Fear belongs to man, not to the world. The world feels no fear, at any time, in any place. We are “an unhappy people in a happy world”—Wallace Stevens’s last stance. Feelings of fear—personal, cognitive fear—allow us to feel anguish while lying in a hammock on a beautiful day, allow us to feel as if our life were threatened when the sky is blue and the meadow at peace. Raymond Queneau:

The poet is never “inspired, if by inspiration we mean...a function of the poet’s mood, the temperature, the political situation, subjective accidents, or the subconscious. The poet is never inspired because he is the master of what others assume to be inspiration.... He’s never inspired because he’s always inspired, because the powers of poetry are always at his disposal, obedient to his will, receptive to his guidance.

Fear is but is too often false.

It is false in its origins, its perceptions, and its fruits.

"...the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

Last evening I was talking with my father who fears whoever is elected will be unable to positively engage the profound problems at hand.

I agree it will be a difficult decade or more.  But I reminded my dad he had been born in the worst year of the Great Depression, his older brother was sent to battle the Nazi threat, most of his adult life had been shadowed by the threat of communism and nuclear warfare.

There is cause for concern, for needed effort, for courage. In confronting our shared challenges fear is unnecessary and unhelpful.