Well, howdy there, internet people, it's Bo, again.

So tonight we're going to talk about President Reagan, fear, love, and a science fiction cliche.

There's a cliche in science fiction books and movies it gets played out so often that people probably

think it's true that it's a reality. You've seen it in Independence Day. It's a good example of it.

When the people from outer space arrive, what happens?

The entire world bands together, holds hands,

and defeats whatever it is.

Reagan talked about this once.

Probably one of the weirdest things he's ever said in public.

He said, perhaps we need some outside universal threat to make us recognize this common bond.

I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.

Sounds good. The aliens show up and we all hold hands and seeing we are the world and at the end of the movie everything's better.

But see, it sounds like a message of love.

It sounds like a message of interconnectedness, that common bond, right? But it's not. It's not. It's a message of fear. And it's telling us exactly how government governs.

We can't try to achieve this recognition of our common bond, this love, this interconnectedness, unless

we have something to be afraid of because that makes it really easy to motivate

people.

If you didn't have fear to unite people,

well then you would have to actually work, lead.

It was true then and it's true now. The thing is that's not how it actually plays out though,

when we have that universal threat.

It's not what happens. It never is. We become more fragmented and the powers that be,

...