This morning (2/1/19), Representative Lee Zedlin (R) tweeted that it was “Crazy to watch what Democrats are empowering, elevating.” He had just learned that freshman congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Muslim, was appointed to the House Foreign Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation. For Zeldin, Muslims are to be feared. To have a Muslim appointed to this particular post, with its access to sensitive information, leaves him shaking his head in disbelief at the danger he assumes she poses to the government.

For the past two years, fear has been in the news every day. The President uses fear like a weapon. He described the thousands of immigrants in the Mexican caravan as “rapists and murderers.” When that didn’t express his fears strongly enough, he added that Mexican gangs in the caravan would kill and mutilate innocent people.

He refers to all Muslims as terrorists, all immigrants as “illegal,” words meant to make us afraid for our safety and security. To make sure we were all trembling in our boots so uncontrollably we would fund his border wall, Trump added that unknown Muslims were in the caravan, along with the rapists and murderers and gangs.

The term for this is fear mongering. It is a tactic meant to arouse the public’s fears, an attempt to purposely make us afraid that some part of a bigger situation threatens our physical safety. Fear-mongering sometimes relies on vague and frightening rumors or conspiracy theories. It exaggerates one remote possibility and uses it to characterize a large and complex issue.

Why do some people get caught up in this fear, while others do not? Research studies are showing that the more fearful preschool-aged children are (think fear of the dark, fear of monsters), the more conservative their political views are later on as adults. Scientists who have examined images of the brain have reported that the part of the brain that is associated with fear is larger in conservatives than it is in liberals.

In other words, the more aroused the fear response has been in a person’s life, the more likely s/he will be influenced by fear in taking political positions on the issues. Conservatives have stronger fear reactions than the rest of us to any perceived threats against their physical safety, and have lived with those amorphous fears since they were young children. Republicans, for example, are more than twice as likely to own a gun as Democrats, according to Pew research (6/22/17).

Fear mongering works very well with conservatives. They’re already afraid that some unknown someone or something may cause them bodily harm. It is easy to trigger that fear and use it to manufacture support for discriminatory policies.

Researchers at Yale designed a new study a couple of years ago to expand our understanding of how fear affects our political views (Washington Post, 11/22/17). They conducted an on-line survey with 300 people to get their opinions on contemporary social issues, including gay rights, feminism and immigration.

Before respondents answered the survey question, however, researchers asked them to close their eyes and imagine a genie was granting them one very special super power. For half of the group, the super power they were asked to imagine was “being able to fly.” For the other half, their super power was “being protected from all physical harm;” that is, to be able to be completely, physically safe.

Conservative respondents who had imagined having the power to fly answered the survey questions about social issues and social change along standard party lines. They were resistant to social change and endorsed conservative policies that kept marginalized groups away from power and full participation.

Conservative respondents who imagined the superpower that protected them from bodily harm and freed them from any and all fears for their physical safety gave answers that were significantly more liberal. Their responses to questions about social change as a whole, as well as specific policies to empower the marginalized, were indistinguishable from the responses liberals gave.

Imagine that. When conservatives imagine themselves protected from bodily harm, when their physical safety is assured, conservative attitudes become liberal.

Think about this when you read that a black, gay man was attacked and had a noose tied around his neck as he walked home from the store. Think about this when white men with guns try to prevent a drag queen from reading to children at a story hour in local library. Think about this over and over as you encounter examples of our inability to live as equals.

What can we do with this knowledge? How can we address the fear that is hiding inside hatred, misogyny and bigotry?

I’d like to see that provocative question addressed in social studies classrooms, in community discussions of white privilege and around the dinner table. More than that, figuring out how to address the “fear of bodily harm” is the central question for the Democratic party and for Democratic candidates who are throwing their hats into the ring for the next Presidential election.

In order for Democrats to win, in order to beat Trump at his own game, Democrats have to get serious about addressing conservative’s fears. The fear that queers of any kind are all child molesters. The fear that all Muslims are terrorists. The fear that all blacks want to do violence against all white people. The fear of people who are destitute, or that those emigrating due to violence, poverty and disease will somehow cause harm to our American way of life.

At the very least, the research tells us that Democrats ought to use their public platforms to deliberately counter conservative’s fears. The challenge is to help conservatives imagine themselves living in a nation that cares about each and every individual, a country that looks out for everyone’s personal safety. It’s not the whole answer, but it is an important piece of the bigotry puzzle.