Lying politicians, far-right manipulation, prejudiced religious zealots. I’m not afraid, I’m the other ‘A’, Annoyed. Many people can see what’s going on but just get sucked into the baloney

WHENEVER I used to have conversations with either friends at university, work colleagues, friends from home or family members about social and political issues I’d say I’m not afraid, just annoyed. And I’ll tell you why. To me, it just seems that whenever any kind of hysteria happens, be it either to a public catastrophe, national tragedy, terror attack or political movement of some sort it just seems that there are people who are all too keen to whip-up the frenzy.
Let me give you an example, when we had the presidential elections back in 2016 there was a lot of public unrest in regards to war, social issues and employment etc. One of Trump’s proposals was to have a travel ban on people coming from places that were predominately Muslim. This was something I, like many others, thought was just ridiculous as you could tell that he wasn’t just feeding on public fear and anxiety, he was fueling it to. At the time America had been gradually recovering from terrorist-related attacks dating back from 9/11 on-wards.
As a human being I was just disgusted that he was using national tragedy and fear to fuel his campaign. Remember what he said after the Orlando massacre? Among other things he mocked a reporter with disabilities which I found completely abhorrent so a person living with a disability myself. When all this died down at bit, I told people that I wasn’t afraid of him or people like him, but rather annoyed. It was just so clear that he was using fear and hatred and many people swallowed it.
You have people like Nigel Farage who was continuously going on about our country’s safety, sovereignty and immigration etc. I just found it annoying as he just seemed to use immigrants and refugees as a sort of scapegoat. Now I just found it to some degree, laughable, as he clearly seemed to forget that many people living in this country are descended from immigrants and others were refugees of conflict and genocide.
Throughout his campaign I wondered why people just seemed to swallow what he was saying as quite a bit of it could easily be viewed as xenophobic hate-speech. One of the thoughts that went through my mind was ‘Is anyone here actually dumb enough to believe everything he’s coming out with?’
Like Trump and Farage, I also detest how Corbyn attempts to whip-up public anger to as he even sucks up to people. The last time I saw him giving one of his political speeches I couldn’t see any distinction between his and Trump’s. What I’ve found since listening to them both is just how similar they both are and how they seem to both feed and fuel public outcry and anger.
Whenever I look at people like Trump, Corbyn, Farage, Marine Le Penn, Jayda Fransen and other far-right conservative and religious zealot types I just find them a disappointment to both humanity and society. They know that there is public outrage, fear and distrust due to conflict both abroad and across the nation and political distrust yet they just seem to milk it and a lot of people just follow them blindly like sheep. My only concern is that if we allow them to get away with it is that it’ll just get worse and worse and worse to the point where it’ll all just implode on itself.
As a society we need to both face and understand the facts; yes, there is fear but that’s because we’re scared of something we don’t understand. Yes, we don’t trust our own politicians but we have to trust that there are some who actually want to help make things better for us all. But most of all; yes, we need to know when to question something when we don’t agree with it cos otherwise it’ll just be a game of follow the leader and they’ll lead us somewhere where we definitely don’t want to go