Small wonder that more than 37 million Americans take antidepressants, roughly one in nine of us, or that, in 2016, this country accounted for 80 percent of the global market for opioid prescriptions.Ī climate of fear has led to 43 million new guns being purchased by Americans in 20 in a land singularly awash in more than 400 million firearms, including more than 20 million assault rifles. Alternately, fear your “libtard” neighbor with her rainbow peace flag as she allegedly plots to confiscate your guns and brainwash your kids. Fear your MAGA-hat-wearing neighbor with his steroidal truck and his sizable collection of guns as he supposedly plots a coup against America. Fear, as Frank Herbert wrote in Dune, is the mind-killer. If you’re plugged into the mental matrix that’s America in 2022, you’re constantly exposed to fear. Those would, for instance, include the non-existent Gulf of Tonkin attack cited as the justification for a major military escalation of the war in Vietnam in 1965 or those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq used to justify the 2003 US invasion of that country.Īnd isn’t that, by analogy, true of America’s leaders in these years, as they’ve driven this society to be ever less trusting and more fearful in the name of protecting and advancing their wealth, power, and security? History teaches us that such threats have sometimes not just been inflated but created ex nihilo. Meanwhile, internationally, wars and rumors of war continue to be a constant plague, made worse by the exaggeration of threats to national security. All this has Americans increasingly vexed and stressed. Here at home that would include regular mass shootings controversial decisions by an openly partisan Supreme Court the Capitol riot that the House January 6th Select Committee has repeatedly reminded us about and growing uncertainty when it comes to what, if anything, still unifies these once United States. Of course, America continues to face actual threats to its security and domestic tranquility. Take cover! We’re being threatened by a revived red(dish) menace from a “ rogue” Russia! A “ Yellow peril” from China! Iran with a nuke! And then there are the alleged threats at home.
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