In Biden’s America, Citizens Live in Fear

Michael Busler
3 min readJan 10, 2022

Joe Biden is adamant: we have so much more to fear than “fear itself.”

During Joe Biden’s first year in office, America’s demeanor has changed dramatically from the optimism characteristic of the prior administration to near-total fear. Biden’s policies have led to alarm for taxpaying citizens especially.

Americans want to feel safe and secure. The prior administration always confronted adversaries with a “peace through strength” philosophy. ISIS was eliminated, leaders of other terrorist movements were brought to justice, Russia knew not to confront the United States, China and North Korea were held in check. And in the Middle East, historic peace treaties were signed while Iran was starved by U.S. sanctions. As a result, they, too, had to curtail their terrorist activities. Even progress on their nuclear ambitions slowed.

The prior administration had all but sealed the southern border to stop the flow of illegal immigration, and was in the process of building a wall to permanently solve the problem. Until the COVID pandemic, Americans felt very secure and had little to fear.

In Biden’s first year, he has reversed nearly all of the prior administration’s foreign policies. He has emboldened both Russia and China to act aggressively. China is now threatening Taiwan and Russia is threatening Ukraine. Neither China nor Russia seem to be concerned about any U.S. action.

He has projected weakness to our friends and foes alike with his chaotic and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. He has relieved some sanctions on Iran and has encouraged them to act aggressively and increase their support of terrorist groups in the region. Biden wants to renegotiate with Iran to curtail their nuclear program, but Iran feels they are now dealing from a much stronger position and they have consequently increased their demands.

He has reversed every policy on the southern border that the courts would allow. The number of illegal immigrants coming into the country has increased from just over 200,000 in 2020 to over 2 million in 2021.

Yet American anxiety over the state of the economy is paramount. Prior to the pandemic, the American economy was growing while producing almost no inflation and reaching a historic low of 3.5…

Michael Busler

Dr. Busler is an economist and a public policy analyst. He is a Professor of Finance at Stockton University. His op-ed columns appear in Townhall, Newsmax.