Fear Mongering in the Previous Century
Has Anything Changed?
I am just going to list the fears I knew of without any mores attributed.
As a kid, there always that bully. By the time I was 8 or 9, I had developed routes to get around them. I was also easy pickings due to my small stature and wearing that hearing aid box. By high school though, I knew how to deal with them, made things backfire. Looking back, I did not even realize what I had done until later. It was good for me, I’ve never had to back down from a physical challenge, although that is subject to change, I’m not Superman.
Of course, there was the fear of Communism taking over the world. It may seem laughable now, but it was a legit concern. Most wars the USA was in were to contain communism. I remember the nightly news where the daily count of our men getting killed in Vietnam. I came within a few years of possibly going there.
Economically, it seemed the biggest fear were gas shortages. There was even a law passed for a nationwide speed limit of 55 to save fuel, and, there was some kind of delay of daylight savings time for that reason, which, of course, was reported in the news as getting kids killed at bus stops.
The threat of assassinations were always there, the news played that up so much. The 60’s were the worst.
