When Fear Takes Over Our Thinking

When Fear Takes Over Our Thinking By Dale Jodoin Columnist People keep asking me the same question lately. What is going on with people? They do not ask for it. They ask if they are tired. They ask it confused. They ask it the way someone asks when they no longer recognize the room they are standing in. I heard it at the coffee shop. I hear it while waiting in line. I hear it from people who voted left, right, and some who stopped voting at all. Different people, same feeling.Something feels off. I think part of the answer is fear. Not fear of war or hunger, but fear of a person. Fear of a name. Fear of what that name has come to represent. Say the name Donald Trump and watch what happens. Some people tense up. Some laugh in that nervous way people laugh when they are uncomfortable. Some get angry before the sentence even finishes. That reaction is not thinking. It is emotion grabbing the steering wheel.People joke about Trump Derangement Syndrome. It is not a real illness. No doctor can diagnose it. But as a way to describe behavior, it fits better than many want to admit. This is not about disagreeing with Trump. That is normal. That is politics. This is about fear so strong it shuts down logic. I want to be clear. I am not punching down. I am not calling people stupid. I am talking to people who are scared, even if they would never use that word themselves. Fear makes good people act in strange ways. When people are afraid, they stop listening. They stop weighing facts. They sort the world into teams. Good side and bad side. Approved opinions and forbidden ones. That is where we are stuck. A good example came out of Venezuela. People were freed from a brutal system. Real people. Real families. People who lived with fear, prison, and violence. When they were released, they celebrated. You could see it on their faces. Relief. Joy. Hope. You would think that would be one of those moments where everyone pauses and says, at least something good happened. But many people did not. Instead, they got angry. Not at the dictatorship. Not suffering. But at the fact that Trump had anything to do with it. That should stop us in our tracks. If people who were tortured are smiling, and people watching from safe homes are angry, something has gone wrong. That is not a value. That is pride mixed with fear. Some people have built their whole identity around hating Trump. If he does something good, even once, it feels like admitting it would crack their worldview. So they refuse. They say it does not count. Or it was fake. Or it was evil somehow. Anything except saying, yes, that helped people. Fear does that. It makes good news feel dangerous. We see the same thing here in Canada. If you question taxes, spending, or the direction of the country, some people do not argue back. They label you. They call you Maple MAGA or Mega Maple. Same idea, different flavour. It is meant to shut you up. I have met people called Maple MAGA who have never worn a red hat, never attended a rally, and never cared much about American politics at all. They just voted Conservative. Or questioned government spending. Or asked why groceries cost so much. That is it. But now, disagreeing with Liberals or the NDP gets you lumped into a cartoon version of something you are not. It becomes a shortcut. No discussion needed. Calling someone Maple MAGA is treated like calling them racist or dangerous. It sounds serious. It sounds moral. But most of the time, it is just a way to avoid answering hard questions. That is not a debate. That is fear wearing a mask. The strange part is watching people defend governments that are clearly hurting working Canadians, just because those governments are not Conservative. High taxes get explained away. Missed promises get ignored. Waste gets shrugged off. Fear makes people excuse things they would never excuse otherwise. In the United States, people were told that obvious problems did not matter as long as Trump was gone. Questioning that made you the problem. Not the policy. Not the results. You. That is not healthy for any country. Here is the part that matters. You can dislike Trump and still admit when something works. You can support him and still criticize him. Most normal people live in that middle space. Quietly. Without shouting. Trump helped move peace talks that others could not. That does not make him perfect. It makes those moments real. Pretending they never happened does not make you moral. It just makes you dishonest. Fear has turned politics into a team sport where cheering matters more than outcomes. Where being right matters more than people being free. I am not saying people who think this way are evil. I am saying they are overwhelmed. Afraid of being wrong. Afraid of losing control. Afraid of what happens if the story they were told does not hold up. That fear is powerful. But it does not have to run things. We can still talk. We can still disagree without hating. We can still say, I do not like him, but that helped. Or I voted Conservative, but they got this wrong. That is what grown ups do. Calling names will not save Canada. Screaming will not fix the United States. Fear will not build better leaders. Thinking will. If hearing Trump’s name makes your heart race or your jaw tighten, it might be worth asking why. Not to change your politics, but to get your balance back. Politics should not steal your peace. This is not about worshipping anyone. It is about staying grounded. About not letting fear turn you into someone who roots against freedom just to stay consistent. People are not crazy. They are overloaded. And overloaded people sometimes forget how to breathe. That is what is going wrong today. And the good news is, we can slow it down if we choose to.