From Fear To Fascism

It has been said time and time again that fear makes people do stupid things. It creates ignorant dialogue on popular talk shows, it creates skewed propaganda on the network news and it gives a government the ability to create stupid laws that the people will accept.

Fear is making us accomplices to our own enslavement. There are many things that fear creates from anger to what I call, selective perception.

Selective perception is the cherry picking of facts that resonates with our confirmation bias.

The process of selective perception is necessary because if we did not do this we would be transfixed by the hyper reality and sensory overload. Today, our brains are being filled with all sorts of sensory overload. Think about it – we have simple perceptions of life, light, love, survival, spirituality, God, etc. Then we are exposed to media, print, television, internet, video games, telephony, and many other things pushing the brain further and all of that stimulus is placed in a limited area known as the brain.

When major crises erupt or are perceived, we are told that we need to react. The reaction of course is supposed to be a choice, but it seems that consensus coercion and peer pressures get the majority of people to react in a certain way to a crisis.

Shortly after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, the nation began to mourn, and around the country Americans of all faiths and races began to commemorate the victims and demonstrate their patriotism.

Some flew the American flag from their front porches and car antennas. Others pinned it to their lapels or wore it on t-shirts. Sports teams postponed games. Celebrities organized benefit concerts and performances. People attended impromptu candlelight vigils and participated in moments of silence.

We were saddened and frightened. All religious groups turned to prayer.

At the Washington National Cathedral, the Reverend Billy Graham implored his listeners, “not to implode and disintegrate emotionally and spiritually as a people and a nation” but to “choose to become stronger through the entire struggle to rebuild on a solid foundation.” And at Grace Church in Manhattan, the Reverend Bert Breiner asked parishioners to “please go forth into this world with love as though everything depended on it, because as we now know, everything does depend on it.”

The Imam at the Al Abidin mosque in Queens told his congregation, “We join with our fellow Americans in prayer for the killed and injured.”

However, the reverence, the mourning and the fear quickly turned to anger. It began when the Reverend Jerry Falwell said on the “The 700 Club” that he believed the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians, the ACLU, and people for the American Way– have all tried to secularize America. He ended his remarks by saying they all helped making the tragedy happen.

When George W. Bush told us that Islamic terrorists were responsible for the attacks, the anger exploded and erupted into attacks on people of Arab and Muslim descent, with nearly 600 incidents in the first 10 days after the attacks.

Five hundred furious people mobbed a Chicago-area mosque and refused to leave until they were forced out by police. A Pakistani grocer was murdered in Texas. A man on an anti-Arab rampage in Arizona fatally shot a gas station owner who was an Indian-born Sikh – he was not a Muslim – but of course fear and anger make people do stupid things like attack anyone who wears a turban and has brown skin.

If our model for perceiving our environment and time is limited or if we happen to perceive something while in crisis or after a traumatic experience, we run the obvious risk of missing important information that may be crucial for our well-being and survival; or conversely, of hallucinating imaginary information that may be misleading or hurtful or even dangerous.

There are times when fear and anger can cause us to have an extreme break with reality.

When a person has an extreme break with the reality and the world view, there is always the consensus opinion that the mental health of the person is under suspicion. However, there has never been a consensus opinion that the breakdown of reality is happening and that people of the United States are now are all suffering mentally from a constant bombardment of fear-based disinformation.

It needs to be said that a calculated and manufactured inducement of fear is now creating a mass dependency disorder, along with the selective reality that seems to be a refuge for the person in denial.

President Nixon once said “people react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true.” It is true but when the fear turns to irrational behavior, I think we need to be prepared for more than just an ISIS invasion. We need to prepare for reactionary behaviors that will harm innocent people.

We are seeing what can be termed as rational inconsistencies in this country and a sense of pathological dependency on government to keep us safe. By succumbing to this reality, we are stoking the fear level in order to increase the levels of this mental dependency to the point of seeing government as a parent that makes rules to keep us safe, even if it means we feel held down by these rules.

The dynamic is destructive, wherein it is using fear to keep you in line – to gradually coerce you into giving in to what can be termed, Fascism.

These techniques have been proven very effective as we have seen various cult leaders throughout history – use fear as a tool to guarantee co-dependency on a leader, and to not trust anyone who may try to take away the one of the group that is allegedly looking out for your well-being.

In more general terms, the idea that cults tend to promote an intense dependency is implicit in the unanimous definition reached by different specialists as to what is understood by a “cult”: “a group or movement that exhibits a great or excessive dedication or devotion to some person, idea or thing and employing unethical manipulative techniques of persuasion and control.”

The government and the current administration have succeeded in developing ways to heighten suggestibility and subservience. The network media is crucial in creating a narrative that is full of fear and mistrust, using key words and phrases that trigger fears in people to the point of an angry or compulsive response.

This creates a large number of people that wish to pressure others into believing the whims of the government and create a solution where people are willing to surrender their civil rights and suspend their individuality for the collective thoughts and agendas.

The “spike” events, whether they are mass shootings, bombings, or assassinations are all exploited and some even say designed to advance the goals of the government all to the detriment of the public they are supposed to serve.

You see, the overall co-dependency personality disorder many Americans are adopting is becoming more than just blind following of leaders. It is becoming a health crisis. A health crisis that if unchecked, can lead to more attacks, more hatred for minorities and more reasons for the citizens to enable a police state managed by fascist rulers.

Our government now has fueled the idea of fearing and loathing phantom enemies.

They are also doing things to perpetuate dread and suffering.

For example the flag of the United States was lowered to half-staff at the White House, federal buildings and at American military and diplomatic stations around the world after the terrorist attacks that occurred in Paris France.

President Barack Obama ordered it as a gesture of solidarity with France. After 14 people were killed in the San Bernardino shooting, President Obama again ordered flags to be lowered saying that terrorism is an assault on everyone.

The question is: Why is the President abusing flag etiquette?

I know that the flags can be ordered to be by a presidential proclamation; otherwise the gesture is set aside for heads of state or death of principal figures of the United States Government and the governor of a state, territory, or possession, as a mark of respect to their memory. In the event of the death of other officials or foreign dignitaries, the flag is to be displayed at half-staff according to Presidential orders, or in accordance with recognized customs or practices not inconsistent with law.

“In the event of the death a present or former official of the government of any state, territory, or possession of the United States, the governor of that state, territory, or possession may proclaim that the national flag shall be flown at half-staff.” The code also includes other related details including the specific length of time during which the flag should be displayed at half-staff, in the event of the death of a “principal figure.”

We don’t lower flags after terror attacks. I know some people will say it is a well-intentioned gesture, but it appears that it is being abused in order to remind us that the country should always be in mourning.

We grieve these human losses deeply; however, the abuse of flag etiquette seems to send a message of loss and pessimism. It is also a stark reminder that we are living in a culture of violence and anger.

America’s culture of violence is continually manifested throughout our workplaces, schools, campuses, houses of worship, communities, and families.

There appears to be no end in sight to the carnage. This breeds more co-dependency as the majority of people ask Father Government to do whatever they can to prevent violence. There are many now that are so angry they are now attacking the Obama administration for its failure to prevent further violence.

To say that this is unsettling is an understatement.

The idea of government co-dependency has so ensnared the nation that a lot of Americans don’t even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset.

Americans will eventually agree that it will be in our best interest to pour millions of dollars and resources into establishing a heavily-armed militarized police, the use of advanced spy technology and even war if necessary, to guarantee safety.

None of these solutions work. That doesn’t matter though as fearful Americans eventually crack and demand things that are detrimental to liberty.

As I have said before, we are seeing dangerous patterns in American behavior that are digging a deep and growing chasm between the America we believe we are living in and the social injustices shaping the new reality of a globalist police state.

We are now seeing the school to prison pipeline where “zero tolerance” rules get children arrested and a police record with a threat assessment. Veterans are now being forcibly detained by government agents because of the content of their Facebook post.

We are being tracked, under surveillance and seeing that this isn’t working to stop terror attacks.

Yet, we have somehow all agreed this is something we all want.

It appears we are becoming a country that is mentally crippled — this should be seen as a mental health crisis that is more of a threat to national security than terrorism.

Text – Check out Ground Zero Radio with Clyde Lewis Live Nightly @ http://www.groundzeromedia.org