The Age Of Fear; Or, Don't Be A Sucker

From The Age of Fear, by Neil Strauss, 10/20/16, rollingstone.com
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Trump's rhetoric served only to fan the flames:  "They're bringing drugs.  They're bringing crime.  They're rapists."  "It's only getting worse."  "You walk down the street, you get shot!"  Build a wall.  Ban the Muslims.  Obama founded ISIS.  Hillary is the devil.  Death, destruction, violence, poverty, weakness.  And I alone can make America safe again.

But just how unsafe is America today?

According to Barry Glassner, president of Lewis & Clark College, a leading sociologist and author of The Culture of Fear, "Most Americans are living in the safest place on earth at the safest time in history."

"But we are also living in the most fearmongering time in human history.  And the main reason for this is that there's a lot of power and money available to individuals and organizations who can perpetuate these fears."

For mass media, insurance companies, Big Pharma, advocacy groups, lawyers, politicians and so many more, your fear is worth billions.  And fortunately for them, your fear is also very easy to manipulate.  Humans are wired to respond to it above everything else. 
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So don't be a sucker, dear readers.  (Happily, most of Buster's readers are the opposite of suckers.)  And always consider the source.

I'll leave you with these two factoids:

• For each of us, the odds of a fatal terror attack by a refugee in the U.S. is 1 in 3.6 billion per year.

• 280,000 Americans were killed guns in the past 10 years.  Zero Americans were killed by refugees in the past 10 years.