Fear and Loathing But Not Just in Las Vegas

Fear is defined as "a distressing emotion aroused by impending danger, evil, pain, whether the threat is real or imagined; the feeling or condition of being afraid." 

In recent years the marketing of fear has become BIG business in American, actually fear has been something we have marketed for as long as I can remember.

In the Joseph McCarthy era we were looking under our beds for communists, the evil that was that was going to take over the world. Today we seem to look to the skies for the menace known generically as 'terrorism'. 

The unifying ingredient is 'fear' and it works very well for those whose goal is to immobilize the people and in doing so make a profit from it.

It was a different fear that FDR spoke of in his Inaugural Address in 1933, but real or imagined the reality is that we have nothing to fear but fear itself...

"So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life, a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory." ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt

When we allow the government, our government, to operate in an environment that is addicted to defense spending and secrecy we are indeed swimming in shark infested waters. Anxiety and fear can be very disabling and can at times make us unable to cope with our day to day lives.

We fear terrorist attacks, we fear the failure of banks, we fear inaction on the part of Congress, we fear the rising debt, we fear the reduction of debt - you name it, we fear it. So much so I think we have allowed ourselves to become disabled, unable to think of the very things that are important to our very existence. We need to rid ourselves of these fears and take back the art of living.

We need to get back to work building. Building products, building jobs and building dreams, investing in America at its very core, the middle-class - the women and men who made America great back when it was great. 


Romney wants us to run around in gorilla suits pounding our chests and screeching out to the world - "Beware, fear us, fear us!" If we have to fear then fear 'fear itself'. We don't have to re-digest the history of the world to understand. Just look back the last few years and you can see how totally ineffective fear has been. It has created an environment that led to the collapse of the middle-class. It created an environment  that has seen the growth of a small select group of people and companies I'll call war profiteers.

It all started before President Obama and it it still with us, and fear has become such a valuable commodity for a select group that it is working its way back to become the mainstay issue for the election of 2012.

Now would be a pretty good time to stop this tide, to ask and demand that America focus on issues that involves building back up our middle-class. With roofs over their heads, soup in their bellies a healthy middle-class will be able to lie down at night with its head on the pillow and begin to dream once again...