America No Longer "Home of the Brave"

Home of the Brave? Nah, home of terrified nervous nellies. 

We are safer today than just about any other time in history. I'm tired of this epidemic of irrational fear that has been induced by media propaganda from all kinds of people that profit from fear. We are strangling our society as a result. Irrational fear has been around for a long time and I think is a significant reason for white flight in communities old and new.

My home town of Midwest City, Oklahoma had a triple homicide today and you'd think from the reaction that the entire city is under siege, watching the news coverage. So those who are already terrified are going through a number of reactions that are irrational.

Look, there are some facts about life that are inescapable. First, we will all die. Sorry to break that to you if you didn't know. You will die somehow. You can sit around and worry about how that will be or you can accept your mortality and just live freely until that day comes.

Second, stop living alternate facts life. Being safer than ever, our sense of risk aversion to life is teaching our children really awful things. We are teaching them to fear everyone and everything. Risk is part of life and often leads to big payoffs for those with a sense of adventure and commitment.

Third, evidence and facts should be able to give some sense of peace. We have never lived in a time of less danger. And while those who support Trump are calling those with fear of him "Snowflakes," the Trump devotees are just as "snowflakish" as those they cast aspersions.

America is not the home of the brave anymore. It's the home of the scared and irrational and that needs to change.

From the story.... [Yet one more big change over the last half-century has been the proliferation of a politics of fear. Stearns identifies Lyndon Johnson's 1964 "Daisy" ad as the first fear-based political ad, and says that fear's presence in American discourse has only increased since then. Glassner agrees that politicians, companies and the media have played a big part in the change, figuring out how to trigger fear and using that knowledge more frequently. Technology is part of it, too: though fear of kidnapping is certainly older than the Lindbergh baby, news of the child's disappearance today would appear round-the-clock on cable, social media or via Amber Alerts to Americans' phones.
"Part of what I find interesting about this is that overall most Americans live in what is arguably the safest time and place in human history ," Glassner says, "and yet fear levels are high and there are many, many fears and scares out there."]
http://time.com/4158007/american-fear-history/

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