My Manifesto Against Fright Speech

WHEREAS

1. Many people are frightened by the rhetoric of the current political climate. People to the right of me are frightened by the threat of terrorism and by their perception that the US government is not doing enough to protect them from it. People to the left of me are frightened by what they perceive to be “right-wing terrorism” and by the ubiquity of guns. People are frightened by Mr. Trump, by Mr. Cruz, by Mrs. Clinton, and by Mr. Sanders. I have no doubt that, should Mr. Kasich’s candidacy gain traction, someone will be frightened by him. Although I’m concerned about many of those things, I refuse to be scared of any of them. I have heard apocalyptic language many times before — about presidential candidates and popes and bar-codes and many other things — and they have never been the end of the world. Even the most evil of them were not unmixed with good, and even the best fell short of what they might have been. 
2. Even if the apocalyptic scenarios play out and this world does end, my Christian faith teaches that its end will mark the beginning of something still better. And in fact pretty much every other religion teaches the same. If those religions aren’t true, then there’s no hell for the world to go to, hand basket or no. 
3. The “frightening world” scenarios are, for the most part, self-fulfilling prophecies. Some are so afraid of others (or afraid of the government) that they arm themselves to the teeth, which may — depending on how you evaluate the data — result in increased violence. Some see the police as universally corrupt and thuggish, which of course results in less rather than more professionalism among the police forces. What you assume about races and classes determines, in large part, what your experience of people who belong to those races or classes will be. If we allow ourselves to perceive and speak about the world as “a scary place” or to be “frightened” by the “nightmarish scenario” of this or that political candidate winning an election, we make ourselves more susceptible to manipulation.
4. Not only theology, but history as well shows that fears of doom are rarely realized, and when doom comes it’s rarely related to what people fear. At the height of the Middle Ages, people dreaded many dooms relating to the end of the first millennium, but what actually decimated Europe was the Bubonic Plague, a disease transferred not mainly by marauding armies but by the new shipping industry. No amount of “being frightened” would have protected people.
5. Everyone is going to die, and most will die sooner than they expect or would like. You can be afraid of cancer all you want, and you can cure it, which will perhaps help you not to die of that particular thing, but you’ll still have to die. Sure it would be nice if you didn’t get murdered by rampaging militias, but in the final analysis there’s not all that much difference between being murdered in that way and dying of a heart attack. It’s different for the perpetrators, of course, because doing so turns them into murderers. But from the point of view of the one murdered: not much difference.

THEREFORE although I’ve had to catch myself many times, I’m making a concerted effort not to use the language of fright, and not in fact to live my life with fear in control.

• I will not use the language of enmity with my neighbor; I will use instead the language of hope and reconciliation. 
• When I disagree with someone’s politics, I won’t let that disagreement be an excuse to demean or denigrate; instead, I will assume that my neighbor is just as good and just as smart as I am, and has arrived at different conclusions for good reasons. I need not “be terrified” of someone simply because their ideas are different from mine.
• In my economic and political life, I won’t live as if I either win or I lose, with nothing in between; instead, I will assume that I’ll probably be able to live no matter what happens, and even if not, I’ll die just as I will no matter what. (And, since I’m a Christian, I have hope that such a death will not be the last thing.)