Tag: panic

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ideological culture national politics & policies

The Day and the Hour

prediction, forecast, fortune telling, climate change, global warming, blue and red

Time is almost up!

“Three years ago, scientists gave us a pretty stark warning: They said we have 12 years to avoid the worst consequences of climate change,” John Kerry, former U.S. Senator (D‑Mass.) and Secretary of State and current US Special Climate Envoy, stated last week. 

“And now we have nine years left,” the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate added, “to try to do what science is telling us we need to do.”

Science speaks to Kerry. Just nine years, though? Not much time. 

But it could be worse. 

And apparently already is.

According to BBC environmental correspondent, Matt McGrath, who reported roughly 18 months ago that “there’s a growing consensus that the next 18 months will be critical in dealing with the global heating crisis.”

“The climate math is brutally clear,” Potsdam Climate Institute founder Hans Joachim Schellnhuber argued. “While the world can’t be healed within the next few years, it may be fatally wounded by negligence until 2020.”

“Healed”? Or brought to heel?

That time is running out “is becoming clearer all the time,” McGrath noted then, before quoting the eminent scientist, the Prince of Wales: “I am firmly of the view that the next 18 months will decide our ability to keep climate change to survivable levels and to restore nature to the equilibrium we need for our survival,” declared his royal highness, speaking at a reception more than 18 months back. 

Prince Charles Philip Arthur George Mountbatten-​Windsor is also considered something of an expert on receptions.

For my part, regarding these prophecies, I’m with Gavin Schmidt, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who advised, “All the time-​limited frames are bullsh*t.”

I can follow that science.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly general freedom responsibility

Bath Tub Fails

Coronavirus, Covid, panic, risk

“Barely one in 1,000 Britons has died from coronavirus,” states Tim Harford, in U.K.’s Daily Mail, “and yet the economy is in cardiac arrest, Government debt has run into hundreds of billions and many parents are terrified of sending their children to school.”

Trying to put the pandemic in context with actual numbers, to assess realistic risk, Harford goes on to argue that “given the current low risk of infection, combined with the low risk from the disease, a 30-​year-​old is far more at risk from riding a motorbike, going skiing or horse-​riding — let alone sky-​diving, rock-​climbing or scuba-​diving — than from the virus.”

He makes the startling claim that a trek outside, with possible SARS-​CoV‑2 exposure, “is not much more serious than taking regular baths over a year.”

Harford makes many attempts not to minimize the danger, and assuage Brits’ past and present concerns, thus acknowledging that they weren’t exactly crazy, but in the end the situation is like this: “The prospect of bathtime tragedies has never shut the country down.”

People die of risky activities every day, and not just on slippery porcelain: we risk our lives on asphalt, staircases, and in the air. Yet we go on, plunging ahead.

Brave people, we?

Not now. The worldwide government response has been, with a few notable exceptions — Sweden and South Dakota, to name the two most famous for bucking panic and lockdowns and mask-​wearing mandates — a pitch to people’s fears.

Maybe in Britain thought leaders and statesmen have praised valor and fortitude as well as caution and individual responsibility. But in America, calls to courage have been few and far between.

Hey: I just noticed something, “panic” is contained within the word “pandemic”!

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

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general freedom too much government

Tyranny Resurrected

Corona Virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, hysteria, panic, religion, freedom,

Right after 9/​11, much overkill was directed at the unsuspecting.

Friends of the Dumb Joke Brigade told dumb jokes when everybody was On Edge. It soon became clear that tasteless jocularity had morphed into an actionable offense.

And should anyone on September 12 have had the temerity to sit in a theater studying credits when all others had filed out? Heaven forfend! What schemes might the nonconforming cinephile be plotting alone in the dark?

Twenty years later, we’re at it again. 

We can argue (we do) about which social-​distancing strictures are properly enforceable in our efforts to slow the pandemic. 

But surely some lines inarguably should not be crossed.

I don’t refer to the lone paddle-​boarder or to the man who played catch with his kid in a park. I refer to parishioners who attended worship services at King James Bible Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi in their cars. Listened to the sermon on the radio in their cars. If the metal-​and-​glass shells in which attendees were encased couldn’t block the corona-​fumes, what the heck could?

Nonetheless, eight Greenville police officers showed up to distribute $500 fines.

The state’s governor discourages but has not banned drive-​in church services. It was Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons who has banned them.

The church is suing. Its lawyer, Jeremy Dys, says, “Americans can tolerate a lot if it means demonstrating love for their fellow man, but they will not … tolerate churchgoers being ticketed by the police for following CDC guidelines at church. This has to stop now.”

Beyond violating fundamental human rights, the city’s position also makes no sense.

Unfortunately, nonsense is, in these days of panic, not uncommon.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Corona Virus, Covid, epidemic, pandemic, hysteria, panic, religion, freedom,

Photo from Joel Bradshaw

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crime and punishment ideological culture Popular

Propaganda Bombs

panic, explosion, fear, hysteria, terrorism

“In these times, we have to unify,” President Donald Trump said in response to reports of bombs sent to high-​level Democratic public officials, “we have to come together and send one very clear, strong, unmistakable message that acts or threats of political violence of any kind have no place in the United States of America.”

He also assured that “a major federal investigation is now underway.”

It sure looks like a concerted operation, considering the number of targets: political funder George Soros, former CIA director John Brennan, former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, et al.

Given the political affiliations of the recipients, many people assume it was a partisan terrorist from the Republican side of the proverbial “aisle.”

But note the obvious: not one putative bomb went off. Or even got close to the ostensible targets.

Massive incompetence?

One device seems to have “ISIS” scrawled on it, but experts tell us that device is well below ISIS standards. It turns out that the marking is an ISIS parody symbol. The perp is not likely a jihadist “lone wolf” wannabe.

Bombs going off is serious terrorism, deadly evil. But bombs not going off is serious … propaganda by the dud.

What if the point is not to explode and hurt people, but to “explode” in human minds?

Could this be an “October surprise,” the false flag of some demented person or “cell” on “the left” to impugn “the right”?

As Matt Walsh hazarded at The Daily Wire, “It does not take a conspiracy theorist to wonder about the timing and methods in this case.”

We do not know much yet. Questions will hopefully soon be answered.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

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Illustration: pixabay

 

Categories
Accountability folly general freedom media and media people national politics & policies

The Ex-​Explosion

Margaret Sanger, population, progressivism, panic, birth rate,

When I was a kid, the trendy worry was “the population bomb.” Now we are supposed to worry about a population … fizzle?

“The U.S. birth rate has hit a new record low,” writes Peter Dockrill in Science Alert, “with women in nearly every age group giving birth to fewer babies than a year ago.” Titled “U.S. Fertility Rates Have Plummeted Into Uncharted Territory, And Nobody Knows Why,” Dockrill’s article fails to mention that diminishing population by reduced reproduction is an old worry. 

It fanned the flames of eugenics and racism in Europe and America in the first half of the 20th century. Progressivism was full of this concern, in its heyday.*

As societies get wealthier, reproduction rates decrease. Economist Theodore W. Schultz called it the swapping of “quantity of children” for “quality of children.” This appears to be a natural, voluntary sort of eugenics — which scares actual eugenicists.

The study that Science Alert focused on fingered a different cause: lead in the environment. Over at Reason, Ronald Bailey sees some plausibility in this Lead Poison Theory. But mostly, Bailey writes, population rates in America (and elsewhere) are declining “largely because Americans are choosing to have fewer children.”

Is this really a problem?

Well, for Big Government it is.** German’s demographic collapse appears to have been one factor prodding Angela Merkel to open the doors to millions of refugees — whom Europe seems to have more trouble assimilating than does America.

I like kids — both making and rearing them. But to each his or her own, of course. Still, maybe if people freaked out less about population explosions, the implosion would prove less serious.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* Before progressivism changed its name to “liberalism.” And now back. Oh, and note that the Nazis’ more famous eugenic programs were not identical to progressives. 

** Ponzi-​based safety-​net pension systems worldwide were designed for growing populations. Oops!

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(Illustration from Margaret Sanger’s “Birth Control Review” from 1918.)

Categories
Accountability crime and punishment education and schooling folly general freedom moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies too much government

Leave Them Kids Alone

education, school, panic, hysteria, play, gun, toy, private, competition

This just in: oblivious little boys still play cops and robbers.

Just as in days of old.

Wait. Hold on. Breathe. Just breathe. This sociological fact doesn’t mean that we’re a nation of incipient international terrorists but for the galumphing grace of grumpy zero-​tolerant schoolmasters.

Common sense says you don’t suspend toddlers from school for wiggling their fingers as if wielding a gun, or for sculpting a “gun” out of a slice of Wonder Bread or Freihofer’s. Yet evidence continues to mount that all too many teachers and administrators are immune to considerations of reasonableness when it comes to kids who misbehave. (Or “misbehave.”)

Such enemies of childhood innocence must be hindered. So let’s give two and a half cheers to Ohio lawmaker Peggy Lehner, who proposes to legislate an end in her state to suspending children in the third grade or younger who aren’t threatening anybody. (I’m not sure why kids in grades later than third can’t catch the same break.)

A new, probably imperfect government regulation is not the only way to counter blunderbuss government-​school policies. The most fundamental alternative is the free market.

Ideally, no public-​school monopoly plagued by mandatory insane rules would exist. Ideally, all K‑12 (and university) educational offerings would be provided by an unregulated market economy, making it much easier for families to drop insane schools and patronize sane ones. The pressures of market competition would encourage school officials to become students of common sense.

We are not there yet.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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