My “Tough Time” Enemies: Fear and Anger

I have faced numerous personal challenges in my life: serious health issues from ages 6-8; an overnight move from the city in which I grew up to a town of total strangers the summer before high school; a nasty divorce by my parents at age 15.

Those were tough for me. But I know millions of Americans that, if confronted with MY challenges, would justifiably scoff at my setbacks when put in the context of their own. To that end, I’ve never whined or complained about any of these. Why? Because they were each totally beyond my control or as a result of any of my own choosing and were not results of my actions. Still, they each were devastating.

Every person reading this can likely point to similar traumatic experiences in their own lives. Life without multiple adverse events would undoubtedly be strange and that few experience.

My stating this is purposeful — purposeful in light of the current dark cloud that covers our nation and its impact on me and tens of millions of others. This election on November 3rd and its ancillary parts are tearing at the fiber of not only Americans personally but of our nation. Why? Because fair and free elections are a staple of our representative republic promised to us. By whom?  By our American ancestors in our guideline of life in the U.S., the Constitution, and this election seems to be anything but “fair and free.”

Daily more information slips into the public domain that shows “fair and free” elections today MAY still be free but are far from fair. Legal evidence is aggressively being pursued that, as exposed, seems to verify there was (and still is) systemic corruption in our election system — at least in THIS election.

Is there proof of this at this point? There are multiple examples. But I cannot personally say how a federal court will view them if/when presented. I’m relatively confident that will happen and happen soon. Meanwhile, Americans are forced to digest some very awful truths, which I never thought I would see on my plate. They are, and I’m fearful while being angry.

Fear

Fear in my life primarily results from unknown facts. I don’t know if not knowing facts about events in which you find yourself affect you that way, but I’m a researcher, a questioner, and a “solution guy.” I NEED to see and comprehend every relevant factor to use for understanding. When any of these are missing, I often allow fear to creep into my mind. And that’s dangerous. My nature processes those instances by turning to the “What If” mode. It’s uncanny how many different scenarios I can envision in a matter of minutes when this happens!

How to stop that? With facts! The unfortunate piece of this process is that IF I have facts, I almost certainly would NOT resort to fear at all. Often facts are tricky things beyond our control. And that often lights the fires of fear.

I seldom make the right decisions when I’m engulfed in Fear.

Anger

How often in your life have you responded well when mad? For me, I can’t think of a single time. When one combines small elements of emotional uncertainty, fear, hurt, and surprise, anger seems always to be the easiest go-to emotion to which we turn. It seldom solves problems. It almost always makes problems worse.

Anger cannot exist in a vacuum. It seems to always call on its emotional buddies: bitterness, rejection, and its counterpart, fear. Knowing that should instigate a process in us to quickly identify this chain of emotions as they appear and consciously stop them. But even when we recognize them, in the heat of the moment, we seldom push on the brakes. Instead, I typically push the accelerator to the floor.

Summary

There’s a commonality in Anger and Fear: neither exists on its own; neither has the power to do anything to anybody. However, both can be deadly when activated.

It takes you and me to activate them in our lives before they can do anything. That’s the only way they can work their wiles on us.

Enter the 2020 election. Though we were warned of corruption and cheating ahead, when President Trump himself warned the nation of what was coming. His warnings were ignored. Election Day shows up, voting in-person is conducted with votes being added to the vote tallies of absentee and mail-in ballots, and we received quick, accurate, and proper election results, right?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

This election includes dozens of examples of voter fraud, vote-fixing, counterfeiting, and a mess of illegalities –– the same ones included in the President’s warnings. There were numerous signs of what was to come, yet we just blew right through them. And here we are today, struggling to choke back our fear and anger.

But they’re here!

We’re angry at the cheaters who have little or no regard for the fidelity of the U.S. election system. They subverted Americans’ will who just set “real” voting statistics that dwarf those of any previous election. It appears we are watching a scheme to give the presidency to Joe Biden.

Am I a conspiracy theorist for alleging this? Are millions of Americans who feel the same thing my fellow conspirators? Those answers will hopefully come soon. But today, they remain unknown. And we’re now mired in our fear and are angry.

We’re fearful that their efforts might succeed. We are confronted with and ceretainly understand the implications of a Biden presidency. We grabbed anger by the throat and screamed, “I’m mad and I can’t take it anymore!”

After the initial burst of anger and reality takes hold, we immediately let our fear out of its hiding place. It washes over minds and emotions and assumes control of our thinking.

None of us know for certain what the outcome of this horror story will be, but we have allowed our fear and anger to take over our thinking. And those fears seed dozens of unanswerable questions while creating scenarios that lock us in emotional chains.

No one else can take control of YOUR anger and YOUR fear. YOU are the only person who can do that. It may sound hollow for me to say because I’ve confessed my struggles with both of them. I doubt any person has these two monsters in total control. But there indeed are those who have reconciled ways to deal with them. I’m not in that group…yet.

I’ll stop, but not before saying this: we each have two choices in this matter. We can let the uncertainty we face turn into consuming fear and anger and suffer the consequences. Or we can allow and support those who actually CAN get to the bottom of all this and implement measures necessary to clean them up, whatever is needed.

Nothing WE can do can fix this — THIS time. But the response to this can implement changes to guarantee our kids and their kids that it will never happen again.

We can support federal law enforcement officials in their efforts to peel away the layers of this corruption onion to get to its origins and those responsible. We can kick anger and fear in the teeth to guarantee they will never take over our senses no matter the things we face.

By the way: whether or not Donald Trump gets a second four years, you and I need to tackle this Fear and Anger in our lives and kick them to the “forever curb” on our life’s street. If we don’t, we’ll face these dragons again and again.

I’m headed to the end of my driveway now to drop mine in the garbage can.