Have you noticed that one political party candidate uses fear to motivate folks to agree with his rantings. Everything he says is framed such that bad things will happen, if you don’t vote for him. He is the only person that can save the country from horrible consequences that are happening or will happen.

The idea of making America great again, itself implies that it is no longer great! Somehow bad things have happened and America is no longer great. Really? Look around at all the rest of the places in the world and tell me that Americans don’t have it pretty great. We have freedoms that many other places don’t have. We have opportunities that many other places don’t have. Compared to the past, we currently enjoy things that make our lives way more comfortable than our predecessors. Is this a perfect place, of course not. Nothing is perfect, because perfect is the ultimate goal, and it takes continuous effort to try and achieve it.

Once, a long time ago, the United States was attacked by an enemy. The wise president at the time made a famous speech on the radio, where he stated “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself”, to a shaken nation.

Fear itself, is such a great motivator of changing minds and behaviors. Assuring that there is nothing to fear, calms the nerves and makes people feel better about the situation that they are in. The opposite of fear is optimism and hope.

Fear of ousiders, immigrants. They will take our jobs and they will just take, take, take! We must fear them! We must close the borders! We must round them up, encamp them, and ship them back where they came from! Except for the indigenous people that lived here before us, but didn’t we all get here via immigrants from other places?

Fear of other countries taking over by stealing our jobs, or our land, or not trading fairly, and doing whatever we want them to. I know, we can limit their ability to buy land here. We can raise tariffs and make them pay us if they send their products and goods here to the United States. That will show them and we will reap enormous amounts of wealth from them! We can stop them from taking advantage of us being dependent on them! Just ignore the fact that the corporations sending all that work and jobs to other places are the actual problem, not the country that end up with them. Just ignore the fact that tariffs end up raising the cost that consumers pay for the items. Country’s don’t pay for the tariffs at all, and in fact may even make things worse for you and I.

Fear of ideas “the other side” endorse, as being too liberal. Fear of a woman being able to make her own choice of what happens when medical decisions are needed. Fear of people having equal rights. Fear of people getting anything for “free”, in their minds. Fear of people taking away their God given rights, or those enshrined in the Constitution. Fear of anything different from what they believe.

Fear is being used to scare people into voting for him.

I try to be an optimistic person. It has taken me a very long time and much work on myself, and I still struggle to not give in to being fearful, miserable, and sad. I can easily see how others have fallen for his tactic of using fear to scare people, and divide a nation.

People in general fear change, and like things the way they used to be. The way they are familiar with. People forget about the bad things that were included with the past. They cherry pick out just the good, and think – if just we could go back to the good old days, when things went the way they remembered.

People are so easily fooled into believing their needs are greater than anyone else’s. People say that they care about others, and are good Christians, but only when that suits their needs.

He has no real plans. He speaks of nothing but fear. He plants fear, with hopes of reaping a harvest of hateful followers that vote for him.

Unfortunately, when others call him out on his lies and use of fear – he denies it and doubles down with more of the same. He convinces others to spew the same idiotic lies. He takes NO responsibility for anything, but claims he is the only reason good things happen – even if that is a lie.

The only thing I’m afraid of is, that he wins the election.

I am optimistic that he does not.