Wow, what a an amazing and moving essay J. Cheers for sharing. This internalized terror is what our current politics situation is all about. As Hannah Arendt observed : “Totalitarianism is never content to rule by external means, namely, through the state and a machinery of violence; thanks to its peculiar ideology and the role assigned to it in this apparatus of coercion, totalitarianism has discovered a means of dominating and terrorizing human beings from within.” I wish I could better communicate this to my fellow citizens, despite the facts that so few would listen and some relish the notion of having another Hitler. Note: https://medium.com/@daneke/the-fanatical-fascist-fungus-is-upon-us-please-america-wake-up-and-smell-the-jackboot-polish-b81f695a472f