FEAR SELLS...IT'S ALWAYS SPOOKY IN AMERICA.

She can tell you ‘bout the plane crash
With a gleam in her eye
It’s interesting when people die
Give us dirty laundry

Can we film the operation
Is the head dead yet
You know the boys in the newsroom
Got a running bet
Get the widow on the set

We need dirty laundry

-Don Henley

It’s Halloween…and that means it is the spookiest day of the year…Booga Booga Boo..

Well, almost…in America…every day is the spookiest day of the year….America sells and manufactures a lot of things…but perhaps nothing more insidiously and ubiquitously than Fear…..it’s our Gross(est) national product…

We even do it at the highest level of Government…We were told that Iraq had WMD’s that could be pointed at us right this very moment….doom was in the air….it was our case for committing to our longest war in our nation’s history, and our greatest foreign policy blunder since we landed on Plymouth Rock…(my opinion). It is costing us dearly and the repercussions are far from over.

I remember during W.Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004 when he would conspicuously announce that there was a Code Red Terror threat…that we should be prepared (“based on govt. intelligence”) that we are at “high risk”…this happened a lot as the election drew closer…and the polls showed that support for Republican candidates somehow went up as supposed threats to our national security were felt by our citizens….it was flat out manipulation…but it was a beautiful tactic.

As we happen upon Halloween night….I recall the rumor that was spread decades ago of the razor blade that was found in an apple that had innocently been given to a young trick or treating child….this caused an immediate alarm for parents…there was hysteria to make sure that nothing but wrapped foods could be accepted…some people even went to cutting through wrapped pieces of candy to insure that they would not be victimized…as it turns out…there was NO such incident of a razor blade in an apple…it was made up….but, it traveled like a shooting star across the country…and even if it had happened once somewhere….do we really think that means anything in the lives of every American?

“A lie can get half way around the world before the Truth has a chance to put it’s pants on”- Winston Churchill

Some of us alive today were lucky enough to grow up at a time, or under the parenting, that allowed us to have great autonomy when we were children…we were allowed to ride our bikes till dark (or beyond), go places without our whereabouts being known 24/60, that is every minute of every hour…We were free…free to think freely, without fear….free to be untethered by it….

Somewhere between then and now, though….the media has created a notion that it is incredibly dangerous out there on the streets…walk home from school on your own?.... it could get a parent reported to social services. As parents…we have been conditioned to feel that any moment our child is not in our house or in school…is a serious opportunity for abduction…after all, we have seen the stories on TV, right? Remember Polly Klass? Or Kaycee Dugard who was held captive for 18 years…or Pamela Smart, who was missing for years….? Of course we do…we have seen them all numerous times on the cover of People magazine…actually, if you are a child who is abducted and you are missing for more than a week or so..you have a decent chance of being in People magazine….and why is that? Because it is incredibly rare for a child to be abducted in this country….astoundingly so…..there were only 100 children abducted by non family members last year….in a country of 320 million…(100). Think of how much is lost when we keep our children in “lockdown” mode…how much are they missing out on…how is it shaping their view of the world?

…..by contrast…there were 130 people in the Unites States who were killed in a confrontation with a deer…either being killed directly by the deer, or hitting a deer on a highway….so why isn’t the media warning us about the dangers of deer?…150 people each year on average die from peanut allergies…

It seems like every few days someone tells me about their fear of the ocean due to sharks…..there are only about 75 shark attacks each year across the world…and 10 led to death. Jellyfish kill between 150 to 300 people each year…that is 15 to 30x as many as sharks…why no worry about jellyfishThe media picks and chooses what stories to cover…it is the king of Myopia....and in a world where everyone can document anything at any time using their cellphones, there is an endless supply of things to fear, violence, police brutality, etc., that can be captured on video…I have no doubts that the media, if it wanted to, could, in the course of only a couple of weeks…create a hysteria over the risk of being attacked by a snake in your home…I am sure there is probably someone every day in a country of 320 million people who has a run-in with a snake in their home…and every once in awhile the attack will result in death…you could make it a plan to find every video captured event of a snake attack in America..you could send camera crews to the towns where this occurs…set up camp…interview the victims, and their closest of kin…and, of course, an expert on snakes. Show really scary photos of snakes with their fangs.

In a country of 320 million people …pretty much ANYTHING that is possible is happening to someone on any given day….I bet that in the next week someone will die from choking on a banana somewhere in America…and if the media focuses on that event enough…we can get banana sales to drop in this country overnight….I guarantee it….a banana could make it on the cover of Time magazine…#fearthebanana

The media has one job…and one job only…and that is to please it’s stockholders and advertisers….and the best way to do that …is not to educate us….but to scare us….and keep us scared…and outraged, and aghast….it’s no more dignified than selling aluminum siding, but perhaps less.

By this logic…we should all be carrying umbrellas around with us….on even the most sunny days.

We have been hearing about school shootings for years now…when one occurs it is like the Olympics for the media….they send giant crews to these shooting sites and they parasitically feed off the tragedy...they want to know what the killer had to eat for breakfast, did he have any tatoos?, was he close to his mommy, etc. Why in the planet we are living on do we care about the motivations and insanity of one cryptic and disturbed youth. Obama comes to the microphone and makes a statement about the tragedy (and they are very sad tragedies, of course) but an incredibly disproportionate amount of national attention and energy is being focused on mass shootings….last year there were 335 deaths from mass killings…that is defined as any incident where 4 or more people are killed in a single incident. Ok, a terrible tragedy for sure…but that is less than one death per day on average...and the media is trolling for it every second…as if they have a metal detector on the beach....every time a kid at a school even goes “bang bang” the media blows it up …the media loves schools

by contrast....

Every day in America, another 28 people die as a result of drunk driving crashes. In 2014, 10,076 people died in drunk driving crashes - one every 52 minutes - and 290,000 were injured in drunk driving crashes.

An average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before first arrest

(Every two minutes, a person is injured in a drunk driving crash)

On average, two in three people will be involved in a drunk driving crash in their lifetime

And where is the media to be found in reporting this statistic …a totally avoidable tragedy that kills at 28 times as much as mass shootings….

Why isn’t the President shedding a tear and calling for a repeal of alcohol…or , at least, much tougher measures…more responsibility on establishments that sell alcohol…car manufactures to put mechanisms in their cars that don’t allow a drunk driver to operate it…etc…

Where is the national outrage over the 45 million children and families who are living in poverty in this country? Do they have to be killed in a mass shooting for us to care?

The most recent and thorough study revealed in August shows that 1 in 4 women in America will be raped. That is 40 million women!!….where is the President in this fight? Where is the national outcry over this….where is the “zero tolerance”?…something that violently violates and disempowers and scars for life 1 in 8 Americans? Where is Congress on that? Where is the urgency over that? Who cares about that..who is addressing that? It’s a national disgrace!

The media has been quite successful in painting many pictures that are incomplete or grossly distorted…..police brutality on blacks in America is a problem and one that needs to be addressed….but did you know that whites are killed by police in 50% of all police shooting deaths….only 28% of police shooting victims are black. Have you ever seen the media report a police officer killing anyone white? It is almost twice as common; It doesn’t fit their narrative, that is why....

The media decides what issues we will focus on…what fears we will have…what we will be outraged by…and the media can turn a “molehill into a mountain” before you have time to start the coffee pot in the morning…the media is shaping our debate…they are deciding what we will talk about at the water cooler……they won’t let us feel comfortable for more than a second before they set off an alarm.

Did you know that after Columbine, (and any mass killing in America)…gun sales go up dramatically …right after Columbine they went up by 70%.....everyone thought that they were going to be next….

We are an incredibly fearful country….we wash our hands too much, we fear plastic, we fear an ebola outbreak, we fervently worry about random expiration dates, we feared Y2k, we fear the promise of impending earthquakes, we fear that something that happened once, is going to start happening everyday.…we fear people standing next to us in line. There is a huge opportunity cost to this….In most cases...it is a total waste of our energy and time. We let the media tell us how to feel and what to focus on.. and how to think....it is a circus; it’s a shame; it’s a sham.

Because once you fear…you have already lost…there is a cost to preparing for the worst….when your life has too many locks and deadbolts you are not just locking others out…you are locking yourself in…

Food for thought...

my opinions

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all – Helen Keller