But it was profoundly important historically, with implications well beyond America, where George Washington earned his battle stripes in the Ohio Valley and black slaves helped erect a wooden stockade across what is now Chambers Street in Lower Manhattan to repel a feared invasion by the French and their Indian allies.
SPF 150 actually repels the fear and anxiety and vulnerability and paralyzing paralysis that affects so many of us each and every time we walk outside during daylight hours.
If you weaponise a fortress to repel people who fear hunger or war, they will seek ever more desperate ways to penetrate it.
After a primary debate over contraception that party strategists feared would repel centrist women, Mr. Romney has signaled that he would not seek to change a pay equity law broadly opposed by Republicans.
Mr Johnson has publicly deplored the new 50% top rate of income tax, introduced by the previous Labour government and retained by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, which he fears will repel wealth-creators.
You can be repelled by your fear and retreat to safety.
Greeted by cheers from supporters in the room and hailed by radicals across Europe, Corbyn's triumph opened up the prospect of deep splits within Labour with some fearing he will repel voters with radical policies that include unilateral nuclear disarmament, nationalization and wealth taxes.
Some Tory Eurosceptics are understood to want Mr Farage to take a back seat, fearing the controversial leader will repel more swing voters than he attracts.
In short, whether we are drawn to relativism in the hope that it will encourage desirable kinds of tolerance, or we are repelled by relativism for fear that it will promote undesirable kinds of tolerance, both the hope and the fear are misplaced.
And probably this fear, more than any other, is driving him to repel threats to his rule.
