Both Jon's and Eric's responses are helpful. We don't need to be overly persnickety about the token "scared", even though it seems reasonable given its dictionary definition(s) and connotations, more at "startle" than "frightened".
But the *gist* is that our modern tendency to low information comms (e.g. Tweets and hot takes) smush these things together. They literally and almost physically force us to make false equivalences. Jon's example of "stage fright" is perfect. And early on, I invoked trypophobia. Are these "fears"? I don't think so. But that token, "fear", is ambiguous enough to cover many finer grained categories, whereas I maintain "scare" is not. Yes, words are abused all the time. E.g. "red scare". But one of the ways we *should* be teaching people information hygiene is to notice when a word's being abused, especially for recognizing political propaganda like the Israelis and Trump(s) are pumping out like firehoses. And then Eric suggests we shouldn't *expect* people to be able a) to distinguish their feelings from one another and/or b) to formulate different descriptions of any 2 feelings. I disagree. I fully expect people to be capable of both (a) and (b). If you find you're not capable of it, then perhaps recognize you need some work. Lots of people complain about therapy-speak these days. But if I run across someone so emotionally stunted they can't describe the difference between feeling scared versus anxious, I can't help but wonder why. And this sort of thing is *especially* true if you have a big platform. We should expect more of our role models. As for *caring* what Pink or Mackelmore feel: Sure. But I do care who their opinions influence. E.g. https://apnews.com/article/trump-israel-weapons-sales-gaza-eb48cb7ecf773ffc472fbafc995aef2a On 9/17/26 12:03 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
Pretty sure I don’t care what Pink or Macklemore thinks or feels or what virtues they think they are signaling.
On 9/17/26 11:27 AM, Jon Zingale wrote:
To what extent is this about anxiety, fear, and the perception of threat? I grew up near several roller-coaster parks. As a kid, I felt a lot of anxiety about going on rides with my siblings. That was fear of something anticipated, maybe imagined. Getting off the roller coaster was different. My body had actually been thrown around, safely but intensely, in exactly the way the ride was meant to thrill. Perhaps it was simulating something like being in the toothy maw of a T-Rex. Checking in with my body afterward felt more like a response to something that had actually happened. On a battlefield, I assume both defenders and aggressors feel scared. What is less clear to me is what presenting as scared is supposed to do socially or politically. My band plays 2nd Street Rufina on Friday. Is stage fright the same as being scared? When I see my little boy today after a week at his mom’s, he may need time to warm up. Is that reticence also fear? There is also the response to imagined relations between imagined communities. I often experience something like a generalized fear of being inappropriately classified. That is, perhaps oddly, the subject of quite a few uncomfortable dreams: I am back in middle school, somehow also the age I am now, and no one seems to understand that it makes no sense for me to be there. In my often younger, leftist circles, I feel real pressure to constantly signal virtue: to present as an empathetic cis white male when nothing in my soul could feel further from that description. Socially, I can feel a persistent kind of body dysmorphia, in which my presentation and my being are almost never aligned. I keep hoping that a long observed record of behavior will outweigh the immediate classification, but honestly, who is paying that much attention anyway?
On 9/17/26 11:22 AM, Eric Charles wrote:
I agree with everything you are saying /except /the claim that it somehow means Pink couldn't have been "scared" in a proper sense. Now, obviously, I don't know if Pink /was /scared. You might be right that she probably wasn't. She obviously /might /be honestly confusing some related phenomenon for being scared (like being nervous, or concerned), or she might be engaging in pure performative bullishit. But we don't know for sure that she wasn't. I'm not "empathetic" with Pink, I'm just saying that she might not be lying. The ability of Jewish mothers in particular to be legitimately, debilitatingly, scared over things that most find non-threatening is impressive. Whatever behavioral or phenomenological thing you want "scared" to mean, they can do it. The idea that I might not give my kid a Covid test when they are sick for a weekend can give my mother all the same symptoms she would have if an unknown intruder was rasacking her living room. She is genuinely scared after a synagogue shooting, even though she hasn't been to a synagogue in years, and ditto after the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" rally, despite being nowhere nearby. And if she understood half the Nazi dog-whistles that sounded during the last election cycle, those would have scared her as well. Not to go all Nick on you... but... Let's say we have proof that someone /has /"bought into the idea that non-threat triggers like 'Free Palestine' are as threatening as imminent threats" and you and I /agree /that is a false equivalence. Of course, we don't necessarily mean that they can consciously articulate such an "idea", we mean that they embody it. They have a system designed to respond --- behaviorally, cognitively, emotionally, physiologically --- to respond to immediate physical threats, and as a result of whatever screwed up past history they have, it has come to also respondto non-threat triggers. Why wouldn't we describe such a response as "being scared" in either scenario? It is a mistaken response, sure, but that doesn't change what the response is.
-- 8647 ⊥ ɐןןǝdoɹ ǝ uǝןƃ ὅτε oi μὲν ἄλλοι κύνες τοὺς ἐχϑροὺς δάκνουσιν, ἐγὰ δὲ τοὺς φίλους, ἵνα σώσω.
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