You speak of fear as a major part of the equation in the standoffs between liberals and conservatives. Speaking for myself, I don't have fear in this arena. The major emotion in me when I see/hear all this stuff going on these days in particularly national politics is anger. I get very angry, nonplussed frequently. I'm not afraid, however. What do I have to fear? Like a great friend of mine once told me, the worst they can do is kill you!
I can only answer this based on my own understanding, information I have been told or have uncovered as to how I work, through the process of trying to discovering what I feel.
Let me say first then that according to my understanding fear is not an emotion, it is what happens when all emotion is frozen, when we, as it were, become emotionally dead. It is the fear of realizing we are not really alive. It occurs when what we really feel starts to be come conscious and we flee in panic. Fear is the absence of feeling. It is the fear of dying but actually of knowing we are dead.
What happens when a person begins the journey to understanding what one feels. It is a journey that begins with the feeling that life is missing something or with a deep curiosity of how we operate. In the first case that's normally a state of depression, a sense that life is meaningless, absent joy. It is a step up from fear but is characterized by a sense of deadness perhaps not consciously recognized as such. Via self discovery one can come to see that depression is sadness and hopeless resignation.
If one puts up a fight on will begin a journey back to tears. One begins to awaken into the feeling that depression intended to hide, how deeply sad we are emotionally, how deeply we suffer. This of course, or of course to me, awakens rage. Rage is our defense against feeling sad. If one can go with the rage, and overcome the guilt one carries for being irrationally angry one will hit upon the real feeling, a deep sense of grief and it is this feeling of grief that will make us again alive. In grief we feel what our self hate has forbidden us to feel, real love and care for our selves.
We morn our deaths and in that way begin to heal. We will remember when and where we died and how and will see that this feeling is what we have feared needlessly. It is the psychic equivalent of resurrection and the goal of psychotherapy properly applied, at least in my opinion.
So what we fear is feeling what we feel and what we feel is that we are worthless and deserve to be dead. We fear feeling our pain and because we do that we suffer anyway, unconsciously. To die to the ego, the fearful one who will not feel, is to awaken in the kingdom of heaven where one knows at the deepest level that there was never anything wrong with us. We were trapped and strapped to the wheel of delusion that there is good and evil. There is only love and it's knowing that that we fear. We fear innocence and vulnerability, tenderness and joy, being real again.
No where to go, noting to do, nothing to become. Just Grace and awakening.