Yesterday I shared a meme on my newly revived Facebook page. My friends “liked” or “loved” or “cared” that post. The meme contains a great story. I loved the story and appreciated the “truth” of it at first. But then I thought. The problem is that while the story may or may not be fiction, it certainly contains a lie.

I love story. I believe story-telling is the essential human activity not shared by other species. [Unless you consider the dance of bees indicating the location of flowers to be a story?] We understand events and our lives and the decisions we make each day through stories. Statistics and evidence may be part of the story, but it is down to the story itself that we choose to believe or disbelieve.

Here’s the story I did not write:

When I was a HS sophomore – decades ago! – my World History teacher was Mrs. Holloway, but we all called her Granny Holloway. She was a slight woman, scarcely 5 feet tall, seemingly fragile, but full of vim and vinegar….you know the type. She could speak for hours about the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Inquisition, the Industrial Revolution, and the World Wars. She never sat while she lectured, never stood at a lectern, but moved around the room making eye contact with all of her students. She was demanding too, and I can’t remember how many papers were sent back to me because she would note “you can do better than this, Miss Schaal.”

One day during class, an office aid interrupted her lecture to hand her a note. She read it silently, apologized, and said she needed to leave the room. We knew it had to be important because Granny Holloway stopped lectures for no one.

We sat in the room talking to one another when the door opened, and in walked Mrs. Abels, another teacher in our HS. She explained to us that Granny had been faced with an emergency, a serious one, and it was questionable if she would even be returning to finish out the semester. We were stunned. Would we get a chance to tell her goodbye? Would we get updates, so we would know she was ok? Mrs. Abels assured us that we need not worry, that Granny was safe but needed time away, and that the best thing we could do for her, and the best way we could show our devotion to her, was to be cooperative with her replacement. Mrs. Abels confirmed that she had been asked and had agreed to step in as Granny’s replacement.

Cheer up, she told us, this could be a good thing. Other teachers still believed in endless homework and projects with deadlines and hard work. She would not bring that into our class. She believed in clean slates. If there were grades that we did not like, she could give us a chance to bring them up. She asked us what suggestions we had to make the semester a better learning experience. Someone mentioned that lectures were boring and we wanted more films. Done, she said. Someone else mentioned that a free day now and then would help us if we needed to catch up on work in other classes. She didn’t see a problem with that. She asked us how we felt about an end-of-semester party. Um, yeah, sounded very good to us. And on and on.

Mrs. Abels listened intently and agreed to all of our suggestions, continually emphasizing that her concern was that we have a good learning experience and enjoy the semester. She also reminded us that we were lucky not to be sent out to other classes where we would be working to catch up and, of course, that this was all for Granny.

Near the end of the period, shortly before the bell rang, the door opened and Granny sauntered in with her usual Granny Holloway attitude. “How did they do?,” she asked. “Marvelous,” said Mrs. Abels. “They were completely in my hands.”

Granny then faced us and said “And that, my students, is how a dictator takes over a nation. Not with guns or tanks or laws or mandates. They do it using false promises and gifts”

I can’t remember a lesson all through 12 years of public school that made such an impression on me, and has stayed with me.

We are among wolves in sheep clothing, many are being deceived.

—Facebook

It’s a great story and a great trick used to make a powerful point. Tell us what we want to hear! Great! Or is it?

I initially posted that my beloved sophomore high school World History teacher might have done something like this, but on second thought, no. Mrs. Sherrick didn’t lie to her students. This is not truth and she would not have pulled such a trick on us, just to make us feel bad, and not even to teach us a valuable lesson. [It’s not as bad as the people who make their child cry by pretending to have eaten all their Halloween candy—how is that funny? Making a child cry for a joke is heartless. I digress again.]

It claims that the promise of giving you anything you want is how dictators thrive.

Is that what dictators do? Maybe. Some might. But I can’t think of one off the top of my head. The examples that come to mind operated on a fear-and-scapegoat platform. Fascists have historically found their audience through fear, resentment, and anger. Think Mussolini and Hitler and others from our more recent past. Think why 50,000 Americans died in Vietnam. Think about today’s Republican party. The current political hard right is all about making us afraid and angry, by creating crises and panic where nothing is terribly wrong to begin with, and by reinforcing our unease and suspicion that we could and should be better off if it weren’t for…

The meme is wrong to suggest that false promises of betterment is all that motivates political loyalty. If it were that simple, sure. I get it. But today and for the last century we have experienced something else. I can look at the political campaigns of venomous over-reaching men around the world, and it wasn’t promising a better life that worked in their favor. They threatened our safety and futures. They warned that one group or another intends to harm us. Today, too many Americans are motivated by fear and anger. The elite on the far right have worked hard to instill anger over imagined privilege on the left, resentment toward some minority groups, and fear toward others. Were are told over and over that politicians are never to be trusted and some of us have so thoroughly accepted that message that we expect and accept lies and fail to trust or even consider the truth.

Yes, we need to wake up to promises of a better world, we need to wake up to the power of threats. We need to decide if we want to hurt others or lift everyone? Would we prefer to punish or reward? Carrot or stick?

I fear too many of us prefer that stick. They trust punishment. They trust the beating to satisfy and predict a better future, so long as that beating is promised to happen to someone else.

Are we heading toward dystopia? Most people seem far more interested in the obvious ways things can go wrong than in how to set things right. Carrot or stick?

Motivated by hope or fear? If fear is what motivates you, expect to be faced with threats and warnings only of catastrophe. If you are looking for hope—there is always danger—resist blame and seek the best, most generous plan for fixing things. Ensure the ones who make the promises do their best to keep their promises to everyone, not merely to serve their own selfish interests and power. Choose the carrot.

We have that choice.