The perfect problem

If you are a politician seeking power, and everything is going well, there isn’t any urgency to pass laws beyond those needed for the general maintenance of the status quo, because everything is awesome. You need an enemy or problem to rail against, to be the target of you legislation. You need a boogieman to scare people into supporting you. But what?

You want something that cannot fight back. If you demonize a group they will object.

You want something BIG, because sane people won’t get very worked up about the trivial.

Really big. So big that everyone must be involved, and any dissenters can be easily demonized.

You want something distant in time. You can’t use something that can be disproven next week, or even within the next few election cycles. It’s got to be an ongoing chronic thing hanging out in your children’s and grandchildren’s future.

…but not too distant. Immediate action must be demanded by the hugeness of the problem, not something that can be dealt with mañana.

Far reaching. It must impact every aspect of life, which in turn calls for regulating every aspect of life.

Have many possible parts to the potential solutions. If any one part of the “solution” appears to work it can never be enough, but if some other part doesn’t, it can be used as a call for more spending, more laws, more actions, more something. There isn’t any one magic bullet because the problem is so huge, but many parts that might help some, but they are individually so small that nothing can be proven one way or another. There is always another reason to demand more research, more knowledge, more data, and a reason to demand “doing something” in the meantime “just in case.”

Not an actual threat. If you don’t get everything you demand, no sweat: everything is still going to be OK. But you can always demonize others for failing to do enough, while excusing your own continued high-living lifestyle.

Sound like anything you’ve heard of before?

Global warming?

Yes, global warming, the perfect boogieman.

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One thought on “The perfect problem

  1. Yep. Though it’s far from perfect, it’s just about the best lie the criminal class has come up with yet.

    The more ignorant the population, the easier they are manipulated. So it is that Public Education is a critical element in all of this. Decisive element.

    It is therefore a good time to repeat the assertion that education should be included, should HAVE BEEN included, along with religion, in the first amendment;
    “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of education, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”

    Nothing however, no matter how big, or long term, or dangerous, justifies the wholesale coercion that government always wants.

    Therefore it is not a difficult issue unless we fall for the bait– The question of global warming, or any other, is irrelevant. You still don’t get to exercise coercion, because that would be wrong.

    Therefore, anyone caught using doomsday scenarios, or any other scenarios, such as “the children are starving” et al, or even telling us how great things could be, for the purpose of advocating coercion, should be put down, post haste, as bloody criminals. Sociopaths.

    They’re sociopaths, either way you look at it.

    You don’t get to be a criminal when things are going well, and you still don’t get to be a criminal when things are going poorly. So shut the fuck up, or else.

    So if you’ve managed to convince yourself that the sky is falling, then you are free to build a sky scaffold to hold it up, all at your own expense on your own property. You are also free to attempt to convince others to help build more sky scaffolds. The instant you begin to take from other against their will, however, so as to build your sky scaffolds, you’re a fucking criminal and belong in a cage.

    So do your thing, don’t use coercion, and we can all watch you fail while making a fool of yourself. THAT, is a free country. If you save all our lives in the process of holding up the sky, hey thanks!

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