"The only thing we have to fear...".....you know the rest

I don’t wake up every day and worry about immigrants speaking their native language or getting jobs in my country. I certainly don’t worry about terrorists blowing me up. And I definitely don’t worry about blacks or Muslims or Jews trying to take over the world. But judging by the reactions of American’s over the past few years and the rhetoric flying around now during the presidential race, you’d think I should be.

It must be awful to live in fear every day. To wake up and live every moment with the thought that someone different from you might be trying to live their life in a way that is different from yours. It must be a miserable existence. Something equivalent to an alcoholic that lives in a state of misery so long that it becomes normal. I’ll never understand it.

Ask them if they’re afraid and they’ll say no. But their actions, their reactions, speak differently. They support and vote for leaders that want to build an American Berlin wall. They promote war against entire faiths or nations for the actions of a fraction of a fraction of a minority of the people. They promote racism, protectionism, and neo-imperialism as solutions to assuage themselves of the responsibility of being open-minded, fair, and sympathetic. And all because, deep down, they are afraid. What they’re afraid of, exactly, they don’t know. Yet they cringe in corners- Democrat and Republican, male and female. Hate and fear are non-denominational and apolitical.

What they’re really afraid of is change and difference. They’re afraid of gays, immigrants, religions, politics, and ideas, not because these things are bad, but because they are different and don’t conform to the very narrow slit they view themselves through. And because they feel insecure and threatened they assume everyone else should feel that way.

If you have to live every day afraid that someone, merely by their presence or their values and beliefs, will take away the things you define yourself by, you must have very little faith in yourself or your symbols. If the only way for your philosophy to survive is to cut yourself off from what the rest of the world has to offer, you have implicitly said that your motives and symbols are too weak to stand up to outside influences.

I wake up afraid of needles, large insects, and heights, but never of other people and never of the thought that their culture or values somehow make my own less significant. If I did, I’d consider myself a coward.