All humans live in fear.
It is part and parcel of the human condition, a legacy in part of evolving as prey for some pretty formidable predators there on the savanna. (If you are not too afraid of admitting that we are not some hobby project that God decided to whip up in his garage 6000 years ago, that is.)
The first part of the human brain that evolved, what many folks call the reptile brain, evolved for one purpose only. To keep us from being eaten. To this day, that part of the brain reacts first, before we can control it. It reacts to the stimulus of fear…any fear…and there is basically nothing we can do about it.
Then the ‘animal’ part of the brain evolved, bringing what we would identify today as ‘social fear,’ the fear of being shunned out of the protective pack or herd and being cast out into the night as individual prey, unloved and on our own. This reactive fear still shapes a huge amount of societal behavior. Are YOU a Real American? Or should the rest of us Real Americans shun you out into the night. Are you one of the pack? Or are you the dreaded “other,” something to be feared?
Only when we get past this level of fear do we get to the fears brought on by abstract thought, the so called rational fears, the fears of the developed cortex. Though in my experience, these fears are mostly just embellishments of our abstract imagination on the same old fears. But our “new” and shiny brains are capable of soaring flights and complexities of fear that can v=be truly amazing. In the course of a few minutes of “thought” we can invent whole worlds and timestreams, entire alternate universes in which all of our truly impressive fears are realized. We do it without even having to think. In fact, not thinking is precisely the condition necessary to create these worlds.
And these are the worlds that Conservatives live in. These worlds are the reason that Conservatives fight against any form of change. Because they fear the future and the catastrophes that their reptile brains are constantly on the lookout for, their animal brains make very personal, and their higher cortex embellish to amazing levels.
These are the worlds the Conservatives insist we join them in. This IS the reason for Conservative politics. When the Conservatives whine about Liberals, it almost always some form of “Can’t you Liberals see this enormous threat???”
