8 Potential Side Effects of the Flu Shot You Might Not Know About, According to Doctors
Listeria Outbreaks Sweeping America With 12 Alarming Facts About Recent Recalls
The nation faces an unprecedented wave of food safety concerns as major recalls linked to Listeria contamination affect millions of households across America. From ready-to-eat meats to breakfast staples, the scope of these recalls has raised critical questions about food safety protocols and consumer protection measures.
The scale of recent recalls shakes consumer confidenceOctober 2024 has emerged as a watershed moment in food safety oversight, with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service announcing one of the largest meat recalls in recent history. The initial recall of 10 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat and poultry products from BrucePac quickly expanded to 12 million pounds, affecting products ranging from prepared salads to frozen meals distributed through major retail chains nationwide.
Breakfast foods join the contamination crisisThe scope of concern widened when TreeHouse Foods initiated a voluntary recall of approximately 700 frozen waffle products. This recall affected multiple national brands and retailers, demonstrating how a single contamination source can ripple through various supply chains and impact diverse product categories.
Understanding the invisible threatListeria monocytogenes presents a unique challenge in food safety due to its resilient nature. This bacteria thrives in various environments, from soil and water to food processing facilities, making it particularly difficult to control. Its ability to survive and multiply even in refrigerated conditions sets it apart from many other foodborne pathogens.
The demographics of dangerWhile Listeria infections affect approximately 1,600 Americans annually, the impact varies significantly across different population groups. The elderly, pregnant women, and individuals with compromised immune systems face the highest risk, with about 260 fatal cases reported each year. For pregnant women, the consequences can be particularly severe, potentially leading to pregnancy loss or serious complications.
The anatomy of contaminationUnderstanding how Listeria contamination occurs reveals the complexity of modern food production systems. The bacteria can enter the food supply at multiple points:
Certain food categories face higher contamination risks due to their production methods and storage requirements:
The manifestation of Listeria infection follows a complex timeline:
Consumer response to recalls requires careful attention to detail:
Implementing comprehensive prevention measures becomes crucial for high-risk individuals:
Proper temperature management stands as a critical defense against Listeria proliferation:
Advanced food safety protocols incorporate multiple layers of protection:
The food industry continues to evolve its approach to Listeria prevention:
Moving forward, several key areas demand attention:
Understanding food safety extends beyond following recall notices. Consumers must develop:
The recent wave of Listeria-related recalls serves as a crucial reminder of the ongoing challenges in food safety. While regulatory agencies and manufacturers work to prevent contamination, consumers must remain vigilant and informed. Through proper handling, storage, and preparation of food items, along with awareness of recall notices and risk factors, individuals can significantly reduce their exposure to foodborne illness. As our food system continues to evolve, the partnership between industry, regulators, and consumers remains essential in maintaining public health and safety.
Be Afraid: What Horror Movies Say About America
These are frightening times. Of this, there is no doubt. We may even believe there's never been more to fear. And for some populations, that's true. But humanity has always lived in frightening times.
Since we first cast shadows onto cavern walls, we've made things to fear. Over time, those shadows evolved into performers donning masks, authors putting ink to paper, and filmmakers harnessing technology to project our nightmares onto the screen as we returned to our cave-dwelling roots to sit in the dark with others. We are a horror people. And as the world has gotten scarier, horror has been there to reflect back our fears.
The rise of Hollywood and independent filmmaking in the 20th century created a lasting dialogue between what we see in the fear-seeking news, and what films are made in response. Early American horror movies of the mid-1920s and 30s, particularly those produced by Universal Studios, brought the great literary tales of horror and folklore to the silver screen. The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), Werewolf of London (1935), and all of their various sequels and crossovers through the '40s were tied to European stories and history, providing motion pictures with a level of prestige and literary merit, until the sequels started getting sillier and sillier, though nonetheless charming.
These classic films built Universal Studio into a major Hollywood player, but the stories told in these Universal Monster movies never quite felt entirely our own. Nor did another early entry in the canon, the independently made White Zombie (1932), which depicts French colonialism in Haiti but has little to say or criticize outside of pointing out the strangeness of foreign, or more specifically, non-white, people.
America found its way to homegrown horror with Tod Browning's Freaks (1932) and Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933). While the stories of a trapeze artist scheming to steal the inheritance of a sideshow dwarf and a quest to film and capture the "8th Wonder of the World" are very different on the surface, both films dealt with the abuse of rights, the underestimation of power, and wealth built through exploitation amid the Great Depression and expansion of Hollywood. Both films were quite progressive for their time, displaying genuine empathy for characters who would have otherwise been considered monsters, and instead, pointed their fingers at so-called normal and civilized people and suggest that they are the true monsters.
In the 1940s, horror offered little direct commentary on World War II. There were clear separations of good and evil, and several Nazi-coded mad doctors, but most WWII-centric horrors came from other countries, while America largely continued on the same track it had been on as newsreels provided audiences with a different kind of jolt.
During the 1950s, the nuclear arms race set off an alarm in American households. People realized that what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki could happen here. Inspired by Ishiro Honda's Japanese masterpiece Godzilla (1954), America created its own atomic monstrosities. Gordon Douglas' Them! (1954) featured giant, irradiated ants, emerging from New Mexico.
As McCarthyism rose, so did horror/science fiction films about "others," creatures from outer space, monsters disguised as humans and mind-controlling aliens like The Thing From Another World (1951), Invaders From Mars (1953) and, most significantly, Don Siegel's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). In Siegel's film, the citizens of a small town are replaced by cold alien duplicates, suggesting that even our neighbors could be the enemy. Though dismissed and derided over the years (mostly a result of Mystery Science Theater 3000) Bert I. Gordon's The Amazing Colossal Man (1957) and War of the Colossal Beast (1958) considered the repercussions of atomic experiments, as the U.S. Military was forced to confront one of its own who turns against them after a Lt. Colonel survived a plutonium atomic bomb explosion, only to grow 60 feet tall and lose his mind in the process. The Red Scare had us convinced there were spies and traitors everywhere, and even as Joseph McCarthy lost the public trust, suspicions remained. We all go a little mad sometimes.
The '60s swung in like a knife through the air with Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). It was a shift from strange monsters and aliens to brutal acts of madness committed by Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) in a wig and his mother's dress. Suddenly, it wasn't scientific experiments or giant insects we had to fear, but the ticking in our heads, the repressed desires that could go off at any moment. We were the bomb. Three years later, one of those bombs went off, as the peculiarly Bates-like Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy.
As counterculture movements raged on, America's youth began to figure out who they were and what they stood for against the institutions upheld by their parents. George A. Romero took a sledgehammer to the status quo with the zombie feature Night of the Living Dead (1968). Though the filmmaker always said the casting of Black actor Duane Jones as the lead character Ben was not based on race, the Civil Rights Movement subtext was hard to miss. Ben's refusal to stand down for a middle-aged white man seeking to wrest power from him was radical, as was the film's ending, in which the hero was shot by yokels failing to distinguish him from the zombies previously described as animals. As much as the '60s were about progress, the establishment was always there to push back.
Roman Polanski's Rosemary's Baby (1968) opened just one week after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, which put an end to America's Camelot era and began its long dance with the devil. A year after Rosemary, Polanski's wife, Sharon Tate, and their unborn child were killed by the Manson Family, a shocking end to an era when breaking the rules was the new American dream, until those rules were broken so far that any semblance of control was lost. The '60s began with Psycho on our movie screens and ended with psychos in our homes.
Rosemary's Baby (left), starring Mia Farrow, was released one year before the murder of Sharon Tate (above), the wife of the film's director, Roman Polanski. The attack on Tate and her unborn child by members of the Manson Family also claimed the lives of Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski and Steven Parent. Courtesy Everett Collection; Keystone/Getty ImagesHorror became increasingly violent in the '70s, as the media put the spotlight on serial killers Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy and Ed Kemper. Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972) depicted a teenager's rape and murder, and the destruction of the nuclear family, echoing the more sensational, less sanitized newscasts that became the norm. Craven, who took an anti-violence stance and was outspoken about the Vietnam War, aimed to deglamorize the violence of Hollywood movies, though critics claimed he only sensationalized it.
The aftershocks of the Vietnam War and the ruination of family legacy also came into play in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). On their way to check out their family property, a group of teenagers trespassed on the land of a nearby house, home of the monstrous, chainsaw-wielding Leatherface. In Texas Chain Saw, the teenagers invading property that isn't theirs, rather than the teens being hunted on public land, as the slasher tropes that would follow established. The Vietnam allegory was clear here, and not to excuse the ensuring massacre or cannibalism, it was somewhat ironic that it's the film's antagonists who are the most concerned with upholding the nuclear family.
Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978) used elements of Hitchcock's proto-slasher, Psycho, to instill fear into teenagers growing up in an era of serial killers running at large. But both of these films were progressive in terms of Clark's perspective on abortion and women's right to choose, and Carpenter's depiction of Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis), the average American babysitter who faught back against Michael Myers — and not only survived but also protected the next generation, not as a motherly figure, but as an instinctual leader and fighter. These films, and Texas Chain Saw, laid the groundwork for the slasher boom to come. But the '70s saw no shortage of trends through which to mine the American experience.
A few years after Time published the provocative 1966 cover story "Is God Dead?" — highlighting the growing number of young Americans leaving religion — glow-eyed figurines of an anguished Christ on a crucifix traumatized poor Carrie (Sissy Spacek) in Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976), while William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973) and Richard Donner's The Omen (1976) conjured the devil in the faces of kids. The late night TV asked, "Do you know where your children are?" The next question Americans asked themselves was, "Do you know who your children are?"
In the aftermath of Night of the Living Dead, Blaxploitation, and Black filmmakers sank their teeth into horror with Blacula (1972), Ganja & Hess, Sugar Hill (1974), and Petey Wheatstraw (1977), and showcased, on shoestring budgets, that white folks weren't the only Americans with something to fear.
Lost — that's the overarching sentiment of '70s horror. The U.S. Lost in Vietnam, both countless lives and the sanity of many veterans who came home. President Richard Nixon lost the trust of the American people. And with counterculture movements falling out of the mainstream, there was the lingering question of, "What now?" Even traditional norms of adulthood and parenthood were looked at as a certain kind of defeat for those who grew up fighting, as evidenced by films The Stepford Wives (1975), Eraserhead (1977), and Demon Seed (1977) which made domesticity its own kind of vapid hell, a passively accepted system rather than a choice, an idea that forms the spine of Phillip Kaufman's Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978).
With America shifting to the conservatism that defined much of the '80s, corporations marketed the idea that hard work and raising a family were all there was to the American Dream. Ridley Scott's Alien (1979) pushed back against those ideals, depicting a near-future that made no efforts to hide the horrors of working-class abuse, and the threat of forced procreation that only Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) was capable of dismantling, at least for a while. We fell asleep and lived our lives on autopilot. That's not to say there weren't still battles being fought or injustices taking place in the '70s, but compared to the previous decades, a certain sense of complacency set into the public,
As Reagan rose, the slasher films that followed reinforced conservative values, with masked killers slaughtering teenagers who engaged in sex, drinking and smoking. Sean S. Cunningham's Friday the 13th (1980) kicked off the craze, and at one point, slasher movies were released on a near-weekly basis, with titles like The Burning (1981), The Prowler (1981), The Slumber Party Massacre (1982), The House on Sorority Row (1983), Sleepaway Camp (1983) and The Mutilator (1984) serving as stern reminders to teens to behave. After a while, the horror of these films dulled and there emerged a kind of comfort in these repeated icons that stuck to the rules, and served, sometimes literally, as parental figures.
Craven took the slasher to the next level with A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), where not even the privacy of dreams was safe from watching eyes. Robert Englund brought a sense of humor to Freddy Krueger, to the point where audiences were cheering for him rather than the movie's teenage leads. Unlike the other slasher figures of the time, Freddy Krueger goaded teenagers into bad behavior and pushed them into giving in to their worst impulses, as those made for better nightmares. In an age of parental-coded slasher villains, Freddy was the weird uncle who told dirty jokes and encouraged sneaking beer into the theater. By the time Chucky was introduced in 1988's Child's Play, the slasher family felt complete, and even as subsequent entries starring Michael, Jason, Freddy, and Chucky became less frightening these characters formed close bonds with their audiences, creating a lingering sense of nostalgia and ownership that has become both a blessing and a curse.
With former hippies staring down middle-age in an increasingly conservative and consumeristic country, it seemed the America they fought for no longer existed. Horror movies like monster flick The Thing (1982), The Dead Zone (1983), the zombie pic Day of the Dead (1985) and the satirical Re-Animator (1985) explored the fears of legacies lost. David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) was an allegory for aging as it explored Seth Brundle's (Jeff Goldblum) horrifying transformation and the toll it took on his girlfriend Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis). But audiences also saw the film through the lens of the AIDS epidemic that raged as the Reagan administration refused to act.
David Cronenberg's body horror feature The Fly (left) coincided with the early years of the AIDS epidemic, with many drawing a line between the disease and the movie. Cronenberg has stated this was not his intent, though he understands the connection. 20th century/Courtesy Everett Collection; Mark Reinstein/Corbis/Getty ImagesThe '80s were all about abiding by the rules. '90s slashers said fuck the rules. Craven's Scream (1996) posited that old men chasing teenagers no longer was scary. It was your classmates and your friends you had to keep an eye on. The Craft (1996), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), Disturbing Behavior (1998), Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (1998), Urban Legend (1998), The Faculty (1998) and The Rage: Carrie 2 (1999) kept the train rolling until 1999's Columbine High School massacre forced studios to rethink teen-on-teen violence for a brief moment.
Black horror also came to the forefront this decade, moving the genre out of suburbs and into the hood, where very different fears existed. James Bond III's Def by Temptation (1990), Craven's The People Under the Stairs (1991) and Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Bernard Rose's Candyman (1992), Ernest R. Dickerson's Tales From the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995), Rusty Cundieff's Tales From the Hood (1995), Kasi Lemmons' Eve's Bayou (1997) and Jonathan Demme's Beloved (1998) drew attention to the Black housing crises, miscegenation, police brutality, the prison system and the sustained racism of post-Civil Rights Movement America.Yet Hollywood failed to capitalize on their talents and insights of the four Black filmmakers — Bond, Dickerson, Cundieff and Lemmons — leading to a dearth of Black horror films in an age where it was needed more than ever, an age where President Bill Clinton was given the tongue-in-cheek distinction of America's first Black president, hip-hop and rap made its way to white consumers, along with Black hairstyles and fashion.
The '90s also saw celebrated filmmakers who weren't known for their work in the horror genre make a play for awards recognition by bringing an element of prestige to critics' most oft-dismissed genre. Rob Reiner's Misery (1990), Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Mike Nichols' Wolf (1994) recaptured some of the literary sensibilities of '30s horror films. But arguably more impressive was the rise of the next generation of indie filmmakers who worked wonders with limited and home video releases. While traditionally non-horror filmmakers peered into the past to bring a little respectability to horror, indie filmmakers were looked ahead to make a name for themselves.
Larry Fessenden, who had been making short films since the late '70s, hit the feature film scene with No Telling (1991), an environmentally and ethically concerned Frankenstein story, and Habit (1997), a raw reimagining of vampire lore through the lens of addiction. Don Coscarelli became a cult-favorite filmmaker with his Phantasm sequels, which tackled the idea that childhood is worse than you remember and as much as you might try, you can't go home again. Don Coscarelli became a cult favorite filmmaker with his Phantasm sequels, Charles Band, Brian Yuzna, and Stuart Gordon kept the home video market thriving with new horror releases that reveled in the wetness of the genre.
Most notably, filmmakers Daniel Myric and Eduardo Sánchez and actors/directors Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams and Joshua Leonard created The Blair Witch Project (1999). The film featured the most effective viral (before viral was truly invented) marketing campaign of all time, which had audiences convinced that the found-footage feature about young filmmakers hunted by a witch in a forest was actually a true story. It ushered in an era of democratic filmmaking in which anyone with a camera could be a director.
The 2000s had barely begun before 9/11 shattered any further illusions of safety the '90s had fostered. As the news showed U.S. Survivors covered in dust and military forces invading the Middle East, horror movies responded in kind almost immediately.
Directors embraced the meaninglessness of violence, sometimes reveling in the cruelty of the world. Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses (2003) brought grindhouse aesthetics into the mainstream, and Bryan Bertino's The Strangers (2008) reveled in nihilism, and reflected America's invasive policies and missile strikes on areas civilian populations back at us, "because you were home," as one of the killers said. Slasher villains no longer simply slashed, they tortured and inflicted pain, mirroring the stories of criminal abuses committed by the U.S. Overseas and in Guantanamo Bay. Marcus Nispel brought back Leatherface grislier and meaner than ever in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) and Rob Zombie took the same approach with Michael Myers in Halloween (2007) and Halloween II (2009).
As nationalism rose, horror films explored the hidden recesses of America, where homegrown terrorists waited, ready to act with extreme prejudice. Wrong Turn (2003), The Descent (2005), House of Wax (2005) and The Hills Have Eyes (2006) all served as reminders that in an America stressing unity, we were anything but united. The sins of America's past weren't only left to be scrutinized in the War on Terror, but in the places we believed we had control over.
"Torture porn" was used to describe films like James Wan and Leigh Whannell's Saw (2004), but Eli Roth's Hostel (2005) and its 2007 sequel better fit the label. These films, about college kids tormented while studying abroad, challenged the belief that Americans were welcome to go wherever they wanted to do whatever they wanted. These films were unflattering portraits of America, and movies like Turistas (2006) and The Ruins (2008) solidified this idea while also feeling less exploitative.
As the post-9/11 era revealed that Americans no longer were welcome overseas (left), films like Hostel (right) explored a worst-case scenario for collegians studying abroad. Scott Nelson/Getty Images; Screen Gems/Courtesy Everett CollectionHollywood evoked 9/11 and the constant threat of terrorism in films like Matt Reeves' Cloverfield (2008). American zombie movies like Dawn of the Dead (2004), Planet Terror (2007), I Am Legend (2007) and Zombieland (2009) took a stylish and action-oriented "us or them" approach, with roaming bands of people forming domestic armies to protect themselves and each other from these invading forces. While discussions of surviving a zombie apocalypse became an American fantasy for some, this prepper mentality overlapped with Obama's presidency as accusations of him being the Antichrist gained a foothold with a certain percentage of Americans. Night of the Living Dead filmmaker Romero, unsurprisingly, was one of the few to further evolve the zombie genre with Land of the Dead (2005), which criticized fascism and feudalism and explored the class system through the perspective of humans and zombies, led by Big Daddy, who mysteriously regained some of their humanity and desired more than an endless war.
The first half of the 2010s explored our fears of being lied to, watched and manipulated. Found-footage horror films like V/H/S (2013), Creep (2014), Unfriended (2014) and Be My Cat: A Film for Anne (2016) asked audiences not only to question our relationship to technology but also our relationships to each other as social media gave rise to catfishing and teenage suicides.
As the beginnings of Trumpism began to take hold, horror movies served as calls to reclaim history, space and identity.
Robert Eggers' The Witch (2015) pushed for a rejection of oppressive familial conditions. Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room (2015) saw a group of young punks fight for survival against a gang of neo-Nazi skinheads in a reclamation of punk, not only as a music genre but as a lifestyle. Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017) created a renaissance of Black horror, tackling the tropes of Black people in the genre, and connecting America's past with its present, revealing that white liberalism too often hid a core of racist ideals.
Even familiar subgenres popularized in the '70s were given a new vibrancy in films like Karyn Kusama's The Invitation (2015), which looked at grief through the lens of a suicide cult, just as cult personalities attempted to control America. Jenn Wexler's punk-slasher The Ranger (2018) centered on a group of teens making a stand for their own space in America as a deranged park ranger attempts to enforce rules of patriarchal oppression.
Ari Aster's Midsommar (2019) tapped into the contemporary fears of gaslighting. And Mike Flanagan's The Shining sequel Doctor Sleep (2019) glimpsed into the past, while Dan Torrance (Ewan McGregor) rides his fears to a place where healing, acceptance and redemption could begin.
Did the 2020s allow for healing? Well, that remains to be seen. But Americans, like the rest of the world, certainly waded through a lot of sickness to reach the point where healing could be a possibility. The COVID-19 pandemic had a direct influence on horror movies like Host (2020) and Dashcam (2021), set during the lockdown.
But it wasn't just the pandemic that made America sick. It was police brutality, queerphobia and misogyny that not only proved to be terrifying but also further opened the doors to Black, queer and female filmmakers. Nia DaCosta's Candyman (2021) spoke to the cycles of physical and mental violence committed against Black people. Michael Kennedy brought queer stories and fears to mainstream slashers as the writer behind projects like director (and co-writer) Christopher Landon's Freaky (2020) and director Tyler MacIntyre's It's a Wonderful Knife (2023). Jane Schoenbrun emerged as one of the most exciting horror filmmakers while rejecting conventions and providing an inherently queer perspective in films We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) and I Saw the TV Glow (2024).
Female filmmakers tackled many of America's most pressing issues as they saw their rights and truths stolen. Chloe Okuno's Watcher and Mariama Diallo's Master (2022) broached the fears stemming from not believing women and modern diagnoses of hysteria through two distinct racial lenses.
Natalie Erika James' Relic (2020) and Coralie Fargeat's The Substance (2024) explore female aging, while Zelda Williams' Lisa Frankenstein (2024) and Arkasha Stevenson's The First Omen offer tonally different considerations of women's bodily autonomy.
While fans of IP-shackled sci-fi and superhero movies are crying "woke" at every turn, horror has carved out enough seats at the table for everyone to have a voice, and those voices are growing louder.
So, what's next? Where will the 2020s go from here? What can we expect from the 2030s? America faces a major turning point in just a few weeks. It would be nice to have fewer things to fear, but regardless of the outcome, we'll do what we have always done. We'll cast shadows and somehow, once again, we will manage to find ways to explore fears.
We are, after all, a horror people.
This story appeared in the Oct. 23 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
A previous version misstated that writer and producer Michael Kennedy was also the director of Freaky and It's a Wonderful Knife.
The Politics Of Fear: Laying The Groundwork For Fascism, American-style
America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.
The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.
Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.
This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.
Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can't escape it.
We're being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left. The list goes on and on.
The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.
Fear makes people stupid.
Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.
Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.
This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail.
This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an "us" against "them" mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.
All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and "we the suckers" get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.
Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams.
America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of their so-called "anti-government" views, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented, and their communications monitored.
These threats are not to be underestimated.
Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.
This language of fear has given rise to a politics of fear whose only aim is to distract and divide us. In this way, we have been discouraged from thinking analytically and believing that we have any part to play in solving the problems before us. Instead, we have been conditioned to point the finger at the other Person or vote for this Politician or support this Group, because they are the ones who will fix it. Except that they can't and won't fix the problems plaguing our communities.
Nevertheless, fear remains the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.
The government's overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence, disease, illegal immigration, and so-called domestic extremism have been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.
An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. However, with crime at an all-time low, is such fear rational?
Statistics show that you are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocating in bed than from a terrorist attack. And you are 9 more times likely to choke to death in your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack.
Indeed, those living in the American police state are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist. Thus, the government's endless jabbering about terrorism amounts to little more than propaganda—the propaganda of fear—a tactic used to terrorize, cower and control the population.
In turn, the government's stranglehold on power and extreme paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats has resulted in a populace that is increasingly viewed as the government's enemies.
Why else would the government feel the need to monitor our communications, track our movements, criminalize our every action, treat us like suspects, and strip us of any means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons?
So far, these tactics—terrorizing the citizenry over the government's paranoia and overblown fears while treating them like criminals—are working to transform the way "we the people" view ourselves and our role in this nation.
Indeed, fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.
The American people have been reduced to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as "herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties."
Sanchez continues:
I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.E., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…
I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves.
Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.
As history makes clear, fear and government paranoia lead to fascist, totalitarian regimes.
It's a simple enough formula. National crises, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.
A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.
The following, derived by from John T. Flynn's 1944 treatise on fascism As We Go Marching are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:
The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.
"Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn't begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect," writes economist Jeffrey Tucker. "It's incorrect to call fascism either right wing or left wing. It is both and neither… fascism does not seek to overthrow institutions like commercial establishments, family, religious centers, and civic traditions. It seeks to control them… it preserves most of what people hold dear but promises to improve economic, social, and cultural life through unifying their operations under government control."
For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it's not only expedient but necessary. In times of "crisis," expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.
We are at a critical crossroads in American history.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it has become the driving force behind the American police state.
All of which begs the question what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.
As we once again find ourselves faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, "we the people" have a decision to make: do we simply participate in the collapse of the American republic as it degenerates toward a totalitarian regime, or do we take a stand and reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us?
There is no easy answer, but one thing is true: the lesser of two evils is still evil.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik B
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