FEAR.

This 4-letter word probably explains everything big that’s happening.

Fear of death is the best fear for purposes of our rulers.

Don’t ask me why, but I woke up this morning thinking about fear …. And how it’s really the fear of fear that explains every scary thing happening in our world today. 

Fear of Covid is the most-recent example of how authorities and our most influential and important organizations profit from selling (and exaggerating) “threats” we should all fear.

Thirty years ago, few people recognized that the CDC or Fauci’s NIAID or the World Health Organization would obtain so much power over our lives.

There’s no need to recount the draconian “mitigation measures” these authorities created to compel mass compliance with their dictates. 

But more citizens should probably think about how these people exploited the population’s irrational fear of a respiratory virus to achieve even more immense power and control.

The greatest fear of all is death. It follows logically that any group that tells you they can and will prevent your death is probably going to receive our blind support … which of course happened in Covid times.

Non-sensical fear campaigns aren’t new … 

These agencies actually cemented their power decades earlier. 

RFK, Jr. argues in “The Real Anthony Fauci” that Anthony Fauci became one of the world’s most influential people in the early and mid 1980s when he leveraged “fear of AIDS” to dramatically increase the funding and influence of his obscure health agency.

Back then, the fear was everyone was at risk of dying from AIDS (or HIV). 

Like 99 percent of society’s great “threats,” the notion that AIDS was a potential killer of everyone was preposterously wrong. AIDS actually only poses a risk to promiscuous gay men and drug users who share dirty needles.

Celia Farber, a rare contrarian real journalist and author, has noted that the “death of (real) science” can be traced to Fauci’s “politicization” of science. 

Until the Great AIDS Scare, science and medical bureaucracies didn’t have tremendous influence on all of our lives. Back then our great fear (kind of like today) was “Russia! Russia! Russia” except four decades ago it was “Soviet Union! Soviet Union! Soviet Union!”

Today’s Great Fear is respiratory viruses.

In 1984 (the year, not the novel), nobody thought alleged experts in some Alphabet Bureaucratic Agency would end up telling everyone 100 things they had to do … and 100 things we couldn’t do.

But fear is a powerful thing and that’s exactly what happened. Not only did it happen, hardly anyone questioned the power given to these “experts.” (And those who did question the authorized narrative …. suddenly had a lot to fear).

It’s still surreal to me that in the “Land of the Free” so few people fear the growth of the government …. or the growth of censorship.

Why did everyone suddenly become a huge fan of Bigger Government?

I’ve thought a good bit about how or why all the key organizations and corporations went along with the massive growth of government.

Again, fear must provide the answer.

One assumes Amazon, Wal-Mart, JP Morgan, the colleges, Facebook, Twitter and Google, etc. must have been motivated, in part, by fear as well. 

What these companies probably all fear is getting on the wrong side of the world’s 900-pound gorilla - the federal government.

If one happens to fear some person or organization, one strategy might be to become friends or allies with this mean-spirited bully. If you are too scared to fight “City Hall” … go ahead and join forces with this behemoth. Which is exactly what happened … on a grand scale.

As it turns out, the people who lead mega companies and influential organizations also fear losing their power, status and wealth.

They also fear “competition.” If the government (via its policies and crony-benefitting decisions) can make it much less likely a competitor will take away your company’s market share, it probably makes economic sense to support this ally.

Once upon a time, political scientists defined this result as “fascism.” Fascism occurs when big government and big business join forces to protect and expand their influence.

People also fear going against ‘The Current Thing’

I’ve also written a good bit about the power of “The Current Thing” (aka the “authorized narrative.”) 

In today’s world, the vast majority of citizens posses a fear of going against the Current Thing. What these people really fear is being cast out out of the “herd” for challenging the thinking of the pack … or of the pack’s leader(s).

A key question for our times is who created all the false or dubious narratives in the first place. 

I don’t think government officials birthed all of society’s fear-producing narratives. But government has the most power and, ultimately, matters most. 

Put it this way, if George Soros, Bill Gates, BlackRock or the Davos club members are really the  master puppeteer’s pulling the most-important strings, they still couldn’t do anything they want without an army of enforcers in government.

Two months ago I wrote a piece arguing that all the most important “truth-seeking” institutions in society now seemingly exist to conceal important truths. One of these institutions is “academia” or higher education.

But why did the key leaders of 99.9 percent of the colleges go along with 100-percent of the authorized Covid narratives?

Fear strikes again. The colleges were simply afraid to lose billions of dollars of research grants and federal funding, which they knew would happen if they bit the hand of the beast who was feeding them.

Government and its cronies are also afraid … 

Which brings me to my final point of this meditation on fear: The people and organizations who rule the world are also motivated by great fears. Their fear is losing control, losing their lofty status in society’s hierarchy.

At some level, they must also fear legions of citizens going for those proverbial pitch forks and coming after them.

By now, practically every Substack author has opined on why Fox News executives decided to dismiss Tucker Carlson. (This despite the fact Carlson produced the most popular TV news talk show on the planet).

My best guess is that someone in some high place (inside this company or outside of it) had to be afraid of the scathing monologues Tucker was airing on a nightly basis. 

Tucker’s segments were beginning to resonate with far too many people. And virtually all of his programs had one common theme: 

“Folks,” argued Tucker, “It’s about time we started identifying the real Bad Guys who are ruining our world.”

What Tucker was really telling his sizable audience is that government - and all its sycophant cronies - are the real threat to our society.

So someone decided Tucker had to go. 

Before this, someone decided that Jame O’Keefe, the founder of Project Veritas, had to go. 

Before that, someone figured out how to capture and neutralize The Drudge Report. 

And before that someone decided that Julian Assange had to be locked up for life (for the crime of publishing true documents the Powers that Be didn’t want published.)

“Someone” also decided that social media and Big Tech had to heavily censor “dangerous misinformation” to “protect” people from the “harm” of free speech.

Until recent years, most Americans didn’t even know that free speech was that dangerous to them.

We the People are the Boogie Men to our rulers …

John and Nisha Whitehead just wrote an excellent essay which tells readers who is really afraid.

“The war on free speech is really a war on the right to criticize the government,” they wrote.

“… In fact, the government has become increasingly intolerant of speech that challenges its power, reveals its corruption, exposes its lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.”

That is, the government (and all its many cronies) are afraid of any speech that doesn’t square with its own fear-producing narratives.

In short, the government is afraid of We the People.

More specifically, the government is afraid of large numbers of citizens shedding their irrational fears. If and when this happens, the majority of citizens may no longer run to their Nanny to protect them. 

Tucker Carlson referenced this in his first tweet since being dismissed by Fox News. This message has now been viewed by more than 77 million people … so clearly Carlson’s message resonates with massive numbers of people.

The key message: There’s a lot more of us than there are of them. One suspects the people who benefit from selling fear also know this … which must scare the hell out of them.

The victor in the existential battle currently being waged will be determined by what message resonates with the most people - the government’s message (that only the government can save us all) … or the message being shared by the dissidents our government clearly fears. 

If we’re all going to continue to be motivated by fear, let’s hope more people at least begin to fear our real enemy … which (great news) I think is starting to happen.