How can a citizen protect himself or herself from a Culture of Fear?

[Moonbeam]

How...

1. Stop watching and reading the news. Especially Fox and CNN.
2. Travel the world. Get out of your comfort zone. Traveling out of America is an awesome experience, and you will think differently.

just two examples.

Hehe, I notice my mind turning around how to handle imagined harassment in the Rome train station. I've been spooked by rumors of impending prying fingers, prayer beads and clickers. My latest concept is a suit of porcupine quills.

 

[Greenman]

I don't see much of what you mentioned to be fear motivated.... Assessing the risk of an outcome or an event that has a reasonable probability for occurrence and then seeking to mitigate that eventuality is not irrational. Fear seems to have at least some degree of irrational behavior attached and so long as it is not a threat to others inappropriately it seems ok.

I don't fear Earthquakes and I live in Southern California... There is a high probability of one occurring here. I don't have EQ insurance, but some provisions.
I calculate the risk of being attacked by a great white shark while in the ocean very low but I won't accept that risk and since the only mitigation I can think of is to not go into the ocean, I don't.

Folks can develop an irrational behavior based on fear if the causation is imagined and, therefore, not really something that should produce the resulting behavior.
If you notice a tiger licking its chops while looking in your direction the fear response to that is or could be rational... iow, based on a real and present danger.

Political activity now a days seems to contain quite a bit of irrational fear based behavior... and that is a perplexing and a danger to us all.

I can solve the shark attack problem for you, it's a system I developed while snorkeling in Maui. It's really simple, just tag along with a group of people that has at least one fat guy in it, old and fat is even better. That way you don't have to be able to out swim a shark (which is impossible) just one old fat guy. I'm not sure the system actually works, but it makes me feel better.
A few months back I was snorkeling in a beautiful little cove just off Wialia beach that was lousy with sea turtles, and a woman was killed by a shark less than half a mile up the beach. I didn't bother getting out of the water because the turtles were so cool, and there were a couple fat guys out there as well.

I'd appreciate it if everyone would avoid pointing out the flaws in my system, I work hard at pretending they don't exist so I can enjoy the diving.

 

[D-Man]

I appreciate this point of view and thank you for expressing it. I believe that despite the fact that politicians try to leverage fear into party votes there are threats that come and go that are real. I believe we poked a stick into a Muslim hornets nest via our lust for oil and have created a real terrorist threat for ourselves. We always create what we fear. The result of that, of course, is that our enemies, lacking a military means to respond to us, but with high motivation, look for other means to get us, namely terrorism. The bottom line is that because we are stupid as a government we have created a real threat to our people. The best way to do something about that, in my opinion, is to work to undo what we have done as sincerely as we can, but in the mean time, we can't just allow the deaths of our own innocent people. This means, to my mind, that a pure idealistic concept of personal liberties has to flex under the terrorist threat. All the national security laws we passed, however, should have expiration dates that require new votes to continue. I don't know where to strike the best balance, but I believe one is needed.

I will go with this. When you mess with people who's motto is the enemy of my enemy is my friend you have indeed pushed your stick in a hornets nest.