Fear.
When used in politics fear can be a powerful tool to manipulate both an individual and a populace. That’s why it’s become one of the go to weapons in the modern political playbook. Politicians use fear like your older brother used Bo Jackson in Tecmo Super Bowl or Michael Vick in Madden 2004. It’s the go to cheat code for Democrats and Republicans.
“We just bailed out Wall Street, again… Oooh! Look over there Chinese Tik Tok is coming for your kids!”
“We are stripping you of your Constitutional right to privacy… but really it’s Saddam Hussein and the terrorists who you should be really scared of!”
“We just let Big Pharma buy off the Food and Drug Administration, giving them carte blanche to legally string you out on opiates… Ha! What’s really, really scary are all those poor people sneaking across the imaginary line between Texas and Mexico. I mean they could be sneaking drugs into the country!
MS13!!! MS13!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
However, after decades of turning the fear meter up to eleven on everything from terrorists to Halloween candy, Washington D.C. recently found itself running low on villains. Sure, each party still had their own Freddy and Jasons to fill their base with fear; the Democrats had Donald Trump and Joe Rogan while the Republicans had Trans folks and Disney. But they both were lacking that one big bad to unify and distract the country with. Those truly epic, Thanos level villains like the Communists in the 1950’s or al-Qaeda in the early 2000’s. Then out of the blue (quit literally) UFO’s fell into their laps.
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