
Fear is America’s top-selling consumer product - oblib
http://laphamsquarterly.org/fear/petrified-forest
======
komali2
I'm slowly trimming away the means I acquire news, because it's all becoming
so editorialized. Twitter is bombarded with bots and flamewars, reddit is a
lost cause, and news.google.com is mainly driven by larger syndications that
have mastered the "Big Headlines Sell" strategy.

That leaves HN and my little local papers, Mountain View Voice and its ilk.
Great for local stories and tech news, but I feel like I'm missing out on
what's going on in the world. Every time I dip my feet in global news, it's
screamed at me, dripping in panic: "Trump DID A THING!!!" "Cops Shoot a Guy
AGAIN WHY DID THEY DO THAT?!!"

Are there any good general global news sources that don't try to manipulate my
emotions as I read them? Paid or free.

~~~
banned1
Not really. CNN has gone the way of MSNBC (i.e. liberal, one-sided, pretty
much echo-chamber). HN is the same way when it relates to political news (i.e.
liberal, one-sided, pretty much echo-chamber). Fox News is, well, Fox News.
NPR is, well, for the most part, the Fox News of the left. So on and so forth.

In a world of two echo chambers (The Right-wingers and The Left-wingers), it's
up to you to make up your mind. You have to visit all sites and KNOW that you
are getting the one sided alternative facts that best support their specific
agenda. Then you MUST realize the world is never really Black and White, and
MUST come to your own informed conclusions.

Every site has their own goodness. I find interesting articles in each of CNN,
MSNBC, Fox News, Braitbart, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National
Geographic, etc. etc., but you have to sift through 99% of one-sided junk.

~~~
rndmize
I don't understand this perspective. When CNN gets a story wrong, the right
creates a huge storm and people get fired. When the right gets a story wrong
(Breitbart still pushing the hard anti-climate change line, Hannity with the
Seth Rich conspiracy, the entire birther movement, Pizzagate, and on and on
and _on_ )... nothing happens. Nothing. It took Milo saying "maybe pedophelia
isn't that bad" before there was enough of an outcry for him to be fired. It
truly frustrates me when I see people pushing this "oh both sides are just as
bad, but one is left and one is right". No. They are not.

And it isn't hard to see the direct effects this is having, now. When the
governor of Texas calls out the national guard to keep an eye on the _US Army
doing training exercises_ , because of right-wing conspiracy insanity that has
hit the mainstream, we are having problems. When President Trump can claim
that Obama is the founder of Isis and people just eat it up, we are having
problems. For God's sake, the man had his press secretary go out on Day One of
his presidency and lie about crowd sizes. He spouts bullshit about crime
statistics in Sweden and for months, Breitbart suddenly has constant articles
about how immigrants are causing everything wrong in Sweden ever (I
particularly remember an article with an image of a mangled child, with the
claim this was caused by immigrants, only for word to come out later it was a
dog attack).

The "mainstream media" (and I use the term in quotes because all the biggest
radio shows are right-wing, fox is the biggest cable channel and the WSJ is
the biggest paper aside from USA Today) is like a dog chasing a car, towing a
pro-business line and chasing after whatever will give them the most eyeballs
at the moment. But at least they aren't a goddamn propaganda force for the
left, marching in lock-step and feeding off each other the way the right media
does.

~~~
didibus
The truth is, there's actually a huge amount of centrist in the USA. Those
centrists are reasonable people. They'll hear you out, think, analyze and make
up their mind. They'll accept compromise, and they'll try hard to see if maybe
there's truth to consider, even if most things said appears exaggerated, or
ridiculous.

And then there's unreasonable people. They don't want to think, or consider
options.

In the USA, if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most
reasonable people are clustered with the left. And a minority of unreasonable
people are also on the left, with another minority of reasonable people
clustered on the right.

Effectively, the right averages to be unreasonable, and the left to be
reasonable. I find the media reflect that quite well. Maybe CNN forgot to
consider an option, so they reconsider. Fox news doesn't, they're not trying
to be reasonable.

So what's happening currently is all reasonable people on the left is trying
to give a chance to the minority of reasonable people on the right. While the
bigger chunk of unreasonable people on the right are trying to avoid all
reasoning about alternative options.

In that sense, its normal for most reasonable news source to appear tied to
the left. And most unreasonable news source to appear tied to the right.

~~~
kogepathic
_> In the USA, if you are unreasonable, you're most likely on the right. Most
reasonable people are clustered with the left. And a minority of unreasonable
people are also on the left, with another minority of reasonable people
clustered on the right._

I don't think it's fair to generalize 330 million people like this.

Certainly it feels like there are more reality-denying theories peddled by
right wing media, but that could be for a variety of reasons, not limited to:

1\. Right wing media is louder in their publicizing of these issues

2\. Your media sources are more liberal and you view right wing media outlets
as "unreasonable"

I am not American, but I have American friends. You cannot generalize
political beliefs into who is reasonable or unreasonable in all their beliefs.
Politics is a spectrum, and right now in America you have the loudest people
screaming from the extreme right and (IMHO) the centre left. If you identify
as more liberal, you're far more inclined to view this coverage as
"reasonable" compared to more right leaning coverage.

 _> Effectively, the right averages to be unreasonable, and the left to be
reasonable. I find the media reflect that quite well._

No, this is the current media situation in America. In other countries this
kind of propaganda from both sides of the political spectrum is not as
prominent, and it's far easier to have a rational and reasonable debate about
political issues.

You can draw your own conclusions about America, but please do not come away
with the impression that all right-leaning people are unreasonable. It's a big
world, and this most certainly is not the case in other countries.

I'd argue it's also not the case in America. American media has just been
hijacked by the most loud, extreme group of people (from both sides) because
the executives have figured out this style of coverage earns more money.

From an outside view, American news media has basically turned into The Jerry
Springer Show. It's trashy and devoid of almost any meaningful content, but
people watch it to be entertained.

~~~
slice_of_life
> but please do not come away with the impression that all right-leaning
> people are unreasonable

Nor that even MOST right leaning people are unreasonable. It's all a matter of
vantage point.

Edit: grammar

~~~
didibus
I don't think it's a matter of vintage point. It's all about intention. You
can work to be more reasonable if you choose to. You can teach people to be
more reasonable. Its a skill, a quality that everyone healthy can choose to
practice or not.

I don't even know what right or left leaning imply. That whole categorization
is a joke. Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will
work best to get it. Only after that's been cleared up can we start discussing
meaningfully.

What I do know though is that in the media, in the USA, in 2017 (it hasn't
always been this way), most unreasonable people making noise associsate
themselves with the right and like to associate reasonable people with the
left.

~~~
slice_of_life
> That whole categorization is a joke

It's a very serious distinction. One which wars have been fought over many
times over (from the french revolution to the cold war). To trivialize it is
more than naive.

> Tell me what you want, why you want it and how you believe will work best to
> get it

There are many things I personally want but underlying it all is the idea of
non-egalitarianism. I want structure in any society where merit and hard-work
are given the utmost priority. Why do I want it? Because it is the most
natural and most proven way to create proper incentive structures for the best
outcome for other humans and myself.

How will I get it? First of all, remove most, if not all, government
involvement in citizens' affairs. Allow for free markets to prevail and for
the best ideas and the best people to rise to the top. I will take aristocracy
over democracy any day. Democracy has become a tool that's been used to take
away the liberties of individuals in the guise of freedom and equality.

~~~
didibus
The American right and the French revolution right are competly different
things, which is another good reason for me to believe the categorization is a
joke. They've lost meaning, and serve only to avoid talking details, they
naturally lead to partisanship.

From what you said, we could have a reasonable conversation, but you sound
more libertarian then the current American right. Here lies the issue of
affiliation. You sound reasonable, but if you affiliate yourself with
breitbart, fox news, and the rest of the leading right, you're associating
yourself with a lot of unreasonable people in position of power. And since
you've mentioned soviet communism and german fascism before, you might know
that's exactly how reasonable people got tricked in the past also.

~~~
slice_of_life
> The American right and the French revolution right are competly different
> things

[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26029/what-is-
th...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/26029/what-is-the-origin-
for-left-being-used-to-indicate-socialist-liberals-and-right)

I'd point you to that and say I'd only support your statement in so far as
saying part of the American right is not as pro-liberty as it ought to be -
this is in reference to neoconservatism and similar ideologies.

> They've lost meaning, and serve only to avoid talking details

They're shorthand and I think they're useful when you're genuine about
discussion but want a quick way to understand where an argument is coming
from. If you're disingenuous about conversation, it doesn't matter whether
labels are used or not, you simply cannot self-regulate your bias to give room
for discourse is all I'm saying.

------
aleyan
This is not this essay's first time[1] making it to this front of hacker news.
And I am glad for it, because Petrified Forrest essay is great, and Lapham's
whole issue[2] on fear is fantastic.

Unfortunately two pieces I found most relevant for HN crowd from this issue so
far aren't available on Lapham's Quarterly website. They are a moralistic
Japanese 17th century account of an entrepreneur in "All the goodness gone
from tea"[3] and Joseph Heller's bit on "Corporate Welfare" in "Something
Happened"[4]. Hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14589087](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14589087)

[2] [http://laphamsquarterly.org/fear](http://laphamsquarterly.org/fear)

[3]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=ux89AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA93&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=ux89AAAAIAAJ&lpg=PA93&ots=_0XDTIXhUw&dq=%22all%20the%20goodness%20gone%20from%20tea%22&pg=PA93#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[4]
[https://books.google.com/books?id=b2AiWB98p5sC&lpg=PT14&ots=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=b2AiWB98p5sC&lpg=PT14&ots=GTXIjffuIu&dq=_&pg=PT14#v=onepage&q&f=false)

~~~
oblib
When I entered the link I kind of expected to be notified it had be posted
already, but no such notice came up. I was revisiting the site today and
couldn't remember seeing that article linked here so I thought I'd give it a
try.

Nice to see it get around some more. It really is a high quality site and one
I look forward to each update with real anticipation.

------
erikb
I wanted to complain about the title not really making the right distinction,
that fear is not a product but a sales method. However, the author actually
understands that distinction and really talks about fear being the product.
That also implies that people desire fear and that fear is produced with
industrial efficiency.

Interesting thought.

~~~
QAPereo
I don't think people crave fear, they crave stimulation. Joy is much harder to
manufacture than dread, and dread makes people act in a predictable, often-
profitable manner. In other words, people don't want to be bored more than
anything else, and the rest is just about the most stimulating things on
offer.

~~~
nowarninglabel
>Joy is much harder to manufacture than dread

Is it though? And is it just harder in our current configuration or absolutely
harder no matter how resources are allocated?

I'd argue that Joy is easier/cheaper to produce, we just haven't optimized for
it (yet).

~~~
Swizec
Joy is fleeting, fear is forever.

Manufacturing joy is easy, yes. Tie a counter to a semi-random process that's
semi-controlled by a human and they experience joy when the counter goes up.
The so called slot machine. THis is how HackerNews karma, Facebook
notifications, your email inbox, and other addictive activities are designed.

You experience momentary joy.

But fear, fear is forever. How many fears have you been dragging on since
childhood that never seem to go away no matter how irrational they are?
Could've been from a single event like watching a scary movie about a clown,
or a case of near-drowning, or ... well there's a lot of common phobias. The
list can go on forever.

You always need to make a new slot machine. You rarely need to make a new
fear.

~~~
nowarninglabel
I think that's a fair point, but would argue that it's likely not true for a
sizable amount of the population (e.g. my childhood fears have mostly left
me). But further, there are lots of services which actually sell getting past
your fears, perhaps they are just not selling well enough yet to overcome the
amount of fear being produced continuously? Mainly, just questioning how much
it is "forever" fear vs. a constant influx of new fear.

~~~
Swizec
Maybe it's not a matter of introducing new fears but of reinforcing old ones
and reminding you of them.

Everyone's afraid of random unexpected death that's out of their control
right? Well most of us on some level at least.

So media spends a lot of time reminding us that we could die any moment.
Terrorists, natural disasters, wars, car crashes, shootings, all these things
that have a low chance of happening to you in particular but that nonetheless
happen every day and _could_ happen to you.

Or take social exclusion. We all fear being cast out of society. So media
keeps reminding us of all these things the cool people are doing that wr
arent. Potentially things we can _pay_ to do.

------
alecco
Playing devil's advocate, all this fear and anxiety (as @coldtea properly
states) is an engine of the economic machine of the western world.

What I'd argue is that is all twisted for idiotic reasons. For example, it
would be good to have fear of death used to push society towards things like
cures for cancers. And anxiety used to push ourselves to _reach our potential_
instead of seeking validation in superficial things expressed in Instagram
pictures.

But we humans like the quick fix and the advertising lobby delivers. We have
50% of the blame here. Same with the unhealthy foods and drinks we take all
the time.

To improve our behaviour we need incentives like most animals.

------
mxfh
A not so convincing conservative (counter) narrative that lumps up the
arguably questionable nature of trigger warnings with a russian imposed
nuclear doomsday scenario?

That assumption that a russian bomb was merely a copy of the the American
effort, spying helped it speed up, but mostly prevented costly mistakes for
the soviets is just another example of american exceptionalism.

Would rather watch Adam Curtis' _Power of Nightmares_ again, blaming the
_culture of fear_ rightly and mostly on the rise of _neoconservatives_.

~~~
Ygg2
> A not so convincing conservative (counter) narrative that lumps up the
> arguably questionable nature of trigger warnings

Conservative? Can trigger warning exist without fearing something? I think the
author describes evolution of fear.

~~~
mxfh
I wouldn't call this fear, but a, yet to be proven effective, strategy to
avoid retraumatization.

The motivation, as I understand it, is actually to enable and prepare more
people reading things they would be otherwise afraid of, so quite the opposite
of fear.

Besides some right wing people seeing this as one of the horsemen of the end
of free speech, this relatively obscure and confined practice simply doesn't
warrant mentioning it on level akin with national doctrines like _MAD_.

------
ivanhoe
To be honest I think this was pretty obvious to anyone living outside the US,
especially after 9/11\. And unfortunately for the rest of the world, it's
nothing US exclusive, scaring people into obedience is the oldest trick in the
book. Fear has been always one of the main selling point for politicians, ever
since the beginning of time. When faced with a common threat (real or not)
people tend to unite under a leader who they hope will protect them, and it's
any totalitarian ruler's wet dream. Frightened people are easier to control
and far more likely too look the other way on whatever irregularity or
injustice, as it will always seem unimportant compared to the threat and fear
they feel.

------
mancerayder
Without a doubt the business news has a greater interest in delivery of facts
on the ground than your typical national newspaper. To that end I pay for (and
only pay for) the Financial Times due to their attempt to seek out truth. For
example, on controversial issues they'll have editorials from both sides, long
articles, and they publish letters criticizing and correcting articles. As
it's investment-minded and British owned, there's more of an international
focus.

The sad thing about the FT is how expensive it is.

Investors tend to care about facts more than feelings, so objectivity becomes
a worthwhile pursuit. When you're investing in a commodity, foreign currency
and so forth, you're going to read everything with squinted eyes, looking for
the facts.

~~~
richev
> The sad thing about the FT is how expensive it is.

Real journalism costs money, and ad revenues aren't what they used to be.

~~~
colejohnson66
Partly because of ad blockers. But ad blockers became popular due to the rise
in obnoxious ads. It’s an endless cycle that advertisers and publishers aren’t
working at all to fix.

------
ethn
I think it's quite ridiculous that any author can get away with the obscure
clairvoyant claim that people are really irrational and desire to be
fearful——it's a claim contrary to primitive animal and human psychology alike.
The motivation to go buy products associated with fear has nothing to do with
fear itself even when you explicitly define fear as an uncomfortable
uncertainty.

The reason to want to know fear, why fearful subjects are even discussed, is
the quite natural rational thirst for information about uncertainty. Thus, you
would expect them to purchase services that provide information about and that
mitigate uncertainty. Much of the financial economy is purposed as a
mitigation to uncertainty, because uncertainty causes an inherent inefficient
allocation in resources in order to prepare for the uncertain event. If there
is uncertainty, the rational agent is forced to prepare for it with capital
(be it financial or physical). This causes there to be an unused buffer of
resources that cannot be allocated to more pressing utilizations. Instead, the
rational agent is obliged to maintain a buffer, and even incur more
transactional costs in maintaining that very buffer. Uncertainty is expensive,
and the rational agent thus seeks to understand all disturbances to mitigate
the cost of uncertainty.

tl;dr The author is actually engaging in the cheap literary trope where the
general population lacks rationality and the author is the exception for
pointing it out.

~~~
enraged_camel
No, I don't think the desire to mitigate uncertainty explains it. The reason
is simple: fear is about overplaying and exaggerating the risks and
uncertainty.

Fear of terrorist attacks is a great example. If you live in the US, that
means that over the past 15 years you have been more likely to be killed by a
lightning strike than a foreign terrorist attack. Yet a lot of people shit
their pants with regards to, say, Islamic terrorism.

~~~
burkaman
Because terrorism is more unpredictable. If you don't want to get struck by
lightning, stay inside when it storms, or at least don't stand in the middle
of an empty field. If you don't want to be killed by a terrorist, don't go
outside at all?

~~~
mikeash
Avoiding terrorism is pretty easy: avoid the busy parts of the largest cities.
Nobody is carrying out a terrorist attack in Boise.

Which is ironic that the Americans who appear to be the most fearful of
terrorism are the ones who live in places where it will most likely never
happen.

~~~
burkaman
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/04...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403022.html)

[http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article536103...](http://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article53610300.html)

Can we agree that the conditions for lightning are fairly predictable, and
staying safe is pretty straightforward? Whereas "just don't be where all the
people are" is by definition advice that most people can't or won't follow.

Honestly I don't think this point is really debatable. Unpredictability is a
core characteristic of terrorism. If tomorrow all Americans decided to spread
homogeneously across the country and never congregate in large groups,
terrorists would think of something else. If it were predictable and avoidable
it wouldn't be as scary, which is the whole point of this conversation.

~~~
mikeash
From your first link:

"The analysis measured not whether a city would make an attractive target to a
terrorist but rather how well it could withstand an attack, Piegorsch said."

In other words, Boise is ill-prepared to handle an attack, but no statement is
made on the likelihood that it would be a target. That likelihood is, of
course, quite low.

For the second, the goals of an individual nut who couldn't even make his plan
work aren't all that interesting.

Characterizing my advice as "just don't be where all the people are" is super
misleading. There are a _small number_ of likely terrorist targets, and my
advice is not to be _there_. If you're worried about terrorism, then you
should probably avoid Manhattan, downtown Boston, major airports, etc. And
most people paranoid about terrorism probably already avoid these places.
Chicago or Miami or Seattle are probably fine. Places away from the centers of
likely target cities are probably fine. "Don't visit New York" is perfectly
viable advice for a fearful person in Iowa.

You can easily reduce your risk of being killed by lightning, but remaining
perfectly safe is hard. Taking shelter isn't necessarily sufficient. Lightning
_can_ conduct into buildings, and it can also start fires.

I don't think the fear of terrorism is down to its unpredictability and
unavoidability. The same is true of car crashes (someone else's mistake or
malevolence can easily end your life on the road, and avoiding the roads is
not an option for the vast majority of people) and yet people give little
thought to those.

------
oblib
Lapham’s Quarterly is an absolute treasure. This issue is especially timely
and informative (to say the least).

------
yuhong
It is funny how the US focuses on "intellectual property" over selling actual
goods. We have been running a trade deficit since the 1980s I think. This
reminds me of patent trolls for example.

------
coldtea
The 2nd top-selling consumer product: the first is anxiety (for your body,
social status, income, career, etc.).

------
lutorm
Funny, I just watched this:
[https://youtu.be/JrBdYmStZJ4?t=22s](https://youtu.be/JrBdYmStZJ4?t=22s)

Seems pretty apt.

------
DanielBMarkham
The internet promised to make every man a publisher, and it has succeeded. The
problem is that most professional publishers shouldn't be publishers, much
less the average person. There's simply too much money to be made with
eyeballs. A press with no overhead is a race to the bottom with a cast of
billions, many of whom would fight to the death over pennies.

I tell my friends to monitor and severely cut their intake of news. Ingesting
news today is a profoundly emotionally unhealthy thing to do, and to the
degree people ingest it, they are usually over-the-top in their fear of
various things, the vast majority of which are no threat to much of anybody.

We've always had this situation with small publications. As a former freelance
journalist, what I've seen over the past several years is that the big
publications, after being brought over to Facebook and Twitter for better
access to readers, are being forced to play this game too -- while they
continue to lay-off staff and reduce costs. There's more than a whiff of
desperation I see in the majority of headlines from most major news sources.
It is a sad thing.

------
NumberCruncher
Evergreen:
[http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews](http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews)

Tl,dr: None of these stories [the news] have relevance to my life. Reading
them may be enjoyable, but it’s an enjoyable waste of time. They will have no
impact on my actions one way or another.

------
amelius
Also: "Fear of missing out"

It's essentially what our culture seems to be based on nowadays. Thanks
Facebook, thanks Google.

~~~
United857
I'd say FOMO has been the primary technique used since the dawn of
advertising. Not unique to Facebook or Google, although perhaps more
prominent.

------
Hasknewbie
"Fear itself these days is America’s top-selling consumer product"

Isn't that the point Michael Moore was making in Bowling For Columbine all
those years ago? We are only rediscovering what we already knew.

------
avs733
In some sick way I am a little impressed with Fox News...the comments in this
thread seem to indicate they have effectively won the battle they chose to
fight by making everything seem biased. Nihilism isn't intended as a political
strategy but it is an effective one.

------
nathan-wailes
Hey all, I'm interested in this topic and created several summaries for my own
use (below). Since this article is somewhat long and isn't as easy to
understand as it could be, I figured other HNers might find these summaries
useful:

\-----------------

Short plain-English summary of the major things he says in the article:

People in the US are generally much safer than in the past, but they also seem
to be more afraid than in the past, and it seems to be because there are
powerful groups that benefit (or believe they benefit) from this state of
affairs: those associated with or members of the news media, the military and
its private-sector suppliers, politicians, the very rich, and the police.

This shift to having the public generally fearful seems to have started in
1949 when we in the US learned that the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons.
Consensus in Washington became that the Soviet Union was a more immediate and
serious threat than it probably really was, and the news media sold papers by
stirring up fear of WW3. In the 1960s the news media made people afraid of the
possibility of an actual armed revolution within the US by leftists. With the
fall of the Berlin Wall the news media and politicians shifted to fear of
drugs, and since 9/11 it has been terrorism.

\-----------------

The main ideas / questions discussed, in his words:

[Motivating problem:] In no country anywhere in the history of the world has
the majority of a population lived in circumstances as benign and well-lighted
as those currently at home and at large within the borders of the United
States of America. And yet, despite the bulk of reassuring evidence, a divided
but democratically inclined body politic finds itself herded into the unifying
lockdown imposed by the networked sum of its fears—sexual and racial,
cultural, social, and economic, nuanced and naked, founded and unfounded.

[Main questions:] How does it happen that American society at the moment
stands on constant terror alert? Why and wherefrom the trigger warnings, and
whose innocence or interest are they meant to comfort, defend, and preserve?
Who is afraid of whom or of what, and why do the trumpetings of doom keep
rising in frequency and pitch?

\-----------------

Paragraph-by-paragraph-ish main ideas (as far as I could tell), in his words:

Fear [is] the oldest and strongest of the human emotions.

[There is] real fear and neurotic fear, the former a rational and
comprehensible response to the perception of clear and present danger, the
latter “free-floating,” anxious expectation attachable to any something or
nothing that catches the eye or the ear.

I’m old enough to remember when Americans weren’t as easily persuaded to
confuse the one with the other. I was taught that looking fear straight in the
face was the root meaning of courage.

[After] August 1949, when the Soviet Union successfully tested a [nuclear]
bomb, my further acquaintance with fear was for the most part to take the form
of the neurotic.

The Cold War with the Russians produced the doctrine of mutual assured
destruction. For the everybodies whose lives were the stake on the gaming
table, [this] didn’t leave much room for Teddy Roosevelt’s looking real fear
straight in the face.

Expectant anxiety maybe weakens the resolve of individual persons, but it
strengthens the powers of church and state.

Fear is the most wonder-working of all the world’s marketing tools. Used
wisely, innovatively, and well, it sells everything in the store—the word of
God and the wages of sin, the divorce papers and the marriage certificate, the
face cream and the assault rifle, the grim headline news in the morning and
the late-night laugh track.

[He tells a story of working as a reporter in NYC in 1962, receiving a press
release from the Russians about new weapons tech, and having the editor of the
paper mold it into a front-page fear-soaked story, presumably motivated by the
desire to sell more papers.]

Expectant anxiety sells newspapers.

The Cold War was born in the cradle of expectant anxiety; so were the wars in
Vietnam and Iraq.

The innovative and entrepreneurial consensus in Washington resurrected from
the ruins [of Russia post-WW2] the evil Soviet Empire—stupendous enemy, world-
class and operatic, menace for all seasons, dread destroyer of American wealth
and well-being.

Fattened on the seed of openhanded military spending (upward of $15 trillion
since 1950) the confederation of vested interest that President Eisenhower
identified as the military-industrial complex brought forth an armed colossus
the likes of which the world had never seen.

The turbulent decade in the 1960s raised the force levels of the public alarm.
The always fearmongering news media projected armed revolution; the violent
fantasy sold papers, boosted ratings, stimulated the demand for repressive
surveillance and heavy law enforcement that blossomed into one of the
country’s richest and most innovative growth industries.

The tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 undermined the threat presented by
the evil Soviet Empire, and without the Cold War against the Russians, how
then defend, honor, and protect the cash flow of the nation’s military-
industrial complex? The custodians of America’s conscience and bank balance
found the solution in the war on drugs.

The stockpiling of domestic fear for all seasons is the political alchemist’s
trick of changing lead into gold, the work undertaken in the 1990s by the
presidential campaigns pitching their tents and slogans on the frontiers of
race and class.

Like the war on drugs, the war on terror is unwinnable because [it is] waged
against an unknown enemy and an abstract noun.

[The War on Terror] is a war that returns a handsome profit to the
manufacturers of cruise missiles and a reassuring increase of dictatorial
power for a stupefied plutocracy that associates the phrase _national
security_ not with the health and well-being of the American people but with
the protection of their private wealth and privilege.

Unable to erect a secure perimeter around the life and landscape of a _free_
society, the government departments of public safety solve the technical
problem by seeing to it that society becomes _less_ free.

The war on terror brought up to combat strength the nation’s ample reserves of
xenophobic paranoia, the American people told to live in fear.

Given enough time and trouble over the last sixteen years, their collective
fear and loathing collected into the cesspool from which Donald J. Trump
became the president of the United States.

------
microcolonel
Don't watch cable news, your life will be better. If you're not already
convinced that most cable news is editorialized for political gain, then
surely you're convinced that is unhealthy to rubberneck at every problem in
the world.

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richev
Article needs editing for length and clarity.

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fl0wenol
I got excited for just a split second on the off chance the author meant the
Monolith Productions title back in 2005.

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apexalpha
The joy of your country having a neutral public broadcaster...

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valuearb
I hope the author found their point, because I went 3 pages in and gave up
looking for one.

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TazeTSchnitzel
The writing style is pretentious, and for the life of me I can't see why
trigger warnings, of all things, are being spun into this narrative. Perhaps
betrays a lack of understanding of the concept from the author.

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uptownfunk
Brilliant magazine.

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arkis22
I would have thought it was sex

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known
AKA
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome)

------
colanderman
Maybe I'm dumb, but I can't glean the meaning of this partial (verbless)
sentence?

> Not the outcome envisioned by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but the one raising
> the question addressed in this issue of Lapham’s Quarterly.

Lapham’s Quarterly is highly regarded, so I would expect such non-sentences –
especially at the start of a paragraph, complete with a drop-cap – to be
culled by the editor (or author, who is in this case the same person). Or am I
just not intelligent enough to understand this style of writing? (Even
inserting a well-placed “is” does not clarify this sentence for me.)

Aside, I’m surprised the article doesn’t touch on _why_ fear is so delectable
to the American palate. I suspect it’s that humans _expect_ fear, like how we
expect work, pain, hierarchy, and other objectively unpleasant things which we
seek out when lacking, to restore balance to an otherwise saccharine
existence. Americans in fact have very little to rightly fear, thus our lizard
brains instinctively latch on to anything to fill that void in our lives.

