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“The frightening things we do sometimes when we’re afraid to be afraid.” - Dr. Praetorius from ‘People Will Talk’ (J. Mankiewicz, 1951) I have a fear of heights. I don’t know when it arrived, but I didn’t always have it. I didn’t have it as a child. I didn’t have it in college. 1/13

But one day I was in a high rise building and noticed that I felt tremendous anxiety, panic even. Weirdly (and conveniently) this doesn’t apply to flying, which I can handle. Does that make sense? Not at all. Which is the point of this little essay: fear is not reasonable. 2/13

This was driven home when I was watching the movie “Vanilla Sky” the other day. Its final scene takes place on the roof of a very, very tall Manhattan skyscraper. Even though I was sitting at home, safely at ground level… I felt anxiety just looking at the screen. 3/13

No matter how much I tried to convince myself that there was absolutely nothing for me to be fearful of… it wasn’t working. At a certain point I had to avert my eyes. 4/13

My rational faculties simply couldn’t overcome whatever was activating those far more ancient structures in my brain that were convinced that I was in mortal peril. 5/13

That’s not even the worst of it: I once experienced acrophobia when just READING about people at great heights: there’s a passage in Michael Chabon’s “The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” that takes place on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. 6/13

Bonkers, right? For all my attempts to be a rational person, I’m vulnerable to this ludicrous meshugaas. 7/13

I can manage my exposure to things that trigger my fear, so it typically doesn’t interfere with my life. I acknowledge my fear and its irrationality, and can take steps to counter it. 8/13

But when I think of common fears that are manipulated by demagogues and which govern the behavior of millions of people, I despair. Because you can’t even begin to address a problem unless you see it as a problem, and many fears are easily rationalized and defended. 9/13

The contempt that Trump supporters have for liberals? They make a big show of laughing at us, but at the root of their hatred is fear. 11/13

Liberalism, secularism, pluralism… they all represent change, and challenge deeply held assumptions that a very large number of White Americans were taught to believe before they were capable of questioning them. 12/13