WFFJ-TV

By:  David Deschesne
Editor/Publisher,
Fort Fairfield Journal
September 6, 2023

One of the worst things you can do if you’re lost in the woods is panic. When a person panics and fear sets in, they tend to make irrational decisions. Driven by fear, the lost individual continues to wander at a frantic pace in one direction, then another, in hopes of finding their way back. But in reality they get themselves more and more lost deeper into the woods. In their fear, they lose track of time; in their haste they work up a sweat. Before they know it, it’s dusk, they don’t have a shelter or a fire and it’s getting cold as night falls. Then, with it too dark to see, they settle down, cold, tired and more lost than they were. Hypothermia sets in because their body is wet with sweat and the evening temperature has dropped to 40 degrees Fahrenheit. By morning, they are dead from dehydration and hypothermia. This is the worst case scenario, but not impossible to play out
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Meanwhile, the afternoon before, search teams were in the woods searching for this lost person but since the victim did not stay in one spot they were unwittingly eluding their rescuers. More than once, the search team ended up in a location where the lost victim had been, but since the victim was panicked and afraid they kept moving, rather than doing the rational thing which is to prepare a makeshift shelter, work on building a fire for warmth and waiting in one location to be found.

Fear has a way of clouding judgment and causing people to make bad decisions. Regardless of the situation, fear, anger and hysteria conspire to prevent cool thinking and level-headed analysis of the situation in order to problem-solve, recognize the pros and cons of a situation and work toward a desirable outcome.

For example, suppose you have a problem with your cell phone account and are unable to link it with your internet provider. There are two ways you can handle it. First, you could get angry, call a customer service representative, stay on hold for an hour, get even angrier and when the representative finally picks up the phone, you hurl a barrage of insults and verbal attacks on them and their company. This elevated emotional level not only keeps you in an elevated state of hysteria, but it can adversely affect the customer service representative—the person whose mind you need to be in a good place so they can help you with your problem. If you elevate the emotion with the customer service representative, they will respond with anxiety, frustration and self-preservation—all perfectly normal responses but not conducive to solving your problem. The second way to handle it is to calm your mind and emotions. Think carefully before you speak and when the representative comes on the line, explain your problem slowly and carefully so they can understand the situation and work toward providing a solution. When problem solving, emotion is wasted energy.

Two types of people
There are two basic types of people in the world: those who lead with their emotions and those who lead with critical thinking. The former are called “right brain” and are generally the more artistic, imaginative, creative and nurturing while the latter are called “left brain” with the characteristics of logical thought, rationality, reason and are usually pretty good with mathematics, working with their hands and seeing through technical or mechanical issues. There is, of course, a continuum from one type to the other and some people do well in either scenario. It’s not that the two groups use the actual respective side of their brain that their characteristics represent—the status of “right” or “left” brain simply refers to which side of the brain generally handles those activities—conscious thought and reactions happen elsewhere. For example, everyone uses the cerebrum for complex thought and decisions and the pre-frontal cortex for predicting outcomes of their potential decisions and experiencing feelings of frustration, tension and anxiety as it predicts the various potential outcomes of those events. The amygdala is evolutionarily one of the most ancient parts of the brain. It responds to stress and anxiety and triggers the “fight or flight” mechanism. People who make decisions based on their emotions are usually more triggered by the amygdala than those who think their problems through rationally (unless the problem is a charging bear, then it’s fight or flight!)

In politics, those on the left (i.e. Democrats/Socialists) tend to make decisions from an emotional standpoint while those on the right (i.e. Conservatives/Republicans) tend to make decisions based on a careful evaluation of the situation at hand and use logic and reason to come to a conclusion.

For example, when it was reported that the Nazi group known as the Blood Tribe was setting up a base camp in Northern Maine, Democrat Representative Joe Baldacci nearly lost his mind. The Blood Tribe protests at LGBTQ events by wearing full face masks to conceal their identity and scream at their opponents to instill fear, hysteria and psychological discomfort.

Operating from an emotion-driven position, Rep. Baldacci reflexively announced he was going to introduce legislation that would make the Blood Tribe’s activities illegal and “send them back to Texas.” He also suggested his legislation would prohibit wearing face masks while openly carrying a weapon.

Legislating to Alleviate Fear
What Rep. Baldacci was really doing is projecting his fear into the ether then proposing legislation that would alleviate his fear—not actually solve the problem. Like screaming hysterically at a customer service representative, Baldacci’s comments betray his inability to think rationally as his decisions are governed exclusively by emotions. He is unable to see the logic that his comments and suggestions would use the police power of government to engage in the same tactics used by the Nazi group he purports to oppose. It’s also interesting that he wants to ban the wearing of face masks under certain conditions when it was his political party that wholeheartedly supported the mandating of face masks during the recent media-created COVID “plannedemic.”

When people like politicians are given the police power via the ability to legislate, then make laws based on their emotions, society will always suffer because problem-solving decisions are rarely useful or beneficial when made from an emotional place. In fact, those decisions are usually harmful or counterproductive.

During that COVID plannedemic, fear was used by the Left to gin up highly emotional-charged reactions in the public in order to quash individual thinking and exercise dictatorial control over the populace. This resulted in the mandating of face masks to stop the respiratory virus from spreading even though every scientific trial ever conducted showed face masks do not work in that scenario. But, when making decisions based on emotions, facts don’t have a voice in the discussion.

We all saw that whenever anyone went on social media to mention the randomized control trials on face masks and how they do not stop respiratory virus transmission, they had their posts censored and their accounts removed. These censorship decisions were made by a cabal of leftists who are in charge of the social media companies who also make reflexive decisions based on emotions rather than facts. When emotions rule, logic, rationality and reason are always censored. It seems they want to run through the forest lost and confused rather than stop and think things through. That strategy rarely improves a person’s situation and often makes it worse.

On the other side, many left-brain thinking conservatives were busy reading scientific data and analyzing the trends in countries that did not use face masks and found the new data corroborated the historical scientific data—that face masks do not stop respiratory viral transmission. But, they were ridiculed and had their comments labeled as “misinformation” by the loud and vocal group whose thought process is ruled exclusively by their emotions.

Typically, those who chose to wear face masks did so from an emotional standpoint in order to make themselves feel safe, or to virtue signal to their peers that they are trying to make others safe. This, regardless of the fact that face masks in reality do not stop respiratory viruses from spreading; they are window dressing and that is all. Those are the facts, facts emotion-driven individuals are simply unable to see or comprehend. Do you want those types of people in charge of dictating how you live? Does that sound like a good idea?

Neither Side Can See the Other
While both sides of today’s polarized political dichotomy will vehemently agree theirs is the best decision, they will rarely be able to see the other side’s point of view because their brains simply aren’t wired to see it. That disconnect is exacerbated by the tribalism of groups through social media, the news sources they consume information from and a desire to fit into their tribe—which is human nature.

Unfortunately the emotion-driven Left is now, in 2023, beginning to re-embrace lockdown protocols (which ultimately did nothing to stop the spread of the virus), face mask usage and social distancing – all of which were as useless as pixie dust at solving the COVID problem. President Trump recently came out against those measures which will only polarize the Left into their position, even if their position is not only wrong, but indeed socially destructive.

Paging Dr. Mills… “NOT!”
Speaking of socially destructive measures done using the power of government, Maine’s Democrat governor, Janet “Big Sister” Mills mandated from a position of highly charged emotion when she required all medical personnel in the State be required to receive an experimental, and now known to be very toxic, gene therapy drug that was masquerading and marketed as a “vaccine” for SARS-CoV-2 even though it was soon found that the drug/“vaccine” did not stop people from catching the virus, or prevent them from spreading it to others. Hundreds of thousands of people were adversely affected by the experimental drugs across the U.S. Yet, the emotion-based mandate remained in effect (it has since been quietly rescinded, two years too late).

What’s worse is Mills is not even a medical doctor and even if she were, she did not take the opportunity to examine all of the people she forced to take the shot in order to evaluate their personal medical history, allergies, physiology or any other attributes real doctors consider when helping a person make health care decisions. Instead, Mills ran haphazardly through the proverbial forest prescribing medications she had no business prescribing simply because she had the perceived power to do so.

Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Mills was given a pass by the voters in the subsequent election cycle where she was re-elected by a majority of voters who saw nothing wrong with her erratic and dangerous behavior because they, too, make decisions based on emotion and were thus in her camp. Running randomly through the forest when you’re lost is a dangerous activity to undertake even if it feels like the right thing to do from an emotional standpoint. Giving that type of person the police power and a massive group of emotion-driven supporters can lead to literally deadly results for everyone.

Avoid the Stampede
The solution is, of course, to not follow leaders who are held hostage to their emotions. Calm, critical thinking is what’s needed when dealing with any problem or bad situation. However, giving a mass of emotionally-charged people the police power and a leader who leads by emotion instead of logic, makes it very difficult to resist the crowd of sheep stampeding to the slaughterhouse, each jockeying for position to see who can be at the front of the line to get their throat cut first.

Decisions about public policy and responses to perceived threats that are being made now and in the future must be examined a little more carefully to determine if they are based on emotion or fact. If they are based on emotion and “feel good” measures designed to help alleviate fear rather than solve the problem, they must be ignored and called out. I know that’s difficult to do in a cancel culture society but it must be done continually. We must stop these ill-informed people from forcing us to stampede through the forest because we are not going to find our way out following them as leaders. We must stop, slow down, think and make rational decisions based on the facts we have at hand. Then, we can solve the problems we face. But that means metaphorically putting our emotions in a box on a shelf and refusing to let the irrational, fear-driven emotional masses from ruining our lives and the fabric of society.

We all like to feel good and enjoy a low level of fear and there is nothing wrong with that. Not all decisions that are based on emotion are bad. However, when life and limb or matters of health and public policy are concerned, emotion should have no place in that decision-making process. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

We as a society cannot afford to continue to be frantically led screaming through the forest while the rescue team struggles to keep up with us.

Think inwardly about your own decision making process in extreme situations. Are you led by emotion, or calm, thoughtful analysis of the situation at hand?