In ordinary life, fear is often a fitting response to danger - Hobbes

Thomas Hobbes , the 17th-century political philosopher, understood fear.

On the Hobbesian picture, fear is a fitting response to instability and insecurity.

We are living through our own historical moment in which a media revolution, social fracturing and culture wars are redefining society and politics.

Almost half of private-sector employees in the US do not have the option of saving for retirement through work.

The US is the only developed nation in the world to have the phenomenon known as medical bankruptcy’ Inflation is also a source of insecurity for many.

And when instability and insecurity take hold of the citizenry, the political project is in peril.

An economic system that values market efficiency over creating security and stability erodes the central planks of our lives work, home and health.

Political society is meant to solve this problem by protecting us against uncertainty and insecurity.

Many people for whom the system of government doesn’t offer protection from daily insecurity and instability.

Trump ’s proposed solution is authoritarianism (as he said in 2016 : I, alone, can fix it’). The problem with this solution is that it ends up trading one source of insecurity our fractured political system for another the whims of an individual whose principal interest is his own power.