Fear Makes Power
The establishment’s pundits and politicians who cheer for higher death tolls from the virus and for more straitened circumstances must imagine that enough people in their audience are fearful enough to have abandoned all critical faculties—fearful enough to follow the fear-mongers.
By Angelo Codevilla • March 18, 2020
Don’t panic is rotten advice,†Peggy Noonan advised in her column in last weekend’s Wall Street Journal. A stream of similar opinions in the New York Times and from CNN, reminded me of Machiavelli’s historical observation that “whoever controls the people’s fears becomes master of their souls.â€
The formula for achieving such mastery has not changed in millennia: stoke any fear, turn the fear to hate of whomever and whatever you accuse of standing in the way of safety, and make yourself the agent of that hate.
The formula works when its dynamic embeds itself in the masses’ behavior—even when the master himself is the one to be feared. That is because stampeding humans readily give up their souls and become no more mindful of their own interest than steers. Hence, whoever manages to madden crowds while directing their hysteria onto his enemies stands to reap power.
Our 21st-century “developed†world, which so touts its own rationality, is now engaged in the historically unprecedented attempt to shut down most social and economic intercourse for the sake of mitigating the effects of a virus the lethality of which is far more like recent strands of the flu than that of the plague. One reason we do not know how many persons have been infected by this virus is that most infections in most people are so mild as to be unnoticed. That is also why we do not know the virus’s true lethality. Of course it is especially lethal to the old and otherwise infirm. What isn’t?
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https://amgreatness.com/2020/03/18/fear-makes-power/
