Right now I’m sitting at the airport waiting for my plane to board, wishing I brought my laptop so that I didn’t have to write this on my phone (stupid conveniences of capitalism!), and going through the TSA checkpoint got me thinking. What are we afraid of? We’ve all heard ad nauseum about the looming threats of ISIS and other Islamic extremist terrorism and we’ve heard about the existential threats that both a Trump or Sanders presidency would pose to the country.
How long must we deal with these threats? What can we do to prevent catastrophe for our way of life?
The answers lie with you. While ISIS and terrorism are certainly horribly bad and Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders will both attempt to further restrict liberty, the likelihood of any of them or anything like them causing serious issues in society in my opinion is remote. Why can I sit here and say that with such confidence? It’s because nothing has ever happened any other time we were so sternly warned about similar dangers.
Remember North Korea? Did the United States government pull a diplomatic rabbit out of its hat? I seriously doubt it. It seems much more likely that the media just moved on to the next story (in this case ISIS). I’m not suggesting that the North Korean government or ISIS or any similar entities are anything but bad; they just do not represent a legitimate threat to you and I.
I’ll put it this way: lung cancer is very bad, but I don’t worry about it because I don’t smoke, my lungs are healthy, and I’m 27 years old.
The threat of the next president is a bit different. I think whomever gets in will be bad, but the impact of the president on the day to day living in the country is usually exaggerated. I remember being very upset when Barack Obama was elected president in 2008. I thought the country was going to plunge itself into socialism (please pardon the fact that there was and continues to be a high degree of socialism). I felt the same dread when he was re-elected for a second term. To reiterate, Obama has been bad, but he has more or less led the country along the same path that it was already on. Life hasn’t changed all that much. Why should I expect anything different from the next president?
I hope that my views that the status quo need to be questioned and society needs restructuring are not lost in the points I’m making here. I am not saying that we shouldn’t worry about anything and that people should sit down and shut up. I think quite the opposite. And while some will tell you to stop watching the news and listening to the media, I just think you should not assume that they are peddling the truth.
