Culture of Fear

People love to overreact to sensationalism. I remember hearing scare stories of people trying to kill kids with bad halloween candy. How many times has it actually happened? Uh, none. We have parents paranoid about their child being kidnapped, even though the odds of it happening are next to 0. Even more disturbing is when fear causes a dangerous behavior to be substituted for "safe" one out of fear. In order to avoid all the "danger" out there, parents drive their kids excessively, exposing them to one of the most common causes of death. The media loves to hype up new dangers, because that is what sells. Activists can use this coverage to push for new legislation to "protect" people. Alas, soften the legislation comes at great cost, without significantly increasing safety. Meanwhile, small dangers gradually create greater danger to society. (Banning cars, or limiting their maximum speed would result in a huge increase in safety, but we have gradually become accepting of the dangers.)
The author attempts to present a politically neutral viewpoint. However, his viewpoint comes across as significantly left wing. He criticizes both Republican and Democratic presidents for using the "War on Drugs" to distract from more significant issues. However, he then proceeds to criticize Bush and Trump administrations by heaping praise on Obama. Is this because Obama really did eschew the politics of fear? Or is this because he views the fears that Republicans rely on less pertinent than those of the Democrats? Similarly, the spin on issues tends to favor the more liberal viewpoint. Conservatives have an unjust "fear" of gun control, rather than liberals having an unjust fear of law abiding gun ownership. (Though he does call out working gun legislation that both sides are proud of.) He brushes aside fears of crimes committed by minorities. He also goes on to point out "journalistic objectivity" causes less respected viewpoints to be given undue weight. But how do we determine what the respected viewpoint should be? His examples tend to have a left of center feel. Guns are constantly brought up as a cause of problems, with gun control advocates arguments viewed as missing the main issue. Alas, these are the arguments that tend to strengthen the right wing rhetoric. This inadvertently strengthens the validity of using fear.
The media has generally abused its role in using fear of small probability events into worrisome calamities. Alas, this also makes it difficult to identify cases where there is a need to worried about something. "Fake" experts abuse their power to get their message across, while real experts do not. Things that happen slowly over time do not invoke the fear, and are not properly held in check. A low probability occurrence ends up taking precedence over the true dangers.
Trump has significantly ramped up the blatant use of fear as a political motivator. The left has responded by being more public in their invocation of fear. Perhaps this is a good thing in that it makes it much more easy to identify. Alas social media had made it easier for one-sided fear-based messages to spread without even an attempt at journalistic objectivity. This has made fear an even more powerful tool.