They are inseparable. They always have been. What besides fear would impel anyone to give up his power to another, in exchange for protection -- whether that protection be from enemies, from natural perils, or from the wrath of the protector? Niccolo Machiavelli understood that. Karl Rove understands it, and so does each of the current presidential and vice-presidential candidates. The political protection racket is legal, while unofficial protection rackets are prosecutable, not because they are essentially different, but because the politicians in power write the laws and pay the salaries of their enforcers.
Incumbents have an edge in elections generally, and it is not just because of name recognition and greater access to the means for election fraud. Some who support the incumbents believe, "better the devil you know than the one you don't," meaning that they fear the unknown more than they do the familiar miscreants. Others, who may vote for change if they believe in the secrecy of their ballot, will speak out publicly in favor of the incumbent because they fear reprisals otherwise. I know people who wait cagily to see who leads in the polls before placing the projected winners' campaign signs in their front yards. It has ever been in the mouse's best interest to curry favor with the cat, at least in the view of the fearful mouse.
Candidates try to convince voters that their opponents will not protect them from enemies and natural or economic perils as well as they themselves will. It appears to me, after watching the results of a quarter century of elections in Alaska, that most voters here are more afraid of unemployment and poverty than they are of catastrophic climate change and ecological disaster. In other words, they are greedy and short-sighted. Of course, the winners of those elections were the ones who made the most extravagant false promises of jobs and prosperity. Once in power, they had no need to deliver on the promises. The voices of dissent raised in protest were no more effective against the fear-mongers' propaganda than was that little boy who tried to tell everyone the emperor had no clothes. All a politician needs in order to succeed is to manufacture or imagine a peril and convince people that he can protect them from it.
Every argument against anarchy that I have encountered has been fear-driven. People are paralyzed by fear, afraid of their fellow humans, and afraid of their inadequacy to deal with danger, afraid of responsibility and afraid of failure, despite generations of observations of incompetent leaders who failed in their responsibilities and created one disaster after another. Why do you poor, dumb, sick suckers always think someone else can do a better job than you can? Or is it just that you don't want to make the effort or bear the burden, and the ones who do, and have done such a lousy job of it, are those who understand and crave the perks of power? Or rather than being fearful, lazy and irresponsible, are you spiritually immune, above all that greed and power-hunger, content to just be, and let the world be in the mess it's in? You must derive some comfort and consolation from those beliefs, some comfort and consolation that I just don't have, and don't want.
Here's a little medicine for your fear, if you can take it straight up.
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