Skyler Adlata’s version of the American dream is pitch perfect.

When fear is used to stoke a spirit of anger and suspicion, it gives rise to a kind of emotional inversion. Instead of fear giving rise to courage and in time maturing into hope, we view hope as adolescent, courage as futile, and fear as mature. This is wrong. Fear is not the proper end. Fear is useful only if it orients our agency toward a truly proper end: hope. As long as we refuse to nurse and condition our participation with fear to grow into something more, we will remain small and worried for all our lives.