Normally, I embrace fear. I traffic in fear. Fear has been good to yours truly.
But if there's anything scaring me these days, it's the blatant misuse of fear in regards to health care reform. I am appalled at the brazen lies being propagated by opponents of reform specifically to scare the elderly and other vulnerable segments of our society. Pushing untruths about "death panels" and "pulling the plug on Grandma" are not helping the debate.
If we're going to achieve effective health care in this country, we need an honest public discussion based on facts: how do we pay for reform, how will it work, who will be covered?
These are important issues than cannot be solved while lobbyists, pundits and "tea-baggers" are muddying the waters by marketing fear. The only people who should be scared by health care reform are those who make a profit off of other people's suffering and illness.
Other things that frighten me:
I'm scared by the enormous amount of bottled water being consumed today, instead of people drinking filtered tap water. Did you know that nearly 90 percent of those plastic bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose? Hey, there's only so much room on this planet folks...
Also on the environmental front, I'm scared by the liberal contingent of Escalade driving, thug wheeled, Blackberry-yakking, GPS-searching moms who idle their huge vehicles in front of elementary schools for 30 minutes a day while waiting to pick up their children. Yeah, they'll give lip service to being eco-friendly, but five days a week they'll sit in their SUV's spewing carbon monoxide into the air. And hey, when did kids stop walking to school?
I also fear that kids themselves are losing the spirit of adventure that I grew up with. Thanks to a culture of instant gratification and constant connectivity an entire generation is growing up online. Instead of opening up their horizons to travel and new cultures, they spend their time communicating via text on cell phones (even when they're standing next to each other), socializing from afar on Facebook and downloading their entertainment from the internet. The technologies of convenience are making our sphere of exploration and experience smaller.
Finally, one thing that's scaring me in a good way is a recent Swedish horror film movie I saw called Let The Right One In. Just when I thought vampires had "jumped the shark," comes this chilling and disturbing movie (based on an equally frightening novel) that had me trembling like a teenager who had just discovered Stephen King, Clive Barker and Anne Rice on the same day. It's a complete reinvention of the vampire myth, and an extremely dark and creepy one at that. I highly recommend you find a copy of it on DVD, surrender to the subtitles and immerse yourself in a truly good scare.
Robert Englund is currently starring in FEARnet.com's Fear Clinic.