The Weaponization of Fear

The Weaponization of Fear
The View from the Middle

In his 1932 inaugural speech, Franklin Delano Roosevelt uttered one of the most famous lines of his Presidency as he began to rally the country to come out of the Great Depression. He told the country that, “the only think we have to fear is – fear itself”. While FDR was not a perfect man, I could argue that he was a master at persuading people to rally around a cause and to put trust in him. He did, after all, guide us out of a depression, manage the successful US campaign during World War II and win four Presidential elections. In this first inaugural he was telling the country not to be paralyzed by fear and not allow it to keep the country from making progress. He was motivating the people of America. He knew the negative power of fear and wanted everyone focused on the bright future that he was promising.

What he was revealing was that fear can be a powerful tool to manipulate people, and some people today have used it in its most malicious form. The fear mongering always starts out the same way. They tell you to blindly “believe” the experts / scientists. That sounds reasonable, right? They are “experts” after all. They are scientists. They must be smart and know exactly what they're talking about. Then the scientists make predictions that scare the hell out of everyone, but it ends up that the experts are wrong.

Back in March, a study by Imperial College scientists in Britain predicted that the Coronavirus would kill over two million people in the United States and over 500,000 people in England would die. Of course, that forecast ended up being off by a factor of 20, but the scare tactic worked and the American people were immediately frightened to death. Even as that projection slowly got dialed back to 250,000 dead in the US and then finally to 70,000 (which is less deaths than the seasonal flu delivered just two years ago), the paranoia was already set in place. And today the media is vested in the panic of all Americans, so they have to sell the death toll. The newest shock tactic is to compare the current death toll to the deaths from the Vietnam War. While that is clever, it is grossly misleading. The media should compare the current death toll to the seasonal flu last year or the year before (56,000 last year and 80,000 the year before), but that wouldn’t serve their purpose which was to terrify the American people.

Then we had the esteemed Dr. Anthony Fauci come out and tell us that the Coronavirus was ten times deadlier than the seasonal flu. Wow, that sounds awful and scary! Of course, Dr. Fauci never told the other side of that equation, which is that even with this inflated mortality projection it meant that 99% of the people who would be infected by this virus would survive. And today, virologists are discovering that millions of people who contracted this virus showed little to no symptoms and didn’t even know they had it. This new information has the “experts” suggesting that the mortality rate for the Coronavirus might be closer to 0.1%, or the same as the seasonal flu. Now, let’s consider something. If these “experts” and “scientists” had emphasized that the mortality rate was that low and that this meant that 99.9% of the people who were infected would indeed recover and not die, would we have had such a draconian response?

After all of this misinformation, we have fanatic and unscrupulous politicians trying to use this crisis to advance their ideological agenda’s. Just yesterday, Hillary Clinton once again admitted to the Democrat Party’s disgusting, cruel and even extortionistic strategy when she said, “this would be a terrible crisis to waste.” They will use this crisis to add totally unrelated programs to bills designed to address the hardship being experienced by the American people. For example, what does “a universal guaranteed income” have to do with fighting this virus? What do oppressive regulations for airline fuel mileage have to do with this virus? What does funding for Planned Parenthood have to do with the Coronavirus recovery plan? You’re right, nothing! Yet, Democrats will attach these unconnected spending packages and regulations to bills that are desperately needed by the American people. THAT is what they mean by not letting a terrible crisis go to waste. They plan to use that crisis for their own ends.

But haven’t I seen this play before? Oh yah – Climate Change (or global warming or whatever). The experts / scientists make horrifying predictions like “the polar ice caps will be gone by 2010” or “New York will be underwater by 2013” or we have 10 years to get totally out of fossil fuels or our world will become uninhabitable. Obviously, these predictions were wrong, but climate change extremists will never admit it. They just move the goal posts. Now they say that if we don’t change everything right now, the world will be uninhabitable in 100 years, when they will all conveniently be dead. My motto is, “If anyone tells you that they know what is going to happen in 100 years, they are lying.”

Yes, these expert scientists have managed to scare the hell out of many, including teen environmentalist, Greta Thunberg and her entire generation. That’s not difficult, since Greta is only 15 years old and I’m sure doesn’t understand in the least the intricacies that drive our climate. I would actually consider what they have done to Greta as child abuse. What they haven’t told Greta is that the experts have been wrong in virtually ALL of their predictions. The Polar Ice Caps as well as the polar bears are still here. New York is still above sea level and there aren’t millions of climate change refugees wandering around Europe and the United States starving due to droughts and crop failures.

The lesson for all of us is that we should be skeptical when politicians ask us to give up our rights, our property or our money for promises to save us from “whatever”. Look at what our government has done in the face of a virus as threatening as the seasonal flu. They have shut down our economy. They put millions of people out of work. They forced millions of businesses to close their doors, some of which will never reopen, and of course they spent / borrowed trillions of dollars that will just be added to the debt that our children and grandchildren will inherit from us. What a legacy.

Our country was built on God given freedoms and personal responsibility. We should never give those up for any reason. Viruses will come and go. Natural disasters will shake us to our core. Politicians will promise us free everything. They will promise no more sickness or death and no racial, gender, religious or income divides. But with each promise they will ask for a little bit more of your rights, your money and your freedom until you have nothing left and totally depend on them. Don’t believe them. Stick with the original contract that has made America the greatest country on earth! Freedom with personal responsibility. They can suggest how they think I should respond to the Coronavirus. I'll take it from there.