What’s the worst four-letter word in the English language?
I’ll give you a clue.
It starts with the letter F.
No, not that one.
The word I mean, the word that truly brings out the worst in us, is fear.
Not all fear is bad. Going all the way back to primitive man, one type of fear served as a warning of real danger. If a man saw a sabre-tooth tiger in the distance, fear made him aware that he needed to do whatever he could to avoid becoming prey.
That was what we might call useful fear.
Fear with a purpose.
But as society became more complex, fear became something experienced in different ways. People feared people who were in competition with them — for jobs, for money, for love. When they feared they. might lose out, they behaved negatively toward their competition. Instead of trying to show they were better, they tried to make their competitor look worse.
When they felt bad, they wanted the people around them to feel worse.
When they feared people stronger, they picked on people weaker. Fear is basically where the idea of bullying originated.
Bullying isn’t always about the same kind of fears. A bully may fear deep down that people think he’s stupid, so he physically picks on smarter, weaker people to show his dominance in that area.
People like Donald Trump, Don DeSantis and Ted Cruz are perfect examples of successful bullies in politics, and if there’s an irony in it, it’s that they often seem to wind up bullying each other.
It isn’t just Republicans either. Democrats tend to be a little more subtle about it, but it would be tough to say Hillary Clinton never bullied anyone in her various campaigns.
Maybe it’s just what America has become in the last 40-50 years. Maybe people are just all about themselves these days and we have reached a point where it’s all Me Me Me and whatever it takes to win is legitimate.
At one point during my years in California, I gave some thought to getting into politics on the local level. In the end I didn’t do it, but my plan if I had was to do two things. First was to do as much one on one campaigning as possible, to go door to door and talk with as many people as I possibly could.
Second, and even more important, was to be 100 percent positive and not say anything at all negative about my opponent.
I almost certainly would not have won, even though I’m intelligent, a very good public speaker and I have been told I have a certain level of charisma.
Win or lose, though, it would have been a good thing to run a campaign that wasn’t about fear.