“News programming uses a hierarchy if it bleeds, it leads. Fear-based news programming has two aims. The first is to grab the viewer’s attention. In the news media, this is called the teaser. The second aim is to persuade the viewer that the solution for reducing the identified fear will be in the news story. If a teaser asks, “What’s in your tap water that YOU need to know about?” a viewer will likely tune in to get the up-to-date information to ensure safety. The success of fear-based news relies on presenting dramatic anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, promoting isolated events as trends, depicting categories of people as dangerous and replacing optimism with fatalistic thinking. News conglomerates who want to achieve this use media logic, by tweaking the rhythm, grammar, and presentation format of news stories to elicit the greatest impact. Did you know that some news stations work with consultants who offer fear-based topics that are pre-scripted, outlined with point-of-view shots, and have experts at-the-ready? This practice is known as stunting or just-add-water reporting. Often, these practices present misleading information and promote anxiety in the viewer.

. . . What occurs psychologically for the viewer is a fragmented sense of knowing what’s real, which sets off feelings of hopelessness and helplessness – experiences known to worsen depression.”

Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media

Fear mongering is a successful strategy for acquiring and holding power. Peel back the top layer of this onion to look at the underlying human dynamic.

The fear mongerer controls the subject, the solution, the delivery means, and the debate, while the audience experiences heightened anxiety, worsening depression, hopelessness and helplessness. The exchange between mongerer and audience disempowers the audience and empowers the mongerer.

It is an inherently political transaction with a winner and losers, and its application infects public policy and politics at every level of government. Statesmanship died long ago, probably sometime before the modern progressive [aggressive] era. Selling emotional fears to control people proved far more effective than upholding arcane constitutional constructs.

Currently in Elbert County, lobbyists for increased and prolonged planning and zoning rely heavily on the fear tactic, as reported in various local news sources.

But these same people – Democrats and Republicans – who planned Elbert County’s economic stagnation, are now clamoring for more planning and zoning. Ironically, after more than a decade of their dead Elbert County economy, it would be far more rational to fear them and the government planning they promote, than the fears they traffic in.

But that recognition destroys the illusion the Thayers, Shippers, Browns, Crisans, Rosses, etc., must maintain to keep themselves relevant and in power.

So, embrace the fears they sell to you, forget the consequences of their past leadership we already live with, give up hope of ever finding a job in Elbert County, and let this place continue its slide into a stagnant retirement community.

– Or –

Disavow their false god of planning, get government out of our local economy, repeal their oppressive zoning laws, invite the charlatans to return to the planned disaster zones from which they escaped, and let the free market transform Elbert County into a sustainable economy where people have jobs and raise families.