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Fear leads to a loss of freedom. When we're afraid, we give power to politicians that promise deal with it swiftly. Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on f

Fear leads to a loss of freedom. When we're afraid, we give power to politicians that promise deal with it swiftly. Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking. Then the pandemic hit and the left finally got their turn to exercise it. Has the war on terror stopped? No? When do we get to hop onto a plane without undressing ourselves? Oh, but now there's a war against viruses? So you have to undress yourself and take a shot. Next, there will be a war on climate change. You'll have to undress yourself, take a shot, and prove that you only took public transit to the airport, and that you haven't eaten beef for 48 hours prior because it leads to more gas from farts, which is bad for the environment. When the next financial crisis hits (and it hasn't yet), and a large number of middle class people get wiped out again, there will be legislation to protect retail investors from the volatility of the stork market. You must go to a certified and licensed financial professional for your wealth planning. The appropriate politician from the left or right will run for office and get voted in because when most people fear something, they vote against freedom. /rant

cloutchaser 5y ago
While the right certainly had their fear based issues before the pandemic, it’s a bit of a stretch to say the left didn’t. Trump was going to become a dictator. We had 12 years to go living on earth 4 years ago. Apparently almost everyone is a white supremacist… I could go on. Why didn’t Obama revoke the patriot act if he was so on the side of non fear? Or allow more whistleblowing.
- Swenrekcah 5y ago
  European perspective here: Trump was definitely trying to make himself a dictator, just look at how he handled losing an election. Please don’t vote him in again America. Agree on moral panic issues though.
  - hnuser847 5y ago
    He was handed a global pandemic in which it was completely permissible for leaders to take on unprecedented, unlimited emergency powers, and yet he did nothing. He was actually criticized for not using his emergency powers to implement an (unconstitutional) national lockdown. If his true goal was to become a dictator, why did he do nothing when he was given the perfect opportunity?
    - cloutchaser 5y ago
    - the-dude 5y ago
      His European perspective means that it is skewed much much more "liberal" than when in the US. About half the population here thinks he is a literal monster, worthy of a Godwin.
    - Swenrekcah 5y ago
      He made no difference between himself and the state. Used the AG as his personal lawyer. Used his position to secure personal business dealings. And then tried to orchestrate a coup when he lost. He’s not literally the devil but he’s both so incompetent and corrupt that I’m frankly baffled there is such fervent support for him.
  - nradov 5y ago
    If you read American leftist media from late 2020 to January 2021 you'll find a bunch of breathless editorials claiming that Trump was about to declare martial law and assume dictatorial powers. That was obviously nonsense and displayed a complete lack of knowledge about how the US federal government and military work.
    - Kye 5y ago
      It's lack of trust more than a lack of knowledge. See: the submission title. I can see how this perspective seems reasonable if you've never been on the boot-end of unjust laws, but a lot of us over here on the left side of the center have good reason to doubt that the good parts of law and order can hold up against a sufficiently inspiring and intelligent dictator. Trump was a fool and squandered what he had. Someone will run with what he built and fumbled in the same way Obama ran with what Howard Dean built and fumbled. This is actually why I'm wary of calls to abolish the Senate and Supreme Court. They suck when you want to get stuff done, but they also give us time to organize against people who want to install a dictatorship. Our tar pit of a system and people at high levels believing in it was the only thing that stood between Trump and the genocide he'd love to give large parts of his base.
  - syshum 5y ago
    - Swenrekcah 5y ago
      I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Clinton conceded right away and notably did not urge her supporters to storm the Capitol to “rectify” the results. And regarding governors, recall that most of the swing states were under republican control. Edit: I noticed now you gave the Russian connection as the example. Russian interference was indeed the case. Many people were angry at that but there’s an important difference between being angry at it and saying the Russians “stole” the election as in “had undue influence”, versus just pretending the result was rigged and you actually won an election you lost. That was something Trump did and it undermines the democracy you build your country on. On the question of collusion the Muller report is quite informing but he explicitly didn’t want to say anything on the matter and left that to Congress.
      - cloutchaser 5y ago
      - syshum 5y ago
        I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Clinton is not a populist, she part of the establishment, her method of subversion was and is through the institutions themselves, i.e using the media, and the deep state to do the work not the people. Her power base is not the common man or woman. As to the republican governors, you seem to have confused me with a republican, I am not a supporter of either side of the uniparty coin. I am an actual anti-establishment type, not one that is only anti-establishment when my "tribe" is not in power, or when the "other side" of the uniparty is in power. I am anti-estblishment 24/7, no matter if it is republican or democrat I was no fan of Trump, never voted for him infact (nor Clinton or biden, or obama, or bush, or ....)
        Swenrekcah 5y ago
        I don’t disagree that Clinton is as establishment as it gets and there were a lot of reasons to not want her in office. I’m just triggered by the false equivalency, because unlikeable elite as she may be, her politics are more like treatable cancer for democracy whereas Trumps is like acute lead poisoning. The reason I mentioned the republican governors wasn’t to suggest you were a member, rather to suggest that if we did think those states performed election fraud then we’d expect it to be in favour of the Republican Party, right? Regardless of all that I hope you have a great weekend :)
- dontcare007 5y ago
  Heck, 20 years ago we had 10 years until climate change killed us all.
  - modo_mario 5y ago
    Media hyperbole aside especially when it comes to US conservative coverage... we still didn't get anywhere close to the measures climate scientists wish we took and we're still chugging onwards with a very slow increase in average temperatures which are in line if not above what was predicted
jimkleiber 5y ago
I think fear can do a lot of things, as you say, the loss of freedom. I also think the lack of fear can lead to the loss of freedom. Fear can help us temper our actions so we don't do things that end up hurting us severely or even killing us. That being said, I would agree that repressed fear can do us quite a bit of harm and I think it often happens because we'll say fear is bad, without just appreciating how it hurts and helps.
- headsoup 5y ago
  Only if the lack of fear is because an authority figure has managed it all for you. This creates the bigger problem of a lack of self-regulation and automatic trust in authority.
  - jimkleiber 5y ago
    I guess I meant lack of fear in a very basic way. Not being afraid to jump off a cliff can be pretty detrimental to one's freedom.
noitpmeder 5y ago
Wait how can I get some exposure to the stork market. I need to hedge my baby bets.
ZeroGravitas 5y ago
I realise this was a /rant, but it's still spectacularly misinformed and unhelpful. If your hot take on politics is that climate change, COVID and the war on terror are all the same thing and this proves the left and right are both the same, then you're part of the problem. This reads more like a smart person trying to rationalize their cognitive dissonance, when they know deep down they've found themselves on obviously the morally and factually wrong side of an argument and see no way to retreat while maintaining face.
- kylebyproxy 5y ago
  Yours seems like a particularly uncharitable interpretation compared to my reading; I didn't hear them saying D == R so much as both are susceptible to the same flaw of human nature: impulsive overreaction to stimuli we find threatening. I do agree that's an unhelpful analysis, but only because it happens to be tautological.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hhmc 5y ago
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "If your hot take on politics is that climate change, COVID and the war on terror are all the same thing " I did not read it like this, but rather that all those topics are used by politicians in the same way. To generate fear, to control people. Neverending crisis. Neverending war. Rigid, emergency exemption laws for all eternity. Very well described by Orwell in 1984 already.
- belorn 5y ago
  Neither the left or the right is arguing that climate change or COVID does not exist. The loud disagreements is about what strategy to deploy. We have nations like Germany that want to use natural gas to combat climate change, and we got France that want to use nuclear. The left leans towards natural gas, the right towards nuclear, both arguing that their strategy will lead towards an end to climate change and that the other side won't. Should vegetarian diet be part of our cultural diet, insects meal, blue agriculture, or should we focus our climate change priority on energy, transportation, heating, industry, futuristic technology and so on. With COVID we have had more strategy than can be reasonable described in a comment, some which the left favor and others that the right favors. Should we classify the Swedish strategy as "right" and the Danish strategy as "left"? Doctors all over the world disagree on what optimal treatment is and in the end it is the patient outcome that dictate who was right. The issue is that politicians get voted in because people fear the bad outcome, not because people favor one strategy above an other strategy. Thus the perception from both sides is that the "other" side do not believe that the bad outcome exist.
mschuster91 5y ago
Without fear, however, you don't get any kind of progress. Fear is powerful. Back in the 60s-80s, the world managed to use the fear of pox to eradicate the disease from existence - and most did so by instituting a vaccine mandate. Back in the late 70s/80s, the world managed to use the fear of acid rain to ban sulphur emissions (LRTAP convention). In the early 90s, the world managed to use the fear of ozone to ban CFC gas usage. Back in the Cold War, both major superpowers were too afraid of the other one to launch nuclear weapons to initiate direct warfare, and in the end the fear of global warfare led to comprehensive international agreements on reducing arms proliferation. The difference is: back then, politicians did the right thing to do based on scientific evidence and indications of issues. These days?! Scientists and activists have warned for decades about the dangers of climate change and the urgency to do something... but until now, all we got is politicians waffling around instead of actually doing anything to combat the real problems we are going to face.
- kryogen1c 5y ago
  > Without fear, however, you don't get any kind of progress. Fear is powerful. this is critically underrated. dismissing ths current feardriven environment really misses the issue. what is new now is not fear, but the communication - the market penetration. sowing dissent used to be the game of spies. now any political enemy, foreign and domestic, just has to tweet or facebook. perhaps trust SHOULD be at an all time low.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  I agree with most of what you say. However, one thing I must point out is that climate change is a complex problem with no easy solutions. As much as it sounds like we should "just turn off the oil" that would in fact lead to millions of deaths. It's possible that there are problems that are unsolvable or at least a best outcome doesn't exist. Extinction maybe inevitable.
  - mschuster91 5y ago
    > However, one thing I must point out is that climate change is a complex problem with no easy solutions. Indeed, but right now we are doing almost nothing meaningful. We shame people from taking vacation flights once every couple years but don't ban short distance "business flights" for corporate executives with a completely bonkers view on how important they are. We still don't mandate the end of "bunker fuel" burning on ships or the usage of land-line power of cruise ships. Instead of building electrified freight and passenger rail, large parts of the rail network run on decades old diesel engines, large parts of freight runs on trucks and in the US the word "high speed passenger rail" is as inconceivable as "fair minimum wage".
roenxi 5y ago
And supplementing this rant: a very frustrating aspect of all this is these things are predictable at a high level. * It is certain that in a given lifetime there will be some hostile act that causes hundreds to thousands of deaths. * When you look at how quickly people can travel the world, it was pretty clear there were going to be some pretty horrific diseases this century. We're thankful that it wasn't Ebola. * The climate has been a matter of crisis since biblical times. * Financial markets are obviously healthy, deindustrialisation of advanced economies is a sign of sustainable progress, printing money then handing it out to asset owners has becoming the normal response because it has proven to work very well and isn't causing any social pressures at all (people voted for Trump only due to racism). So maybe the next financial crisis is unpredictable. Things seem pretty rosy in this department. No need to prepare. Why humans are programmed to wait until midway through a crisis to start identifying the risks is a puzzler. The problems are very obvious unless people listen to mass media.
Kye 5y ago
If the left really got power we would all get a month paid vacation so we could actually afford to stock up and stay home while the virus dies off. The left is not in any way empowered in this country.
- joshuahughes 5y ago
  "stock up and stay home while the virus dies off" Given the existence of animal reservoirs, short-lived immunity, asymptomatic carriers, continued transmission after vaccination, and the genetic instability of SARS-CoV-2, this seems like an incredibly naive view. The only virus we've been able to eradicate — smallpox — was a VERY different beast because it had none of the issues listed above.
  - Kye 5y ago
    We've spent trillions on all kinds of naive nonsense. What's the worst that could happen, people get a month off and the line goes up thanks to all the stimulus? Oh, the horror. Mindless cynicism is not the virtuous alternative to optimism. We can do nothing and watch as our health care system continues to collapse or do something. Maybe this isn't it, but you haven't offered a better idea. It's easy to tear people down for standing up to make a suggestion.
    - tapas73 5y ago
      Not all ideas are worth pursuing. Continuing as-is most of the time (like 99.99%) is the appropriate choice. Do you move every time a stranger on TV/street suggests that?
      - Kye 5y ago
        Continuing as-is will mean the nearly full ICU beds will fill up and the already overwhelmed and too-short supply of medical professionals will dry up as they seek other careers. Every doctor I know who hasn't quit is in or approaching a burnout. The curve of deaths from omicron in the US is already above delta's peak in much less time. Do you imagine this will just pass by without completely overwhelming the health care system? It's too late to do anything for this strain, but I don't want to gamble on it being the last or worst.
vannevar 5y ago
The difference is that terrorism in the US is a miniscule threat in reality, killing a handful of people a year, whereas the virus is one of the top causes of death over the past two years. Not all fears are unjustified. Climate change already kills far more people annually than terrorism via floods, fires, and droughts. That being said, fear doesn't justify authoritarianism, even when the fear is reasonable.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  The individual chance that you die from any of that does NOT warrant fear.
  - vannevar 5y ago
    Similarly, the individual chance of getting cancer by smoking a cigarette doesn't warrant fear. But if you apply this logic to cigarette after cigarette, you may end up in a PSA talking through a hole in your throat and telling everyone not to smoke. Fortunately, as human beings, we can see patterns in large numbers and act on them. We aren't limited to looking at the world through the keyhole of individual risk. We can take a broader view.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      I think your system is not an accurate representation. They are talking about an individuals risk of these events killing them. Your system is talking about the cumulative risk of individual cigarettes. This distinction needs to be made because the risk varies greatly by location and ones preparation (mitigating factors).
      - vannevar 5y ago
        My 'system' is talking about incremental risks, whether they are across time or across individuals. The point is that these incremental risks are not great in themselves, but when accumulated, they become substantial. If climate change contributes to increasing disease, as is projected, the cumulation of diseases over time become a substantial risk even to the individual, even if they aren't directly affected by flood, fire or drought. And of course even a low direct individual risk can cascade into a societal risk that circles back to affect the individual. Take the chief risk of COVID-19, which is that the local medical system is overwhelmed. When this becomes acute, as it did in Italy, it affects even those who were at little risk of COVID itself, by denying them access to health care in the event of an accident or other illness.
aklemm 5y ago
A rant like this makes me ask; can we do much better? Want if this is about as good as human cooperation gets? A rant like this has only one answer, and it’s for society to stop trying. The ranter fails to grapple with details, matters of fact, and reality in general. The ranter is overwhelmed.
rgrieselhuber 5y ago
This illustrates perfectly the false axis of the idea of right vs left outside of economic spheres (and labor vs capital is more accurate than left vs right in the economic realm). The spectrum of totalitarianism vs anarchy is a much better axis to use with regards to this topic, IMO. In that light, it is easy to see that all of the post-9/11 fear-mongering and the COVID fear-mongering are run with the same agenda: more restrictions, less freedom.
giantg2 5y ago
"Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking." Not exactly. I think this is an example of how different perspectives lead to fear being used to drive a law, because it has been used by both sides. Those who agree with the law believe the threat (fear) is enough to justify the law, and forget that it was fear that drove it in the first place, or downplay the fear element.

cloutchaser 5y ago

While the right certainly had their fear based issues before the pandemic, it’s a bit of a stretch to say the left didn’t. Trump was going to become a dictator. We had 12 years to go living on earth 4 years ago. Apparently almost everyone is a white supremacist… I could go on. Why didn’t Obama revoke the patriot act if he was so on the side of non fear? Or allow more whistleblowing.

Swenrekcah 5y ago
European perspective here: Trump was definitely trying to make himself a dictator, just look at how he handled losing an election. Please don’t vote him in again America. Agree on moral panic issues though.
- hnuser847 5y ago
  He was handed a global pandemic in which it was completely permissible for leaders to take on unprecedented, unlimited emergency powers, and yet he did nothing. He was actually criticized for not using his emergency powers to implement an (unconstitutional) national lockdown. If his true goal was to become a dictator, why did he do nothing when he was given the perfect opportunity?
  - cloutchaser 5y ago
  - the-dude 5y ago
    His European perspective means that it is skewed much much more "liberal" than when in the US. About half the population here thinks he is a literal monster, worthy of a Godwin.
  - Swenrekcah 5y ago
    He made no difference between himself and the state. Used the AG as his personal lawyer. Used his position to secure personal business dealings. And then tried to orchestrate a coup when he lost. He’s not literally the devil but he’s both so incompetent and corrupt that I’m frankly baffled there is such fervent support for him.
- nradov 5y ago
  If you read American leftist media from late 2020 to January 2021 you'll find a bunch of breathless editorials claiming that Trump was about to declare martial law and assume dictatorial powers. That was obviously nonsense and displayed a complete lack of knowledge about how the US federal government and military work.
  - Kye 5y ago
    It's lack of trust more than a lack of knowledge. See: the submission title. I can see how this perspective seems reasonable if you've never been on the boot-end of unjust laws, but a lot of us over here on the left side of the center have good reason to doubt that the good parts of law and order can hold up against a sufficiently inspiring and intelligent dictator. Trump was a fool and squandered what he had. Someone will run with what he built and fumbled in the same way Obama ran with what Howard Dean built and fumbled. This is actually why I'm wary of calls to abolish the Senate and Supreme Court. They suck when you want to get stuff done, but they also give us time to organize against people who want to install a dictatorship. Our tar pit of a system and people at high levels believing in it was the only thing that stood between Trump and the genocide he'd love to give large parts of his base.
- syshum 5y ago
  - Swenrekcah 5y ago
    I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Clinton conceded right away and notably did not urge her supporters to storm the Capitol to “rectify” the results. And regarding governors, recall that most of the swing states were under republican control. Edit: I noticed now you gave the Russian connection as the example. Russian interference was indeed the case. Many people were angry at that but there’s an important difference between being angry at it and saying the Russians “stole” the election as in “had undue influence”, versus just pretending the result was rigged and you actually won an election you lost. That was something Trump did and it undermines the democracy you build your country on. On the question of collusion the Muller report is quite informing but he explicitly didn’t want to say anything on the matter and left that to Congress.
    - cloutchaser 5y ago
    - syshum 5y ago
      I’m sorry but this is utter nonsense. Clinton is not a populist, she part of the establishment, her method of subversion was and is through the institutions themselves, i.e using the media, and the deep state to do the work not the people. Her power base is not the common man or woman. As to the republican governors, you seem to have confused me with a republican, I am not a supporter of either side of the uniparty coin. I am an actual anti-establishment type, not one that is only anti-establishment when my "tribe" is not in power, or when the "other side" of the uniparty is in power. I am anti-estblishment 24/7, no matter if it is republican or democrat I was no fan of Trump, never voted for him infact (nor Clinton or biden, or obama, or bush, or ....)
      - Swenrekcah 5y ago
        I don’t disagree that Clinton is as establishment as it gets and there were a lot of reasons to not want her in office. I’m just triggered by the false equivalency, because unlikeable elite as she may be, her politics are more like treatable cancer for democracy whereas Trumps is like acute lead poisoning. The reason I mentioned the republican governors wasn’t to suggest you were a member, rather to suggest that if we did think those states performed election fraud then we’d expect it to be in favour of the Republican Party, right? Regardless of all that I hope you have a great weekend :)
dontcare007 5y ago
Heck, 20 years ago we had 10 years until climate change killed us all.
- modo_mario 5y ago
  Media hyperbole aside especially when it comes to US conservative coverage... we still didn't get anywhere close to the measures climate scientists wish we took and we're still chugging onwards with a very slow increase in average temperatures which are in line if not above what was predicted

jimkleiber 5y ago

I think fear can do a lot of things, as you say, the loss of freedom. I also think the lack of fear can lead to the loss of freedom. Fear can help us temper our actions so we don't do things that end up hurting us severely or even killing us. That being said, I would agree that repressed fear can do us quite a bit of harm and I think it often happens because we'll say fear is bad, without just appreciating how it hurts and helps.

headsoup 5y ago
Only if the lack of fear is because an authority figure has managed it all for you. This creates the bigger problem of a lack of self-regulation and automatic trust in authority.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I guess I meant lack of fear in a very basic way. Not being afraid to jump off a cliff can be pretty detrimental to one's freedom.

noitpmeder 5y ago

Wait how can I get some exposure to the stork market. I need to hedge my baby bets.

ZeroGravitas 5y ago

I realise this was a /rant, but it's still spectacularly misinformed and unhelpful. If your hot take on politics is that climate change, COVID and the war on terror are all the same thing and this proves the left and right are both the same, then you're part of the problem. This reads more like a smart person trying to rationalize their cognitive dissonance, when they know deep down they've found themselves on obviously the morally and factually wrong side of an argument and see no way to retreat while maintaining face.

kylebyproxy 5y ago
Yours seems like a particularly uncharitable interpretation compared to my reading; I didn't hear them saying D == R so much as both are susceptible to the same flaw of human nature: impulsive overreaction to stimuli we find threatening. I do agree that's an unhelpful analysis, but only because it happens to be tautological.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hhmc 5y ago
hutzlibu 5y ago
"If your hot take on politics is that climate change, COVID and the war on terror are all the same thing " I did not read it like this, but rather that all those topics are used by politicians in the same way. To generate fear, to control people. Neverending crisis. Neverending war. Rigid, emergency exemption laws for all eternity. Very well described by Orwell in 1984 already.
belorn 5y ago
Neither the left or the right is arguing that climate change or COVID does not exist. The loud disagreements is about what strategy to deploy. We have nations like Germany that want to use natural gas to combat climate change, and we got France that want to use nuclear. The left leans towards natural gas, the right towards nuclear, both arguing that their strategy will lead towards an end to climate change and that the other side won't. Should vegetarian diet be part of our cultural diet, insects meal, blue agriculture, or should we focus our climate change priority on energy, transportation, heating, industry, futuristic technology and so on. With COVID we have had more strategy than can be reasonable described in a comment, some which the left favor and others that the right favors. Should we classify the Swedish strategy as "right" and the Danish strategy as "left"? Doctors all over the world disagree on what optimal treatment is and in the end it is the patient outcome that dictate who was right. The issue is that politicians get voted in because people fear the bad outcome, not because people favor one strategy above an other strategy. Thus the perception from both sides is that the "other" side do not believe that the bad outcome exist.

mschuster91 5y ago

Without fear, however, you don't get any kind of progress. Fear is powerful. Back in the 60s-80s, the world managed to use the fear of pox to eradicate the disease from existence - and most did so by instituting a vaccine mandate. Back in the late 70s/80s, the world managed to use the fear of acid rain to ban sulphur emissions (LRTAP convention). In the early 90s, the world managed to use the fear of ozone to ban CFC gas usage. Back in the Cold War, both major superpowers were too afraid of the other one to launch nuclear weapons to initiate direct warfare, and in the end the fear of global warfare led to comprehensive international agreements on reducing arms proliferation. The difference is: back then, politicians did the right thing to do based on scientific evidence and indications of issues. These days?! Scientists and activists have warned for decades about the dangers of climate change and the urgency to do something... but until now, all we got is politicians waffling around instead of actually doing anything to combat the real problems we are going to face.

kryogen1c 5y ago
> Without fear, however, you don't get any kind of progress. Fear is powerful. this is critically underrated. dismissing ths current feardriven environment really misses the issue. what is new now is not fear, but the communication - the market penetration. sowing dissent used to be the game of spies. now any political enemy, foreign and domestic, just has to tweet or facebook. perhaps trust SHOULD be at an all time low.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
I agree with most of what you say. However, one thing I must point out is that climate change is a complex problem with no easy solutions. As much as it sounds like we should "just turn off the oil" that would in fact lead to millions of deaths. It's possible that there are problems that are unsolvable or at least a best outcome doesn't exist. Extinction maybe inevitable.
- mschuster91 5y ago
  > However, one thing I must point out is that climate change is a complex problem with no easy solutions. Indeed, but right now we are doing almost nothing meaningful. We shame people from taking vacation flights once every couple years but don't ban short distance "business flights" for corporate executives with a completely bonkers view on how important they are. We still don't mandate the end of "bunker fuel" burning on ships or the usage of land-line power of cruise ships. Instead of building electrified freight and passenger rail, large parts of the rail network run on decades old diesel engines, large parts of freight runs on trucks and in the US the word "high speed passenger rail" is as inconceivable as "fair minimum wage".

roenxi 5y ago

And supplementing this rant: a very frustrating aspect of all this is these things are predictable at a high level. * It is certain that in a given lifetime there will be some hostile act that causes hundreds to thousands of deaths. * When you look at how quickly people can travel the world, it was pretty clear there were going to be some pretty horrific diseases this century. We're thankful that it wasn't Ebola. * The climate has been a matter of crisis since biblical times. * Financial markets are obviously healthy, deindustrialisation of advanced economies is a sign of sustainable progress, printing money then handing it out to asset owners has becoming the normal response because it has proven to work very well and isn't causing any social pressures at all (people voted for Trump only due to racism). So maybe the next financial crisis is unpredictable. Things seem pretty rosy in this department. No need to prepare. Why humans are programmed to wait until midway through a crisis to start identifying the risks is a puzzler. The problems are very obvious unless people listen to mass media.

Kye 5y ago

If the left really got power we would all get a month paid vacation so we could actually afford to stock up and stay home while the virus dies off. The left is not in any way empowered in this country.

joshuahughes 5y ago
"stock up and stay home while the virus dies off" Given the existence of animal reservoirs, short-lived immunity, asymptomatic carriers, continued transmission after vaccination, and the genetic instability of SARS-CoV-2, this seems like an incredibly naive view. The only virus we've been able to eradicate — smallpox — was a VERY different beast because it had none of the issues listed above.
- Kye 5y ago
  We've spent trillions on all kinds of naive nonsense. What's the worst that could happen, people get a month off and the line goes up thanks to all the stimulus? Oh, the horror. Mindless cynicism is not the virtuous alternative to optimism. We can do nothing and watch as our health care system continues to collapse or do something. Maybe this isn't it, but you haven't offered a better idea. It's easy to tear people down for standing up to make a suggestion.
  - tapas73 5y ago
    Not all ideas are worth pursuing. Continuing as-is most of the time (like 99.99%) is the appropriate choice. Do you move every time a stranger on TV/street suggests that?
    - Kye 5y ago
      Continuing as-is will mean the nearly full ICU beds will fill up and the already overwhelmed and too-short supply of medical professionals will dry up as they seek other careers. Every doctor I know who hasn't quit is in or approaching a burnout. The curve of deaths from omicron in the US is already above delta's peak in much less time. Do you imagine this will just pass by without completely overwhelming the health care system? It's too late to do anything for this strain, but I don't want to gamble on it being the last or worst.

vannevar 5y ago

The difference is that terrorism in the US is a miniscule threat in reality, killing a handful of people a year, whereas the virus is one of the top causes of death over the past two years. Not all fears are unjustified. Climate change already kills far more people annually than terrorism via floods, fires, and droughts. That being said, fear doesn't justify authoritarianism, even when the fear is reasonable.

raxxorrax 5y ago
The individual chance that you die from any of that does NOT warrant fear.
- vannevar 5y ago
  Similarly, the individual chance of getting cancer by smoking a cigarette doesn't warrant fear. But if you apply this logic to cigarette after cigarette, you may end up in a PSA talking through a hole in your throat and telling everyone not to smoke. Fortunately, as human beings, we can see patterns in large numbers and act on them. We aren't limited to looking at the world through the keyhole of individual risk. We can take a broader view.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I think your system is not an accurate representation. They are talking about an individuals risk of these events killing them. Your system is talking about the cumulative risk of individual cigarettes. This distinction needs to be made because the risk varies greatly by location and ones preparation (mitigating factors).
    - vannevar 5y ago
      My 'system' is talking about incremental risks, whether they are across time or across individuals. The point is that these incremental risks are not great in themselves, but when accumulated, they become substantial. If climate change contributes to increasing disease, as is projected, the cumulation of diseases over time become a substantial risk even to the individual, even if they aren't directly affected by flood, fire or drought. And of course even a low direct individual risk can cascade into a societal risk that circles back to affect the individual. Take the chief risk of COVID-19, which is that the local medical system is overwhelmed. When this becomes acute, as it did in Italy, it affects even those who were at little risk of COVID itself, by denying them access to health care in the event of an accident or other illness.

aklemm 5y ago

A rant like this makes me ask; can we do much better? Want if this is about as good as human cooperation gets? A rant like this has only one answer, and it’s for society to stop trying. The ranter fails to grapple with details, matters of fact, and reality in general. The ranter is overwhelmed.

rgrieselhuber 5y ago

This illustrates perfectly the false axis of the idea of right vs left outside of economic spheres (and labor vs capital is more accurate than left vs right in the economic realm). The spectrum of totalitarianism vs anarchy is a much better axis to use with regards to this topic, IMO. In that light, it is easy to see that all of the post-9/11 fear-mongering and the COVID fear-mongering are run with the same agenda: more restrictions, less freedom.

giantg2 5y ago

"Pre-pandemic, the right had a monopoly on fear-based politicking." Not exactly. I think this is an example of how different perspectives lead to fear being used to drive a law, because it has been used by both sides. Those who agree with the law believe the threat (fear) is enough to justify the law, and forget that it was fear that drove it in the first place, or downplay the fear element.