Have No Fear, The President is Here! I Wish.

Dan K Jackson
4 min readSep 1, 2020

Dialogue. It’s a complicated word. You wouldn’t think it because it simply means to have an exchange of conversation. But for some people it’s more complicated than for others. Right now, in this country of ours, it’s more difficult than ever.

Why is that?

For one, social media is destroying you people. Especially those of you over the age of 35.

You don’t know how to utilize it responsibly. You don’t know how to determine fact from hype. You don’t have a single clue what credible even means.

And so you are lost and confused on the information super highway.

The second thing is, our President.

Fueled by social media and you people’s inability to discern what’s real and what truly is fake, you elected a guy who is woefully unprepared for this.

You however wanted someone who could “shake things up.”

Well you have your wish. Things are more “shook up” now than ever.

Sure, it started in Washington DC, where according to you, all politicians are bad. Unless you just voted for them.

Donald Trump, unprepared, doesn’t read memos, doesn’t read books, doesn’t read security briefings, also turns out doesn’t hire people to fill jobs.

“That’s okay,” you said, “We need to shrink government.”

And then it turns out the people he didn’t hire were people who would have helped manage a pandemic.

“That’s okay,” you said, “We only have those once every 100 years.”

And then it turns out it’s been a hundred years.

“That’s okay,” you said, “He’s a smart businessman. He can handle one crisis.”

And then George Floyd gets choked out. And we have millions of people laid off from work. And it’s a long hot summer.

At this point in time, most “smart” business people would gather trusted advisors, and create a “dialogue,” a communication with people who could assist in tamping down fears and anxiety in the company. Or in this case the country they were tasked with leading.

Can you tell me what is the point of having a fearful nation?

Instead, our current commander in chief, continues to ramp up the fear, and to vilify any civilian who doesn’t agree with him.

Instead of creating a national dialogue of hope about disease, about race, about the future by utilizing reason, and the biggest podium in the world, we get the opposite.

And so now everyone is afraid. Seriously. Everyone.

We are caught in a desert of fear. We need hope.

It started out with being fearful of a disease we still, nine months later, have only sparse knowledge. And so the anxiety began.

We were first afraid for our elderly, and then for those with health issues.

We increasingly became afraid of those who refused to wear masks, and who might turn violent if approached.

And then we watched a man be choked out of his life.

And we became afraid of the police. Even the police in our own community. Even the ones who we’ve known since kindergarten. Even the ones who’ve coached our kids and helped us when we were in need.

And so, in a way, the police begin to fear the people they serve. If they’ve got a clean record of civility in their civil service, which most do, now they are held in the same contempt as Derek Chauvin.

And all of this goes on and on and on, until this weekend. Remember that social media I mentioned earlier?

A Facebook rumor turns the court square in your small southern town, into a confederate statue defense most people don’t even know about.

And even though not one single threat was exposed to these folks, so fearful were they of Black Lives Matter and the mysterious Antifa, that I’m sure African American people were reminded of stories told to them by their grandparents. Blood was shed on those well-manicured courthouse lawns. And it wasn’t white folks’ blood.

And so here we are in our never ending cycle of fear. The only thing that can stop it is leadership. The only thing leadership can truly do, is offer a voice of reason, a dialogue if you will.

But we’ve seen it’s not to be. And so, at least for the next few months, the fear will continue to grow.

I fear, where it will go next.

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Dan K Jackson

Just a blue guy in a red state. Been writing a regular column since 2005. Sometimes politics, sometimes food and travel, sometimes comedy, always a smartass.