Fear and terror in the suburbs.

This is something I noticed when I had to get involved with neighbors over an HOA situation. I can't say I have a calm disposition, but until I experienced the most common accidents that occur in Florida living, like incompetent doctors, I wouldn't have pegged myself as having an anxious personality. And then that ramped up over the HOA situation when I suddenly found myself needing to interact with people that, instinctively, I knew I had nothing in common with.

What I learned was that it was a very bad idea for anyone to get to know you well around here, because those who had an agenda were looking for two things. They were looking for your fears, and they were looking for your wants or needs. For example, when they wanted to win my husband over to their side, they asked what he sold in his business and when he told them they immediately showed interest in buying one. Thankfully for us, he sold a large office machine and his territory was in another part of the State.

As for fears, once MY ALLIES figured out that my fear was the strange and improper land takings that were going on in the community, they found every opportunity to trigger that fear to get me on their side.

It felt so abnormal to be pushed and pulled in this manner, that eventually I became the old lady at the top of the hill that wouldn't talk to anyone.

But, this intentional stoking of fears to control people, is still going on. It's a white American behavior. It happened in an interview between Trump and Maria B. from FoxNews. He was talking about how women wanted to feel protected and he said they were afraid of illegal immigrants coming to their neighborhood presumably to attack them, and I thought, holy crap, he's doing it! That is using a hyperbolic fear, in order to get people on your side. Maria B. didn't even point out that this was malicious fear-stoking. She just let it slide.

But, that's how they do it. There could be millions of people out there, and an incident happens to only one of them and suddenly, the Home of the Brave, no more.