's humongous problems. Or may overlook potential creative blockbusters if we look too narrrowly.
Community can stifle individual uniqueness and have its own years-from-common-revelation-of-how-unfair-it-was oppressions to those who don't fit in.
And for someone who has been one of the few to mainstream the actual interconnections between emotions and reason, it is unfortunate that he can't work work out both the positive and even inevitable parts of fear (the reptilian part of our brains is not going to go away) and how those could work together with the other elements he favors.
Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. And hate is a very effective tool for those who want to control and/or fleece large groups of people.
The worst of our politicians use fear of the "other" to gain and hold power, the worst of our weathy effectively buy those politicians to do their bidding, the worst of our media use fear to drive profits. The very worst all work together.
There are many things to be afraid of as a society -- climate change should scare everyone, economic fears are a daily reality for many Americans, health care fears, and so on.
But many of these fears are addressable, they are not acts of a angry God and they are NOT caused by some enemy who doesn't look like you are pray like you or love like you.
But those problems will fester as long as millions of Americans allow themselves to be lead to fear and hate by those who profit from keeping people divided and distracted.
63 million people voted for the personification of fear and hate in 2016. Sending Trump packing in 2020 will not end the excess of fear and hatred in this country. Not even close. But it is a good start.
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@LT hate is very effective. If it's exploited in just the right way by an unscrupulous leader it can kill thousands. Add in a bit of judicious terror and you've got the perfect mixture for a police state. Citizens will cease to pay attention to minor things like climate change or the ruination of the environment in favor of surviving.
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@LT
My concern is now. There is hope for the next election cycle but what of now and what if our current leader loses but defies leaving office?
The problem today is vast and multilayered and the community supports of the ancient past, past in general, and now have been broken. Groups like Indivisible and the new Supermajority are great attempts to recreate human connection. Rev. William Barber’s work is also fine and important.
Media and Entertainment folks need to stop focusing on violence but stories of human courage both real and imagined of human connection and relationships that pass beyond selfishness and fear.
Kathe Kollowitz a mother and artist was defamed by the Nazis in her own country of Germany. She had a hard life but now there are elementary school all over Germany named after her.
There are many stories and voices of females and so called others and a few good men as well that need to be heard today and in the future.
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When historians define this era, they will see it as confirmation of H. L Mencken's dictum that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Hopefully, we are reaching the point where the electorate becomes worn out with constantly waking up to "breaking news," and, look for candidates who do talk policies, projects, and initiatives. The problem now, however, is that in our legislative branches do not have a lot of practice doing their legislative job.
1
Hopefully, we are reaching the point where the electorate becomes worn out with constantly waking up to "breaking news," and, look for candidates who do talk policies, projects, and initiatives. The problem now, however, is that in our legislative branches do not have a lot of practice doing their legislative job.
Isn’t freedom from fear one of FDR’s promised four?
Two of the others are also threatened- freedom to worship as you please and freedom of expression. Freedom to worship now comes with the extra cost of security to prevent armed attackers and the president is trying to eliminate the ability to speak one’s mind without the worry of an oppressive tweetstorm or threat of a lawsuit.
The last, freedom from want, is getting more elusive every day.
I used to say the United States wasn’t perfect but it was still ahead of whatever is in second place. I don’t think that’s true anymore.
1
I just attended a course three weekends ago given by Landmark Education that dealt with the very concepts that David Brooks is addressing in this article.
Because of the way the course was designed, all participants got to look at their core fearful experiences (from their childhoods) and then put the past in the past - where it actually belongs - rather than keep it in the present or the future, thereby driving every moment of one’s waking life.
And by putting the past back in the past, an enormous freedom from fear is created in one’s life - and this includes being free of the fear of other people.
David Brooks is correct - one tends to generalize from childhood experiences without even realizing one is doing so.
But when the childhood experiences are made conscious they can be evaluated for what they are - seeing life from the vantage point of a child.
This is not to say that one should not be fearful of something like the package left on a subway seat. But, instead of being paralyzed by this fear or ignoring the fear, if the childhood fearful experiences have been re-evaluated from the vantage point of an adult, then one can create the possibility of being fearless and take action in the present.
Hopefully the above doesn’t sound like gobbledegook - since the course has made a profound difference in my life in terms of my ability to now connect with people different from myself as well as take actions to improve the planet.
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Observing the mind of David Brooks
One perennial problem addressed by Mr. Brooks is the nature of causation. What causes what, why, and in what order?
Scan across his articles and most of the comments and one will find a cornucopia of ideas, explicit or implicit, about what actually makes things happen.
Two words come to mind: idealism and materialism.
Idealism has two distinct meanings.
In the first definition, ideas and emotions, in the sense of intention, cause everything.
In the second definition, idealism, in the sense of the existence of following some abstract higher principles, can shape the world for the better. And so we get a fight against fear.
And as for materialism, the first definition is the singular drive to accumulate material things, this standard definition has nothing to do with causation.
Finally, the second definition of materialism is the notion that the ultimate causes of phenomena and events are material. The common expression of this view is the idea that money and technology hold the to understanding human events and problems.
Mr. Brooks seems to fall into the camp of the twin definitions of idealism and he continually repudiates both senses of the definitions of materialism.
I respect David, but I am also acutely aware of his limitations when it comes to questions concerning causation.
His articles generally ignore the influence of material factors such market forces, natural resources, developments in technology and world geography.
3
But how do you get the masses to evaluate Elizabeth Warren's proposals for their own good? You have to get their attention. And Bernie Sanders is getting their attention, despite fear and loathing on the part of most media.
Maybe it's just me, but I think I see a tipping point coming up where people begin to realize they can make a difference with their vote.
7
Yes, fear stokes fear. Yet trying to explain it, risks darkening the shadows of fear.
The counter-point might be to embody hopes - as was shown in so many electoral districts in the last election. There may be a penumbra of fear, visible and audible, but this is in contrast to the hearths of hope to be found in: family, locality, associations, personal pursuits.
Perhaps we can expand the reach of hope not just in political horizons but in incremental social expansions by - inviting distant family members to lunch; highlighting hidden diversity, in localities; widening the outreach of associations; and socialising personal pursuits seeking out kindred spirits. Brooks has rekindled this angle in recent writings.
Mass media amplifies emotional intensities and the drama of individual 'character' flaws. Social media in turn gives generic voice and instant recognition to the squawks of indignation.
The challenge of fear to all of us is how is it to be disaggregated: modulated, moderated, filtered, and dissipated through re-engineered social media. Perhaps advertising companies can favour sites that pump out net positive sentiments; or corporations get rated by proportion of advertisements funneling into fear-inducing sites. On a cultural front - new forms of diffusing humour may yet emerge that 'makes light' of, and disperse, the pall of fears that loiters about any issue.
1
Fear is a huge problem. Governance, good governance, might just be the cure. However, good governance is not the starting point for a cure. Good governance begins with good faith argument. Good faith argument begins with facts.
There are facts and alternative arguments to be made based on those facts. "Alternative facts" are just lies, misrepresentations and distortions of fact.
Mr. Brooks if you actually want good governance, talk to your conservative and Republican comrades. Tell them that good faith debate requires each side to start with the facts and present arguments based on those facts and on lies, misrepresentations and distortions.
I realize this sound pedantic and patronizing but I want good governance too.
2
The majority of this country recently had a hankering for a slightly boring politician who had concrete plans to get things done, and told such inconvenient truths as the fact that coal is dead and people need retraining. Look how that turned out.
3
@Oriflamme -- In 2016, the majority of this country voted for a politician little loved but widely acknowledged as competent and honest. Look how that turned out.
1
I have also come to think that good governance and solving the real problems that people face in their lives will be the cure. Ideology doesn't solve problems. Campaign slogans don't solve problems. Government needs to actively listen to the concerns of every person and the country and respond with practical, feasible and honest solutions.
The biggest problem with current government dysfunction and this dishonest administration is that all the focus is on stoking fear and every move that is called a solution is actually a facade or a mere veneer which papers over the real problems. Lies are being told about funding that doesn't exist and solutions that don't exist and it all gets swept out of sight- leaving the real problems unsolved. Then we are caught in a perpetual cycle of reacting to this fear and dishonesty, which also leaves problems unsolved. This hurts every single American, not just the "other side".
Yes! Let's elect some boring people that are humble and honest enough to recognize that we face real problems in this country and are willing to do the hard work of fixing them.
8
A predicate that goes too far and a conclusion that caves: doing the dishes is not enough to re-set the table.
1
The fear itself quote from FDR seems apt. I saw it take root in rural America and has reached its zenith under the current administration. Unreasoning, blind, illogical fear of the other, of each other, of their neighbors, of those with a different viewpoint or ideology, even though all around us, very little has changed in crime rate, probability of being a crime victim or any of the usual issues. Every morning a new tweet of someone to dislike, to fear or to hate. The instantaneous incessant press where everything is breathless hyperbole. It is just sad and tears at the fabric of our communities.
5
If the world faced a serious, potentially world ending, situation during my adult lifetime, it was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Yet, I don't remember fear - just apprehension. The west had confidence that a young President John F. Kennedy would get us through the perils.
Can anyone seriously say that, faced with another major global threat, the west would have confidence in President Trump? Hah!
As for the fear of: the right, the left, the arabs, the refugees, etc.,I suspect the root cause is economic uncertainty that makes life seem perilous for the middle class (and lower). All too many people can no longer see that life is slowly improving. Instead, they can see people falling out of the middle class dream through no fault of their own.
This has 2 results. Some people band together to resist whatever threat they view most seriously. Others just hunker down and hope for the best.
Those mass reactions were unknown when I was young. The world war had just been won. Jobs were plentiful. Income was rising. Bigger and better homes were the norm. In other words, people were optimistic about their futures. That wide spread optimism is a great antidote to the fear we see today.
The "rot" starts from the top.
6
Fear has a great ROI for enterprises that depend on eyeballs - politicians and media come to mind as well as various rights organization. Political disposition doesn't seem to matter when playing the fear card.
3
It isn’t fear that is choking us, it is how to use our fear to puncture the ugliness of the world men like Trump have created for us. Fear is natural. To use our real fear to fight hate, racism, bigotry, authoritarianism, the destruction of a natural earth, is to be attuned to the good form of fear. It is the fear that causes transformation. To paraphrase FDR, we’ve nothing to fear but not to use our fear.
6
Mr. Brooks is correct - our lives appear to be defined by fear. Plenty of evidence of that in the reactionary comments to this opinion piece.
As an aging liberal democrat, I'm afraid too. So why is MY reaction to Mr. Brooks one of appreciation? He's given us his usual thoughtful, well written opinion on fear, an emotion that humans everywhere feel acutely.
Where fear comes from or how long it's been defining our lives is not what I took the point of Mr. Brooks to be. I won't presume to know what his intentions are on any particular day, but I think his intentions with this piece are to say what fear leads to - anger.
14
@Joy
An appropriate response to Fear is Love. Or, as you put it, Appreciation. We learn to appreciate and love ourselves and our neighbors, and we cast out all fear.
2
We don't have to be this way. With decent leadership, an emphasis on community, and a little risk-taking of being in the presence of people we don't agree with politically, we can get things done. It just takes a few steps--hard ones, given the "pleasures" of partisan ranting, but doable.
Politically, we need better, and this isn't just a takedown of Trump. The system devised by Madison needs the checks and balances he anticipated. It needs people with a broader, more Burkean approach to representation. It needs people willing to defend their institutions even at the cost of party loyalty. There will be far less fear when people no longer believe that everything is a zero-sum game.
10
"But I'm coming the think that governance might be the cure." Well said. We all need to re-read the preamble of the constitution and remind ourselves why "we the people" formed our government in the first place. And I'd really like to hear candidates talk about our government as ours, an extension of ourselves, not as some alien invading power that's out to drown us in regulations and bleed us dry for its own dubious purposes. The people who want us to think that government is the enemy have, in fact, stolen government from us and made it their servant. We want it back. It's ours. It's us.
4
As yet there have been no comments about the link between fear and adrenaline. Yet the effects of fear on the nervous system are well researched. Look at videos of any Trump rally- these people are high on adrenaline. Fear has become the drug of choice.
12
One of the commenters mentioned the role that complexity plays on our emotional state. There is so much more that a person needs to navigate through that one can understand where resentment, grievance, intolerance and fear can be potential outcomes.
While its dangerous to long for simpler times which included horrible behaviors to uphold the status quo (Jim Crow anyone), having more predictability and control of your life (that you won't get outsourced) would provide a greater stability in people's lives and mitigate fear.
Democracy is about love, but no one has taught us how to do democracy that way so we are defenseless in the face of the politics of fear and anger and divide and conquer
2
Henry David Thoreau made this comment almost 200 years ago, and no doubt he was referring to his fellow Americans –– "The mass of men live lives of quiet desperation."
I could blame this on Trump. I could blame this on the Republican Party that has campaigned on hatred since the inglorious defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964. I could blame our rigged, cannibalistic, predatory system of American Capitalism that has no respect for anything but making an extra buck. These things are real and add up to crush strong individuals who would otherwise be happy, productive citizens. The weak just roll over and accept it. The weak-minded sometimes lash out in violence and crime.
But Trump, the Republicans, and the rigged system are just industrially fishing the waters that they know so well –– the hard, unforgiving, vengeful, mean-spirited culture of America that is based on our making lives difficult for others as well as ourselves. They know where to find their fish.
There is nothing good in America that we cannot flipped on its back and turned into something evil. We are fascinated with evil. Turn on the TV and see if I'm wrong.
9
I was afraid to write something in response to this column - but overcame my fear.
One of the fears that Mr. Brooks needs to overcome - and it's a deep-rooted one - is the fear of saying anything positive about President Trump.
2
@Maurice Gatien What would you suggest about President Trump that is positive? I genuinely would like to hear it .
1
Check out Pascal's wager. Then consider two (over-simplifying, I'll grant) options.
Existence is the creation of a loving God, who has revealed Himself in the Bible, and when Scripture says, "Do not fret..." or "Be anxious for nothing..." because is also reports Jesus saying, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me... and surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."
Or... existence is the product of millions and millions of year of atoms buzzing about, connecting randomly, meaningless, and this mess of matter and energy has produced creatures who are not the least comfortable (i.e. they are fearful about abstractions and metaphysicals that... er... don't exist?) with meaninglessness.
Pascal...
Childhood trauma and insecurity is the result of school shootings, which should also be mentioned here. The survivors of Sandy Hook and all the other school slayings will never be the same. We need to do more about gun control.
Adolescent trauma and insecurity is what young African Americans and Hispanics feel when they are driving and are pulled over by police. Their parents have to remind them when they go out, how they should exit the car if stopped. Even so, in my town, the police reacted with gunfire, shooting the young man's friend in the passenger seat, even though he had put up his hands as he exited the car. No weapons were found. We need more and better police training and more community policing.
3
If you substitute the word fear for evil, you would have a more insightful analysis of not just today, not just America, but the world and the human condition since its inception.
We are all deeply flawed, maybe irrevocably. The journey is hard and mysterious.
Full of joys and sorrows. Amazing flights of poetry and unspeakable horror. Hates and loves.
None of us alive today will see a change to this fundamental circumstance. Maybe a thousand years from now, but for today, we only have the chance to choose a side. Love or hate. Poetry or horror.
I know which side I choose.
2
As a child in the 50s, I was smart enough to hear and understand the horror of nuclear weapons. Yet, as a child, I didn't know just how a bomb on our soil could emerge. As I matured into my teenage years, I was more interested in cars, sports, and girls. All the fear went away. I later became a Navy carrier pilot. Sure it was dangerous and there were many who lost their lives doing it. But I was never filled with dread or fear. Going through an earlier period of fear immunized me, I think.
1
I agree.
Recommendation 1: Make a constitutional amendment requiring that any and all elected Congress and Senate members pass half of a bills within a set timeframe to the satisfaction of all parties. Failure to adhere to this amendment will result in the dissolution of the House and a new election. Bills to be classified against historical proportions of the annual government budget for infrastructure, health, education, defence, environment etc.
"When historians define this era they may well see it above all else as a time defined by fear. "
Mr. Brooks, we are living in the United States, where we have not only a vibrant and functioning democracy with checks and balances that are working as good as they ever have, but also choices -- what to watch, what to listen to on the radio, where to shop, etc. Americans can and should think critically, and not just swallow the pabulum that is offered.
This is not Iraq, or Syria, or North Korea or Russia or China, where checks and balances do not exist and where choices are non-existent or limited to what the regimes selects.
I'd humbly submit that if this era is ever defined by historians, it will be characterized by chaos and a multiplicity of options that overwhelm many.
7
No question fear has been weaponized. And you could argue both sides of the political spectrum. But is there a point where the fear becomes justified?
There are those who say Trump won't step down voluntarily. If he loses the election he'll say it was rigged. We've already heard him accuse Democrats of attempting a coup.
He says the FBI and intel agencies are corrupt and should be investigated. The mainstream media is fake news and the
enemy of the people. We've heard him say those things many times.
We've also heard him incite his base to violence. But instead of claiming direct responsibility, he says don't be surprised if
his base revolts because Democrats are trying to overthrow him.
He denies white nationalism is on the rise. He says they're "good people" and portrays his base as the real Americans.
Everybody else is illegitimate or socialist.
The GOP go along with it. Everything Trump does they accuse Democrats of doing. Authoritarians don't need the support of the majority as long as they have the support of the military. And it takes a lot for the military to disobey a Presidential order.
I'm not saying it will happen. I'm saying America is a huge prize and those who believe the country should be prepared
for Trump not being willing to give up the Presidency voluntarily, may have a point. At the very least, expect him to
use every trick in the book to keep himself in power.
6
@JimmySerious
Mr. Trump has no more has "control" of the military than you or I. That is simply not how this country works.
And expect the opposition to Trump to use "every trick in the book" to displace him.
4
@Frank J Haydn
President Bush used fear of WMDs to get the military to invade Iraq. And 16 years later they're still there.
It may not be how the country is supposed to work. But don't be surprised at how easily it can be subverted.
Recalling a lesson from our high school psychology class:
Motivational theory tells us that people are hard-wired to satisfy the lower levels in the hierarchy of needs before they are free to pursue fulfillment of higher level needs. Freedom from fear is a foundational need, just above the bottom layer of physiological needs. That is the reason why the Republican strategy of fearmongering is more successful than the Democratic message of hope, trust and generosity.
I agree with Mr. Brooks that we need to find a candidate with the stature of a Franklin Roosevelt who can convince the fearful that the Republican apocalyptic messaging is nothing more than a cynical attempt to manipulate them.
7
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, and it is a reminder that on Tanguy's death, a portrait of his crashed to the floor. This according to my brother Seymour while I was still in my crib.
Friends, whether they know each other or not, we are going low-profile these days. We do not want to make waves or stand out, and it is progress in age that propel some of us to call Town Hall and inform The Coper that there is a bear in our midst causing havoc. Hungry, he is going through the trash. There appears to be a wave of nostalgia from our younger ones for the days of our parents when the Police wore white gloves.
Congress in a state of governance paralysis, I remember childhood in transit moving from one country to another, with no parental guidance, and life becomes dependent on choices made. Some of us might feel as 'accidental' people, and that nothing in life is accidental.
Insecurity and anxiety lead to a sense of instability. America is in a bad way at the moment, but I believe that while protesting, we are being placed to the test as to our character, our resilience in the face of being threatened by a growing sense of mistrust.
Bin-Laden has not won the War. His day of departure from earth was May 1, 2011. We were never in need of taking back America, but holding on to Our Country and moving forth.
Remember the photo where our President is seen holding on to The Flag for dear life; the epitome of a portrait of Fear with a strained grin.
Yours on the move and woke.
Mr. Brooks has articulated something that we should pay close attention to. The basic notion that we have "fear" and that the fear is caused by our perception of our world, which is influences by our now ubiquitous, unedited, and polarized media. Somehow fear has become, like a horror movie, entertaining and therefore profitable. The Great Recession lead to a social instability that lead to fear of the future and that leads to mistrust in institutions. The upshot of this is that we lose "Trust", trust in government, trust in each other and especially trust in our institutions. Losing trust is dangerous.
A friend told me that he doesn't like "liberals" because they raise taxes, spend money and want big government that can't be controlled by the people. That articulates lack of trust in our government, which initiated safety nets 80 or so years ago, helping millions, making our society better, not worse. Our current administration has split us further in two to keep political power driven, I guess, by the entertainment value of poking "liberals" in the eye. This is dangerous stuff, we cannot be split and fight each other, we have to rekindle trust in each other to plan for the future.
6
@William Trainor
"Our current administration has split us further in two"??
The administration did that all by it's little old self?
And who exactly is the "us" to which you refer?
@Frank J Haydn
"further split us in two", not healing our greatest problem, You?
1
You should clip this column and mail it to Jussie Smollet, Mr. Brooks.
1
I so enjoy the high tech hypocrisies that are being exposed - remember it was going to render irrelevant geographical locations. But then it needs to cluster all its workers in high-cost cities. Remember it was going to democratize access to information. But then it lets Russian agents threaten American democracy. The one Brooks hints at today but doesn't nail completely is that our little devices look like we are in our own little private online world. But as the Times currently shows us, everything we do in our own little online worlds is being watched and analyzed for years.
Studies have long shown that the more television one watched, the more fearful one perceived the world. It looks like the more screen time we have, the more divorced we are from our real power - a true sense of self capable of facing the real world.
3
Mr. Brooks today observes, thoughtfully and well, the elephant in the atmosphere. His observation about 9/11 is essentially correct, but paranoid, fearful nutters have a long history prior to that day. Now they just have digital megaphones and the Murdoch family products.
An essential additional observation is that while a culture of fear is a culture gone mad, it is still true that there are two kinds of fear, rational and evidence-based and irrational and imaginary. Mr. Brooks, as he almost always does, declines to specify from which quarters, politically and religiously speaking, most of the latter arises.
3
Is it fear that defines this era, or is it instead that today's political leaders offer us more reasons to be afraid of their opponents than reasons to believe in themselves?
5
Mr. Brooks writes about the danger of grand ideology without the practicality of nuance, only to follow up by using FDR as an example of a leader invested in hope and optimism.
FDR interned American citizens of Japanese, Italian & German descent without cause nor due process. He also excluded African-Americans from many New Deal programs, which accelerated the wealth gap that exists to this day.
But yes, fear, more specifically, the myth of scarcity, will always hold us back. There is more than enough abundance in this country and across the globe to take care of everybody. We don't have to compete for anything. The value we assign to currency and commodities is totally made up. None of that is real. If we decided to value all people's lives, liberty & prosperity, we'd be alright.
5
Boring is why I supported Hillary Clinton. I knew her administration would be characterized by a dull wonkishness that I wouldn't have to worry about. It would be similar to "no drama Obama" but without his charisma.
Hillary would do all the necessary reading and studying of an issue so I wouldn't have to. She would represent pragmatism and practicality rather than be a be a cult of personality. She would represent ... well, me. She would represent me, an average American in the middle class. She wouldn't represent a dated dogma or seek to self-deal.
People have asked my "why do you support Hillary? she's so boring" and I would respond "exactly!". They seemed perplexed that I wasn't having any of the excitement of the Bernie Sanders "revolution" or even the "strength" and bombast of Trump. I would say "I'll watch Game of Thrones if I want excitement and if I seek to be entertained, I'm not looking for those qualities in my politicians and I'm suspect of those candidates that offer them".
12
The era of fear began with the Columbine shootings in 1999. 9/11 certainly elevated the nation's sense of fear for obvious reasons- but when those two boys entered that school wearing long black coats with the desire to kill as many people as possible- that is when the era of fear began for me.
6
I don’t how we will move beyond the ‘tribal’ mentality that so easily flames the embers of fear. What I do know is that we as a people have no common or clear understanding of what it means to be an American. We live in a world of hyphenations -- white-American, black-American, gay-American, conservative-American, etc., etc., etc. What we don’t focus on or discuss is the back part of the hyphen, that is, what do we all have in common as Americans in 2019. Bill Clinton while president proposed that we hold a national conversation to come to a common understanding of what being an American is, especially as it’s evolved over the years. Sadly, with all the problems during his presidency this conversation didn’t happen. We still need to do this. It will be a real challenge, as our society has become even more polarized, but the conversation is desperately needed if we are to save our democracy.
3
The era of fear began with 9/11? I guess you could make that argument if you choose to ignore a huge segment of the population, the black segment that is, which Brooks seems to do somewhat consistently. Not to mention the poor of Appalachia, migrant workers in California and elsewhere among others. This nation feeds of the fear of its citizens, pitting white against black, rich against poor, it always has.
6
I think Brooks comes to a good conclusion, but he gets to it by way of some nonsensical thinking, some of which is merely semantic; viz. using “fear” to mean “irrational fear.” Obviously fear of a rational kind is indispensable for survival; literal fearlessness would be a recipe for suicide. What wisdom calls for is the ability to distinguish rational from irrational fear. It may never be possible to do this perfectly, but sanity depends on trying one’s best to do it.
True, at one point Brooks suggests that “fear” might be rational if if focused on “what’s happening to us” in the present and not on “some catastrophic thing our imagination tells us might happen” in the future. But that’s nonsense. Reason as well as imagination can forebode catastrophic things in the future. And anyway, fear (like hope) is by definition, focused on the future. It’s nonsense to speak of “fearing” something that has already happened.
2
"But I’m coming to think governance might be cure. The simple act of trying to solve practical problems."
That is precisely what democratically elected officials are supposed to do... or, stated differently, that is precisely what GOVERNMENT is supposed to do. But one party, the GOP, has run it's campaigns since 1980 on the premise that "government is the problem" and is now doing everything possible to dismantle the departments that are designed to "solve practical problems" through deliberations and replace them with top-down edicts from the POTUS, the only one who can solve our problems.
Governance IS the cure... but if we hope to restore respect for governANCE we first need to restore respect for governMENT and an appreciation that while democracy is slow and relatively inefficient it is far superior to relying on one individual who can solve our problems.
26
@WFGersen Thank you.
The economics of our society have created a huge amount of fear too. Mr. Brooks says that we are in the middle of a long economic boom time and although a large part of that is true, we also have more and more citizens that do not have a pension to look forward to, rising home prices, rising college tuitions and rising sea levels.
A great deal of rational fear would be taken away if we could secure our social security situation, have the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes again and do something as a nation, with other nations, about Climate Change.
We need a Marshall Plan, on any level, for the future.
13
My mother grew up in the depression, and we never threw anything out, until we'd used it at least one more time. We rarely bought much either. My impression of Depression era people is one of a fridge full of leftovers stored in old margarine containers - you could never find the margarine.
Mom grew up with the constant reminder that everything can go away in the blink of an eye.
We're living that reality now too. We saw the masters of the universe break the economy only a decade ago, and have watched the government fail to rein them in since then. We know our jobs are tenuous - they can go away in automation, or exported to India, or given to a younger person with a lower health care premium. The economy is "Booming" but people are still living on the edge.
Politicians stoke those fears - the fear of losing everything, the fear that someone else is getting your share of the pie, the fear of other, the fear that any sensible regulation is a slippery slope - because those fears guarantee your vote. If they can get the nation divided 49% to 49%, they only have to spend money to court 2% of the people. Winner takes all.
Yes, good governance, policy, leadership and strong moral leaders - ones who see the job as national service, not an ATM for themselves and their families and buddies - good governance can solve a lot of ills.
Good governance in the age of Trump? Good luck.
13
I always think of the animated sequence of Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine when I read work like this; America was founded on fear. While Trump has dialed it up to a new extreme, the roots of "American Fear" predate the country itself.
1
You are onto something here Mr. Brooks.
Fear of so many things, and fear is not to be admitted.
But fear of death is the big one.
Fear of Death and what comes after it, affects everything,
per Ernest Becker.
You write here,
"...wages finally rising again for the middle-class."
I fear that this conclusion depends upon the source,
and I fear that you may not be right about it.
Fear has rapidly become America's biggest business with no signs of slowing down anytime in the near future. It's ubiquitous, contagious and toxic, exported and imported around the world every nanosecond by those bold enough, evil enough to profit from its victims regardless of the consequences whereby everyone ultimately loses.
Perhaps it too will pass, but not before untold further damage is done. Not until the outrage we all possess is channeled into the courage to finally say enough is enough.
Vote.
5
I fear for the rule of law.
This administration is ignoring traditions and threatening to ignore subpoenas while throwing out countersuits like confetti and behaving like middle schoolers when being questioned by committees.
Allowed to stand, these behaviors could set a precedent that will create ever greater fissures in the levee of justice that is our system of checks and balances.
As long as we allow ourselves to be ruled by a man who would go out of his way to tout the achievements of 2nd round draft pick Nick Bossa, who has posted on white supremacist sites, over the number one pick Kyler Murray, who is notably a person of color, we should expect our country to be viewed with derision for the glaring hypocrisy of all we once claimed to stand for.
It simply cannot be repeated enough. We must use any and all of the powers provided by our Constitution to limit or remove from power the president and any advisors who have so clearly forgotten to what, and to whom, they owe their service.
Another term for Trump will be the end of this nation.
20
@Skeexix
Trump doesn’t follow Constitution.
Congress allows this.
How long can we wait for them to take action?
4
"The fearful person turns asocial, rejects any compassionate response to social problems and instead lashes out."
Hmmm? Remind you of anyone?
Anyway, it's true, the prince of the paranoid style didn't start all this. He is, rather, just its purest form. I appreciate Mr. Brooks' analysis of our woes. He is often correct in it. One does sense a more personal mission however: to mitigate some of the guilt. Mr. Brooks' earlier work enabled much of the worst excesses of today's GOP. Many of us saw it coming. We said as much.
14
@g. harlan Yes but I hope he is now using his writing to correct those past mistakes and forge a new path.
Fear is largely why we evolved into what we have become - the ability to acknowledge issues that may cause us existential harm and then to conceive systems which alleviate that harm. Fear in that way is good and necessary as it protects us in certain situations from damage or death. Fear is a great motivator to move us to action.
Faith is the antidote to fear. Since we cannot address all our fears simultaneous we develop and put faith in systems which manage aspects of our "fear-scape". This is the advantage of living in a society where we look to our fellow man to provide their time and expertise to handle unique parts of our fears and to find issues that we could not perceive.
But there are those among us that do not care about damaging our systems. They see advantage and opportunity in fear and have no qualms in exploiting it for their benefit. Instead of being seen as pariahs and detrimental to our society, they often rise to great power and wealth.
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help." These words by Ronald Reagan to me are the cornerstone of the modern Republican Party and directly attacks the greatest system humans developed to address their fears. While true parts of our government demanded scrutiny and overhaul, to demonize the system which had done so much good and powerful work was in and of itself sinister because it replaced faith with fear. From there we get President Donald Trump
9
The era of fear began with 911 - seriously? How about it began with the words of Ron Reagan when he said "The most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help". That's the official beginning of government as the enemy in America. That's the real "emotional tone" behind Waco, the Oklahoma bombing, the Tea Party, gun rights, efforts to scrap medicare and social security, the beggaring of public education, and so much of the hate and fear stoking that has come to earmark the Right in America and is now a new form of American exceptionalism. Talk about sowing the wind.
22
Raising the fear level has become the lifeblood of the news media. Validating fear or quelling panic is not the purpose of journalism anymore.
Our standards for demanding that appeals to our fear offer evidence or proof have declined.
Refusal to submit to a community consensus that x is an appropriate object of fear is denialism.
2
I disagree. Fear is old hat -- there was plenty of it in other eras. Our era's emotional tone is dissociation, greatly enhanced by the digitization of daily interactions. Dissociation is not too far from sociopathy. And as we can see, the former actually elects the latter in the form of a reality TV star and conscience-free real estate tycoon. Fear takes hold of our dissociation and threatens to fragment us even more, but I believe dissociation and sociopathy are the greatest threat to our society at present.
5
Uncertainty.
The key word.
No idea what America will be like tomorrow: will it be country of whiteness or will it be multicultural, multiracial, multilingual? A vocal minority fears the former, another vocal minority fears the latter.
What the country appears to need is stability, something the current administration is not providing; however, the administration, including both houses of Congress, is also not "getting out of bed and getting stuff done." They're proposing legislation that has no chance of passing both houses let alone the White House, but all fingers point at the other fingers. They're posturing for the sake of the photo op, but they're not "getting out of bed and getting stuff done." Each side is blaming the other, but neither is "getting out of bed and getting stuff done." The president is playing golf, while saying that "they're all good people on both sides," but he isn't "getting out of bed and getting stuff done." Mitch McConnell will pass no liberal bill, but is he "getting out of bed and getting stuff done?" I rather think not. The House is busy investigating, but are they "getting out of bed and getting stuff done?" Nope, not there, either.
It seems we're trapped in a poem by Dr. Seuss waiting for the Cat in the Hat to fix things, to "get out of bed and get stuff done."
The key word.
Uncertainty.
3
Fear that some deranged loner, nursing a grudge is stocking his basement with multiple military grade weapons and is biding his time until the “siren call” of violence becomes irresistible.
Fear that government/UN tyranny is seeking to enslave us all.
Fear that my president just might commit the “unthinkable” in a moment of irrationality.
Fear of being bankrupted by a medical condition.
Fear of insurmountable student debt.
Fear of “socialism.”
Etc. Etc.
Like most in Western Europe, I am deeply worried/fearful about climate change and the extinction of species, and also the social tensions due to rising income inequality. The other fears listed above continue to be peculiarly American and are sadly blighting the lives of millions of Americans.
15
The internet and twenty-four hour worldwide news have increased angst. We need news stories about human achievements and progress to help us keep the faith.
5
I decided today that I am going to read more novels and do less obsessive checking of newspapers and news online. That decision did not last long. Since Trump’s election, I have a hard time believing that government will not go off the rails. That is fear.
I reassure myself that millions of people are working to solve problems of climate change and inequality and prejudice. I think of people working to solve people’s problems-in medicine or public safety or educational classes or home repairs or government or wherever.
Still, I go back to googling Trump. He has more power than I thought a president had and he says and does scary things I never thought a president would say or do.
20
The core strategy for the GOP to be in power is to sell fear. They've been at it for decades.
25
The next time the Archbishop is here, please call me. I'll show up.
I'm of the belief that our most righteous religious figures can tap into things most of us cannot.
So do aliens rule us? No, not unless we let them. But the spiritual message is the same as Jesus gave and the same as protestants. We can try to be like Jesus, and I've done so multiple times in my life. It never worked out well.
Is that reason to give up trying? There's no goal except to do the right thing. In that context, I'll never give up.
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@DudeNumber42
Yet, He stands ready to forgive each of us for the stuff we got wrong. Amazing!
Our embrace of fear as an organizing principle began before 9-11. It began with the Vietnam War. We’ve been reflexively fueling our military-industrial complex ever since, while our societal health corrodes - more homelessness, more economic uncertainty, greater concentrated wealth, assault weapons.
Apollo was our nation’s last collective expression of courage, brilliance, and triumph. Apollo created conditions in which a generation of breathtaking scientific advancement followed.
Our military-industrial complex will not lead us safely through this generation’s greatest danger, that posed by climate change. We must restore our faith in science and fully commit to transforming our relationship with Earth.
Fear and ignorance won’t get this done. Courage and brilliance will.
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@Gimme Shelter
Sounds like you lament our current state and wish to Make America Great Again. Me too. 40 states in 2020!
My wife and I were at mass on Sunday while our son was at work at the nearby popular mall. Fire alarms rang, ambulance and police sirens were heard racing down our main street. I checked my phone for any notice of an emergency, perhaps a shooting. We came home. He came home later. Nothing bad happened to us that day.
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Once you have actually identified and described a fear, you're most of the way there. Actually getting rid of it is the easier part.
Fear has now become an abstract and diffuse reaction to some unknown Other instead of simply a focused response to an immediate real danger.
And of course it takes time to figure out which part of the unknown is hiding in the closet. People are so terrified of uncertainty. And having their most precious secrets revealed. But if the unknown can become known, fear evaporates and no more need to invent ghosts to chase away.
There is no hope of quelling a sense of impending madness without first getting a handle on the social dynamics of fear. That's project number one.
Professor Trump prefers that you hold your all questions until after the lesson is over.
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Some fear can be induced by policy. I took a professional trip to Amsterdam once in the Bush years and tried out one of their cannabis cafes, stopping there at the end of the day for a cuppa tea and a spliff. I have chronic bladder pain, so this time was important for me.
For the first three days, I'd feel terrified, almost shaking, when I ordered at the cafe. It took until the fourth day to relax. On the fifth day, I realized this state of fear had been induced into me by the marijuana policies of America.
I spent the rest of the trip happy and pain-free. Then I flew home, and guess what greeted every single passenger coming off the plane from Amsterdam?
A batallion of scowling federal drug agents wielding very unfriendly drug-sniffing dogs that were not being shy at all about sniffing private places. The dogs were led right up the gangway to the door of the plane.
Welcome home! Time to live in fear again!
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OMG he likes Warren. But then I realize she voted for Nixon and Reagan. She's a pragmatically progressive recovering conservative, which I think is something David aspires to himself.
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Well said, Mr. Brooks, well said! To my lights, from a different angle, the rush to see Avengers Endgame may be driven by something other than simple entertainment. Perhaps it is more than escapism, symptomatic of a deeper fearful search for someone to save us, not unlike that child in Harlem a few years ago who declared he was “waiting for Superman” to come help him.
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I want to ask David a question. I'll put this into context.
Assuming that there is a God more powerful that you, what if you saw God manifested in something you couldn't comprehend. How would you react?
And that's what humanity is facing now, in my belief. Of course there are civilizations far more advanced than ours in this universe. Are they in this galaxy? I think probably millions.
Can they get here? Some, yes, without question. And we'll get there. But how to contact? Should we expect them to be perfect in knowing our psychology? What if they tried contact and the targets jumped off bridges or went crazy telling tall tales? Would they try something different next time? Would they have previous experience to inform them?
They contacted me with a very spiritual message. The only thing I'm 100% sure of in their message is that spiritually we're all going to be ok regardless of actual events.
I needed to hear it having children, but it wasn't about them. It was about all humanity.
I honestly believe I was contacted because they could tell I was connected to influential channels of communication, and they could tell I understood physics.
They're not going to intervene unless we blow it totally. Hundreds of nukes. What would be the point? They don't have the resources to rule us, but only guide us.
Jesus was a messenger, and that messenger is within each and every one of us all. We can all chose to channel it or reject it. The physics back it up.
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@DudeNumber42
And so I'll recount.
I was shaken awake. I woke up and a short person that looked like the prototypical Gray was in my face. It backed off and I saw 3. A tall one, a medium one and the short one that woke me up. I'll remind you, it was physical. It shook me physically until I woke up.
I was communicated with telepathically. My worries, which I had put on Brad Delong's blog, were alleviated. I interpreted everything afterward, and I'm sorry if I misled. It is difficult to separate experience from interpretation.
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@DudeNumber42
It was so real I had to report it. I wrote that account you have in absolute recent memory and absolute awe. It had just happened when I wrote it. I knew it would sound crazy, but I was compelled.
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@DudeNumber42
Why would the report of a drunk person matter? I've said this before and I'll say it again. Because if the person wasn't drunk, they'd go crazy. Through trial and error by the aliens, they realized contact was difficult.
On their minds, what if we try a really drunk person that we can see understands physics and also seems to be socially connected?
If he jumps off a bridge, we'll try something else...
When it is said fear dominates political discourse, this one is all on Trump. There are no “ fine people on both sides” on this one. He began his campaign with fear, hate and conspiracy and has never stopped. I remember thinking, what is he talking about with his American Carnage; but he was dog whistling American insecurity. He was speaking loud and clear especially to those who had been sitting quietly in the background, worrying in fearful silence who were now finally free to speak and act out their deepest thoughts. As with Michael Cohen and others he employs, he never directly orders crimes, he simply hints and they fill in the blanks.
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@DO5 And what is that "American insecurity" that the dog whistles are directed at? It is the white American watching what they believe is their country turning into that great amalgam known as the melting pot: a pot filled with colors. These colors, however, are not melting together, or at least not in the way hoped - becoming white. No, they are changing the face and culture of America and this scares these Americans to death. Rather than change, they lash out in fear.
The solution is education and the understanding of the value of differences and the power that is contained in an understanding of difference.
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Obama tried governance, but he was sabotaged. Some people believe the biggest practical problem is climate change, and have reasons for that belief. Others believe that climate change is a fraud.
The first practical problem is what practical problem to put first. From one perspective, climate change makes sense. From another perspective, getting secret money out of politics is the first problem, because until the power of money is lessened anything else is almost impossible unless it serves money.
The most important thing we can do is to bring back the ability to get things done. To do this, we need honesty rather than sales pitches whose real import is ascertained by reading between the lines and which may have no relation to reality.
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@sdavidc9
What sabotaged Obama was inexperience more than anything else. Had he just waited ...
As David states, perfect love eliminates fear and I agree. However, since perfect love is Godly, (Godlike)it can only be imagined. We all want love and need love. In fact real love is all that we desire. To give and to receive. Fear is not new, it's merely a handy, lazy man's substitute that fulfills our emptiness. I call it the 'human condition', which is our job to consciously strive to overcome. Fear is easy and gives many a purpose for living but there is no substitute love and never will be. We were created for one reason, to learn to love, but this takes discipline and hard work, and that is where we miss the boat.
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@Robert
David's fears started wars.
Never forget that.
David, you forgot a critical fear. Those of us who were once elected and worked on governance are blocked from re-entering this madness. Getting elected requires winning a hyper-partisan primary in order to stand practically unopposed in a General election. How did political parties end up getting guaranteed slots on General election ballots? And working hand and hand to gerrymander districts where both parties only have to win a primary in order to be elected. Nearly 40% claim no-party affiliation. They fear both sides. Speak the truth to power, David.
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@Ted Downing
And until we have a truly Independent Party none of this will change.
Both parties are hyperpolarized, moderates have almost no chance to get elected. Yet, only moderates are in a position to create policies that accommodate all interests to the maximal extent possible.
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Unfortunately, everyone who has tried to be speak up and urge people to be rational about events, rather than succumb to fear, has been accused of being unpatriotic or some other disparaging term.
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@MJ
I agree, today being labeled an unpatriotic racist intolerant bigot has practically become the definition of being a moderate. I.e. someone who can be attacked by both sides with the same disparaging attributes.
I've been thinking of fear a lot lately especially since the Mueller report has come out and the reactions from all sides seem to be so strongly driven by fear. As David Brooks points out in general these fearful reactions don't seem to get anything done accept create intense ,sometimes violent anger and more fear. Maybe David Brooks is correct in pointing in the direction of people who are trying to counteract fear through governance , "boring politicians who just get things done." It seems to me the ideas he proposes are hopeful and at least mildly optimistic rather than full of fear , anger and often times hate. It definitely feels like there has been enough unproductive bombast for a long while.
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