(1976, Florida coast. At a retirement condominium)
“Our modern world and existence stinks of fear. Brooks Ames, a resident of the condo, has set up security, with guns, strutting and armbands, and thereby terrified everyone. Ames, and a lot of these good people, think that without a guard force, which actually does nothing, that drug addicts and blacks and rapists and hoodlums and psychopaths will come skulking in here and break down the doors.”
On the local level Ames, and the public generally, cry out for more protection, but are terrified of predatory tax increases. They are frightened, day and night, with thoughts of violent panhandlers, bums, drunken drivers, purse snatchers, muggers, power failure, gas shortages, water shortages, drug dealers, ruffians, inflation and the high cost of being sick. Going to a grocery store is an exercise in terror.
Nationally they are afraid of big government, welfare, crime in the streets, corruption, busing, liberals, communists, wars, and industrial, political and fiscal conspiracy—real or imagined. Internationally they are afraid of the Arabs, the blacks, the Cubans, the Communists, the Chinese, the multinational corporations, the oil cartels, pollution of the sea and the air, atomic bombs, pestilence, poisons and additives in .....it is the vast and wicked complex of interwoven fears, from the personal and the specific to the vast misty and uncharted, that gives all these people a feeling of helplessness when it comes to comprehending their total environment. (remember, this is 40+ years ago)
A world of almost four billion people is so incredibly complex nobody can comprehend the causes and the trends and the nuances.”
“But these people think they have a God-given right to understand. They are "educated" Americans. They think that if anybody can understand the world and the times, it is an educated American.
In essence, they HAVE to find a reason why they cannot actually understand events. The only other choice was a permanent condition of confusion and terror-- unacceptable to humans.
So we make up facts, conspiracies, inferences-- we give reason to the unfathomable chaos. JFK?-- a warped little misfit in Dallas could combine a lot of luck with Marine Corps skills to kill the beloved president; that a dreary brooding little Arabian kitchen scut, semiretarded, should have brought a pistol to work, in some half-ass dream of glory and revenge and father-killing; that a smiling and demented young man with sewers in his head could, all alone, stalk and cripple a governor; that a chronic criminal, a brute from a demanding background, could be so confused about reality he should attempt to win the cheers of society by killing a black preacher. If these simple things can be true, then anyone is at the mercy of any whim of the beasts in the street.
And that is, of course, unthinkable.
And with just a little diddling of the facts, each case can be made to appear like an intricate conspiracy, so well conceived and well hidden that one sees only a rare change in the consistency of the shadows, as if there is some creature in the bottom of the well.
Conspiracy theories sell well. Common sense is very difficult to merchandise. And someone is always ready and eager to manufacture something that will sell, no matter how meretricious.
Unable to turn inward, all fear turns outward, hence all the weird sects, massive door locks, electronic alarm systems, rejection of bond issues, religious fever, pinched, bitter, ugly, suspicious faces in Florida, California, Arizona—wherever the old ones gather for dying.
We reinforce each other’s terrors. By guarding against assault, shrill proponents of guards,mocks,security etc-they create the terror and offer an explanation and answer--'- , Brooks Ames, and his preposterous condominium private guard force, creates the fear of assault. By speaking always of conspiracies, it all creates more fear of conspiracies.
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