Scott Allan's World

I have been wanting to write about this for a while and finally I had a nice rainy day with nothing else to do.

I have been wondering why it is that suddenly we have become so resistant to change while at the same time our politicians are demanding it?  When confronted with change, these same politicians have a bizarre hyper reaction to stifle it.

Global warming:  There is some sort of consensus that the world’s temperature needs to remain constant forever.  An increase of a fraction of a degree over an infinitesimal amount of time seems to bring out the Chicken Little in everyone.  This just seems completely unrealistic if you look at the history of climate change over the lifespan of the Earth.   Anyone heard of the Ice Age (also one of my favorite movies)?  The temperature swings dramatically in either direction even prior to man’s ability to leave a “carbon footprint”.  I don’t think you could stop it even if you wanted to.   We resort to bizarre ideas like taxing cows and pigs for their methane production and seeding clouds with pollution particles to reflect the Sun’s ray to cool the Earth.  We will spare no expense at preventing this even if it means dramatically lowering our standard of living.  We will go green at enormous expense until we have saved the planet.   I’m not exactly sure how we’ll know when we’ve succeeded.

The economy:  Recessions were once considered to be a cyclical and unavoidable phenomenon of the free market economy.  We used to ride them out and stimulate the recovery with some tax cuts and business incentives.  People learned how to tighten their belts.   Now when we enter a recession, we must do everything possible to avoid letting a recession self-correct itself without any belt tightening or suffering of course.  We strive for pain-free recessions. This is a lot like having a war where no one dies. Good luck with that.  No company should go bankrupt so we bail them out at taxpayer expense no matter how many bad decisions they make. Once they have actually accepted the bailout money, then we can insist on bankruptcy so that the government seize control of the company to advance a political agenda such as imposing socialism or preventing global warming by producing cars that no one wants or can afford.  Trillions of dollars we don’t have must be spent to stop the recession but of course we’re not going to cut any other spending.  Each time we try to manipulate the market by adjusting interest rates or borrowing money we just kick the can further down the road by creating another artificial bubble.

Health:  Do you remember when people used to get sick?  Well not anymore.  Just like the economy, this is now unacceptable.  Forget the fact that 20,000 people die every year from the average, ordinary flu.  When you get sexy new diseases like the Bird Flu or Swine Flu, a virtual artificial panic ensues.   Schools shut down.  People stop traveling. Some countries cull millions of birds and pigs.  Pictures of people wearing masks blanket the news. The Swine Flu might be the wimpiest flu on record, but you wouldn’t know it by the world’s over-reaction.  People were in a virtual panic.  My son’s wrestling school even shut down for a day even though there were no reported cases in our state at the time.  The explanation?  They didn’t want to be the one place that ended up on the news because they were they only place that didn’t close down.  Let’s keep some perspective.  145 people in the world have died due to Swine Flu and 27 in the U.S.  Over 100 people die EVERY DAY in car accidents yet we don’t overreact to that.  1,400 people die EVERY DAY from a heart attack.  17,000 people die every year from illegal drug related deaths yet we still have some people advocating the legalization of such drugs. Seems hypocritical and irresponsible to me.

My question is why?  At first I thought we had a God Complex where we thought we were so arrogant that we could could control the Universe.  Now I think the answer lies in the recent quotes of Rahm Emanuel, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” and Hillary Clinton, “Never waste a good crisis … Don’t waste it when it can have a very positive impact on climate change and energy security.”   These are contrived crises designed to play upon our fears so that we will cede control to those who can save us from ourselves.  It’s a play for power and for money and believe me many people get rich from these fears.  It’s a very dangerous game and the sooner we recognize it, the sooner we can get things back in the correct perspective and maintain our freedom.