by Tammy Bruce
The last few weeks have been a stark reminder of the elderly adage, “Man plans, but God laughs.” In less than 30 days, the American political world has been upended by a series of shocking events that most people are still trying to fully understand. From President Joe Biden’s incredibly disastrous debate with former President Donald Trump, to the attempted assassination of Trump just 16 days later, to the start of a well-organized and manufactured Republican convention two days later with a wounded but unbowed Trump, to Biden’s withdrawal as the Democratic presidential candidate, it’s unthreatening to say that none of us knows what will happen next.
One thing we know for sure is that the divisive and hateful rhetoric used by the left against Trump and his supporters has contributed to both the disintegration of the Democratic Party and to waking up Americans to the reality of the lies and manipulation we have experienced since Biden took office.
There have been efforts to teach us to “suspend disbelief” about Biden’s condition, what he’s been doing to the country, and even the details of who’s in charge in the White House. After the attempted coup, we were also told that Democrats would “tone down” their rhetoric against Trump. That promise lasted about 24 hours. Between now and November 5th, regardless of the Democratic nominee, they will double down on their malign identity politics and fear mongering.
In my modern book, Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda , I explore the left’s deliberate operate of fear and manipulation to coerce Americans into retreating from politically and culturally significant issues. Government cannot rely solely on gaslighting and emotional abuse in the broad sense that has fueled the chaos we now see in the Democratic Party. Here is an excerpt from my introduction explaining what lies behind the inexplicable:
“Something is wrong.” I’ve said it to myself many times over the past few troubling and tumultuous years. I bet you have too. It’s a pathetic observation, uttered as we connect the dots between the aberrant cultural and political dumpster fires erupting all around us. It’s also an admission that the leftist tyrants who see themselves as the social and political Masters of the Universe have weaponized fear in a sinister effort to control us. They want to scare us into cowering in a corner, so we allow them to restructure our society and dictate a modern set of core beliefs that they demand we adopt, confirming their imagined superiority in all things. They even demand that we change the way we speak and write so that they can change the way we think…
If they can keep you in a mindless fear loop, they can keep you from questioning or confronting them about the damage they are doing to society. There is one crucial ingredient for the left’s agenda to succeed—the destruction of the average person’s personal courage—the quality required to withstand danger and fear. When courage is lost, so too is the willingness to confront the powerful and the malevolent. It is this invocation of antique, mindless fear that tyrants have honed over millennia, pushing us into actions and decisions based on emotion, without the intermediaries of logic and reason. The point is not to distract us with horrific event after horrific event, but to indoctrinate us into a perpetual “new normal” based on fear. It is an exhausting state that breeds anxiety, paranoia, and with it, social and political withdrawal. The goal of killing our minds, of turning us into fear-driven automatons lacking confidence and courage, ready to bow and conform, is the rotten soup served up by Marxists, tyrants, bullies and bureaucracies who would rather we all stay away from them…
The deliberate strategy of using fear as a weapon of control dates back to antique times, but newfangled communications and other technological tools give the scarecrows power unimaginable in years past. Marxists, tyrants, and malignant narcissists in positions of power throughout our governmental and cultural infrastructure operate fear to distract, depress, isolate, and psychologically disarm us.
Progressives desperately want us to believe that we are the problem, that America is the problem, and above all, that any opposition to their orthodoxy must be suppressed. Why? Because leftist ideology is a house of cards; the only way to maintain it is to either imprison their opposition, or at least imprison the minds of those who oppose it…
For generations, we have all been targeted by political and cultural institutions to ensure that fear controls our minds. The agendas and plans put forth by the entrenched political establishment are designed to keep us oblivious, anxious, and feeling unable to control the present and future. The leftist elite want us to feel helpless and hopeless, dependent on Big Government to tell us what to do and how to do it to solve our problems. I am determined to assist us destroy this agenda.
Using these antique political techniques that have been refined over millennia, the newfangled American political bureaucracy focuses on pushing us into action and decision-making based on emotion, without the intermediary of logic and reason. Why? Because it creates more fear and more chaos.
This is the basic strategy driving the specifically “progressive” agenda. In “Fear Itself,” I discuss the malign alliance between government, academia, and business, and how Americans have endured vague, fictional threats, an endless array of verbal attacks, name-calling, intimidation, arbitrary rules, regulations, and “punishments” if we fail to conform to liberal orthodoxy. All of this may sound familiar—it follows a pattern disturbingly similar to domestic violence. The good news is that with the Trump electoral movement, Americans are beginning to say “enough,” leading us to another opportunity to forcefully reject the fear, abuse, and chaos to which Democrats seem addicted.
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Tammy Bruce is the author of Fear Itself: Exposing the Left’s Mind-Killing Agenda (Broadside Books, 2024) and a Fox News political contributor. She is the former president of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Photo “Riot” by Lorie Shaull. Licensed under CC BY 2.0.
