How Fear & Anger Are Used to Divide Us
“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.”
~ Gandhi
Instilling fear and stoking anger are the focus of the former president’s latest re-election campaign, as it was in the past two. At every rally, he is stoking anger in an attempt to stir up his base and get people to vote for him again. There are abundant examples all the way back to before his first presidential campaign in the 2016 election that the man trades in fear.
Politicians using fear and anger to divide people and gain power is not new. Autocrats throughout history have used these methods to varied degrees of success. Although not a new strategy, the former occupant of the White House has taken it to a whole new level.
In June of 2020, he retweeted a video of a supporter shouting “White Power”. While this is an overt example, the racism is often more implied than explicit. For example, comments about protestors being “thugs” who are destroying our cities. He frequently invokes fear with messages about crime in cities, such as New York or Chicago. Rather than doing anything in his four years in office to address the actual causes of crime in our inner cities, he blames Democrats.
His lies about election fraud started long before the election. He worked hard during the 2020 campaign to undermine confidence in the election and stoke fear about voter fraud. He did the same thing in 2016 when he said that if he didn’t win, it was rigged. The problem could never be that more voters wanted him gone than there, it must be fraud. He tells constant lies about voter fraud, even as more than 60 court cases were dismissed for lack of evidence. Why would he let a thing like truth stop him?
The former president isn’t alone in using fear and anger to divide the country and make us hate each other. Many members of his party have leapt onto this particular bandwagon because they think it benefits them politically. Spending 5 minutes on Twitter provides sufficient evidence of this. Most tweets from far right politicians are nothing more than messages of fear and hate.
Holding Onto Power is the Point
The former president has spent much of his time before, during, and after his four years in office stoking hate, fear, and anger for the purpose of benefitting his own presidential campaigns. This is not new. He was doing this before he became president, all the way back to the “Central Park Five” case. Throughout the 2016 election and in the early months of his presidency, he stoked fear using a constantly changing cast of monsters, including undocumented immigrants, radical Islamic terrorists executing Christians, drugs “pouring” across the southern border. He insisted that, “I alone can fix it.”
After four years of him, it’s safe to say our problems weren’t fixed, and often made worse, with protests, a global pandemic, and economic downturn, all questionably handled by a scandal ridden administration. In his bid for re-election, he tried hard to re-position himself as the only savior for the country by once again exaggerating problems and stoking fear. He continues to insist that he is the only one that can fix it, despite actually being president during the trouble and offering no leadership.
The use of fear and anger has resulted in more division than ever in the United States. People are no longer merely members of an opposing political party, but evil and out to murder your newborns, eating children, pedophiles, and every other abhorrent accusation they seem able to think of. This all has its roots in the fear, anger, and violence that are being heard in every stump speech, tweet, and campaign rally of people running for everything from school boards to the presidency.
The Country Isn’t Being Helped
This division does absolutely nothing to benefit the average person, regardless of whether the individual loves or despises the former president and his party. Only the politicians benefit from the division. But what does that do to help anyone? Fear does not solve problems, neither does anger or threats of violence. Ideas solve problems. Action solves problems. But there is no action. As we are busy fighting amongst ourselves, the top percent is gaining more wealth.
How about instead of stoking fear, encouraging violence, and stirring up anger, they come up with some ideas about things they could do to help alleviate any of the many problems this society is facing? Too many in power have no interest in making anything better for anyone. What have these cheap politicians who work so hard to make us hate each other ever done to help an average citizen?
They are only able to continue this game as long as we continue to play. Maybe the time has come to stop. Start making voting decisions based on what the person is doing, has done, or will do about the major issues that are plaguing the country. A president shouldn’t have completed a FULL term without a single plan for healthcare, immigration, climate change, or income inequality. The House shouldn’t spend two years doing nothing but conducting sham investigations and rage tweeting lies. Yet here we are.
The step forward will never come from politicians. It will only come from the people turning our backs on the idea that others are evil. A good start would be to stop assuming that anyone who isn’t voting for your candidate hates America. They don’t. We all want the same things but will never get them until we start working together and return to common sense.
