Saturday
When did it begin? Malthusian Theory hints that there has always been a tendency to mass fear. In modern times, it came into focus with the Global Warming movement (AKA the Greenhouse Effect) toward the end of the 20th century. All of a sudden, the changing nature of the climate was a ‘thing’.
It made useless people feel not just useful; but, even better, superior. Those without purpose or substance imagined that they had become Super Heroes at the forefront of a battle to save the planet. Caped in a perception of self-importance, they began lecturing the rest of us on our wicked ways.
Simple people below the level of reason were put into a state of abject terror. They were informed that they were going to be cooked alive in the terrible heat caused by their consumption of fossil fuels. Though all their dire cult predictions came to naught, their policy was to never admit their errors.
“If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth.”
Joseph Goebbels
For politicians and media hacks it did become the truth and, in the West, trillions of dollars of taxpayer’s money was squandered on Green boondoggles.
Then the Wuhan Virus came along. Compared to the Asian Flu, Hong Kong Flu and Polio of just my lifetime, it was a non-event. But to gullible people, already terrified of being cooked to death, it was the final straw.
To say ‘they panicked’ would be the understatement of the millennium. Businesses were forcibly shuttered for months on end, many never to reopen. Millions of jobs were lost. Innocent people were placed under house arrest. Huge penalties were imposed for daring to go for a walk or sit on park benches. Mothers were handcuffed in front of their children and people were brutalized by uniformed thugs for going shopping without a mask. For ten months straight, the media breathlessly and hysterically galloped from one Virus horror story to another. It was the Great 21st Century Panic.
In a strange quirk of fate, these wholly irrational and unfounded fears have brought about a situation where real fear is justified. The forcible closure of businesses for much of 2020 caused economies that were already faltering from over-regulation to begin to collapse. But most were so busy fussing over the weather and a virus that they didn’t notice.
How will people who are scared of a sunny day and a bad cold react to being jobless, homeless and hungry?