Bruce Lear lives in Sioux City and has been connected to Iowa’s public schools for 38 years. He taught for eleven years and represented educators as an Iowa State Education Association regional director for 27 years until retiring. He can be reached at BruceLear2419@gmail.com   

I don’t want to be scared. I avoid roller coasters. I don’t like horror movies. I’m not a fan of people jumping out even if they’re yelling “surprise,” and I don’t pay to be scared in Halloween haunted houses.

But when I was 15, the church youth group went to a haunted house sponsored by another church. Even then, I tried to find an excuse to skip out, but it was a church event. How scary could it be?

It was pitch black as we walked through streamers hanging from the ceiling. There were tableaus lit along the way including a Mummy revving a chain saw, a witch stirring a pot, and ghosts dancing to scarry music. Pretty lame, I thought. Toward the end I walked through a narrow passage. 

Suddenly, a guy in a leather coat jumped out and grabbed me by the shoulders. He was wearing a mask. I struggled. I got one arm free and slugged him. I heard a thud as he fell, the lights flashed on. His mask came off. 

I’d decked a deacon.

Back then, every boy wanted to be Billy Jack, not a guy who’s scared enough at a church haunted house to punch a volunteer. It was embarrassing.

But I was 15. 

Former President Donald Trump is 78, and he seems scared of a lot, and he takes wild swings at everything terrifying him.

Trump seems to think America is one big, haunted house. For him, it’s not populated with ghosts and goblins but with things that terrify him like immigrants, LGBTQ people, Democrats, DEI, woke folks, and anyone he considers to be “other.”

He lives in terror.

Recently Trump spoke to the “Moms Against Other Ideas” Aka “Moms for Liberty.” He spent a lot of his speech scaring the moms into believing undocumented immigrants were crowding out American kids in public schools and he enhanced the scare by saying, “They don’t even speak English.” 

He also claimed kids were going to school and coming back home “with an operation” to change their gender. That’s right: according to Trump, public schools were performing gender changing surgeries in secret. Any other group would laugh him off the stage, but the “Moms Against Other ideas,” were no doubt gasping and cringing in fear.

During the recent debate, Vice President Kamala Harris stoked Trump’s biggest fears when she taunted him about not being as wealthy as he brags, his awful judgment about race, and his followers leaving his rallies early out of boredom and exhaustion. The rest of the debate featured a snarling Trump lashing out.

She just smiled.  

Trump’s other fears were on full display during the debate. Repeating an urban myth first spread by right-wing activists and neo-Nazis, Trump claimed Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were stealing pets and eating them. His running mate JD Vance also amplified the lie.

While this bizarre, unfounded accusation spawned a lot of funny memes, it wasn’t funny. Trump’s fear spawned violent threats causing the Springfield city hall to be evacuated on September 12 because of bomb threats to multiple facilities throughout the city. The alleged perpetrator expressed “frustration related to Haitian immigrants,” Mayor Bob Rue said. Some local schools were also evacuated on September 13.

Recently Trump threatened to figuratively punch other groups he fears. On his social media platform Truth Social, he threatened to punish lawyers, political operatives, donors, and allegedly illegal voters and corrupt election officials. “WHEN I WIN,” Trump wrote, “those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. to the fullest extent of the law which includes long prison sentences.”

It was humiliating at age 15 to punch someone out of fear. My friends didn’t try to make excuses for me. There was no excuse. 

But when Trump lashes out from fear, his MAGA minions shrug and tie themselves in knots defending his actions. It’s pathetic and divisive. Let’s turn the page so we can move forward free from unreasonable fear.

---

Top illustration of a haunted house in a forest is by Dieter Holstein, available via Shutterstock.