“Fear is the Mind Killer”

I’m fond of saying that history is the guide to our future.

Unfortunately, it is most often a guide to what IS going to happen, rather than a warning against what to avoid.

I am sure that I do not need to catalog the broad spectrum of fear that has begun to grip the nation in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.  We have seen it all before – from loyalty tests to internment camps, from special watch lists to cynical politicians riding the wave for their own special interest benefit.

More importantly:  every single time in the past that we have abandoned our Constitutional ideals in the face of fear, we have regretted it, apologized for it, outlawed it, paid a heavy moral price for it. Afterwards.

Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

Once.  Just once I would like to see us control our lizard brains with our supposed higher-order functions.  Once, just once, I’d like to see us turn to our fear-mongering politicians, our propagandist pundits, our bleeding-lead journalists and say:

“STOP!  STFU!.  You will NOT rule us with fear this time.  This time we are going to remember our history and we’re not going to repeat ourselves.”

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