Fear is a powerful emotion. It can make people do amazing things, but it can also lead them to reckless acts, exercise bad judgment, and engage in irrational, self-defeating, self-destructive behavior.
No other nation on earth has learned to incite fear in people in furtherance of despicable and dangerous ends better than the United States of America; it’s the world’s undisputed leader in this respect.
Ever since the US acquired a taste for empire and domination in the middle of the 19th century, fear has been its dearest friend.
The instilling of fear has led the US political, corporate, and military elite to fabricate the most outrageous lies and scams in order to compel the people to support wars, policies, and legislation which benefit those at the top while impoverishing and killing those at the bottom.
The US has expertly managed to use fear to manipulate the public to such an extent that those who are fooled willingly march toward their own dispossession.
The use of fear is one of the best ways to control and brainwash a population into supporting whatever schemes an individual or entity wants them to support.
This process starts at an early age. An endless stream of commercials, along with government representatives, ‘experts’, TV/radio personalities drum into the peoples’ consciousness all sorts of illusions about what they should be, think, look, act, behave, believe, take, and use.
Once these expectations are programmed into peoples’ consciousness, the powers-that-be start employing fear about how wrong, unacceptable, aberrant, unpatriotic, and just plain crazy and stupid one is if they don’t conform to the these mainstream views.
Fear is employed to scare people with the consequences of not accepting the popular views and behaviors that are expected.
This starts with more subtle things like:
-If you don’t whiten your teeth you’ll look dirty
-If you don’t get this latest gadget you’ll look cheap and pathetic
-If you don’t have a big house or new car you’ll be seen as poor
-If you don’t buy what you want on credit people will think that you’re stingy and weird
-If you don’t buy this perfume the opposite sex will not date you
-If you don’t go and buy new clothes in that more expensive store instead of the bargain place, people may find out and you’ll be laughed at and ostracized
These are just a few examples, but there are many others. They might seem ridiculous and trivial, but this is how peoples’ fear buttons are being pressed to make them do things that they think benefit them, but really turn them into automated profit and debt mules for the wealthy, and brainwashed cannon fodder for the country’s wars.
This fear-mongering also crosses over to other realms. People are also subtly being scared, and implicitly threatened, if they don’t accept popular views on politics and current events:
-You’re a traitor and hate America if you don’t support, and criticize US foreign policies
-You’re a suspect if you voice support for a foreign leader or government that the US regime tells you is evil
-You may be reported to the authorities, and even arrested if you attempt to protest against, or expose any sort of government wrongdoing
-You may be fined and arrested if you support any organization, group or foreign government which the US doesn’t like
Of course these are not unrealistic examples and idle threats. Instilling of such fear is followed up by unpleasant consequences if one doesn’t heed the warnings/threats, or is not swayed by fear.
Just look at what has been done with Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, and other dissidents, investigative reporters, and activists who dared not to be scared while reporting sordid tales of US government torture, illegal wiretapping, political scandals, and corruption by government officials and their cohorts.
They’ve been driven to exile, arrested, fined, deported, or died in ‘accidents’ or committed ‘suicide.’
Those in authority who push our fear buttons get away with it because at the same time they cleverly disguise complex subjects as black and white, as the good us against the bad them.
The US government and press constantly label anyone whom the US government doesn’t like or opposes by employing ad hominems—namely attacking the messenger instead of responding to their message.
Also, claims are more frequently being presented as facts or implicitly suggested as fact to mislead the audience.
Just notice how stories in the mainstream media are written. Pay attention to how one-sided they are. Carefully scrutinize each story for claims masquerading as views (these will normally be words or phrases with single or double-quotation marks around them).
Learn to spot ad hominems. These will usually attempt to discredit a subject by saying something—factual or not—about their personality, actions, or past that is meant to embarrass and discredit the subject before the subject’s views are even presented. This is employed chiefly to demonized and discredit anyone who may have a valid criticism of US government policy or that of its ally.
An example would be the following statement:
-A vocal opponent of police violence, Mr. Jackson, who in his youth was arrested for shoplifting, will picket the courthouse this Saturday.
Or something more realistic:
-The Syrian dictator Bashar Al Assad, whom opposition forces blame for human rights abuses, has denounced the US for sending arms to rebels whose aim is to bring freedom and democracy to Syria’s people. He says that those weapons are being used by ISIS and their allies.
In both examples, the fictional Mr. Jackson, and the very real President of Syria are being labeled to look bad right at the beginning. The intent of doing so is to push peoples’ emotional buttons by instilling the fear of them, and thereby discredit the two individuals and their arguments before they’re made.
In the second example, there is also the connotation at the end which associates the rebels and the US with freedom and democracy. This seeks to cleverly line up the reader’s sympathy and allegiance to the US and the rebels.
People are first presented with a negative view of someone, and then another party is presented which is opposed to that villain.
The aim is to manipulate the public into associating an individual as bad, and another individual as good by using words and phrases that set them apart—hence Assad the dictator and human rights abuser, and the US and rebels as freedom-loving democracy promoters.
This is meant to discredit everything that Mr. Assad and Mr. Jackson may say. It’s meant for people to instinctively be filled with dislike of these people whenever they see their names mentioned, and ignore anything these individuals have to say.
These two individuals’ views, no matter how valid, nuanced, interesting and informative, even true, are never taken into account because people are conditioned by ad hominems into associating these people with being thieves and human rights abusers from the get-go, with no credibility in the public’s eyes.
In this way the US governing regime gets away with the most outrageous lies about Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Vladimir Putin, and pretty much everything else.
No one dares to look deeper into the US sending arms to rebel groups, and the problems this causes, and Mr. Jackson's reasons for being at the courthouse that day are ignored, no matter how valid. This is the aim, to prevent the public from learning useful facts which will lead them into making informed, rational choices, rather than reckless emotionally-based decisions driven by fear.
In this way, a government and other entities shut down peoples' thinking and get away with all sorts of disgusting things, without opposition.
So to recap, a subject’s emotional button is pressed by labeling something or someone as bad and harmful.
Once fear takes over, then people look for a savior, a protector who will shield them from the bad. The ‘savior’ is then identified, and the public starts associating that savior as the good guy. The public then believes in, and does whatever their ‘savior’ says and wants because they see it as their ‘protector.’
(This can go even further, by later associating something else with the bad. A good example is when the Bush regime lumped in Saddam Hussein with Al Qaeda. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11, yet by associating him with Al Qaeda, the supposed perpetrators of the attack, instantly made him an evil, reviled figure in the eyes of the US public, and drove people to foolishly support an invasion of Iraq.)
At this point, emotion kicks in and the public starts making irrational choices and engages in reckless behavior.
This is used all the time in advertising.
They gorge on prescription drugs; they get in debt; they trust dishonest politicians and other personalities who cause the nation great harm.
One of the biggest offenders is the pharmaceutical industry. They pump people full of fear by promoting something as a serious problem/ailment, whether real or imagined, then offer some new $400-a-bottle wonder drug as the solution. Then they watch the billions roll inform a naïve and foolish public.
Then some years later that so-called wonder drug is found to cause serious health issues where there were none before and leads to death is just swept under the rug and punished with a small, symbolic fine by big pharma’s allies at the FDA.
Religious organizations, governments, and corporations are the three primary entities today which use and abuse fear for their own nefarious and self-serving ends.
Fear drives people into the churches (where an even greater dose of fear is heaped on them), the stores where they bankrupt themselves on buying things they don’t need, and into needless, endless wars for profit based on lies in which they and their families and fellow citizens only find misery, shame, and disappointment.
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