Have you ever noticed how often politicians and the media point to a current crisis? It would seem one crisis follows another. It's non stop crisis management. Often times, the "crisis" isn't managed and the politicians and media lose interest and move on.
It would seem that having a crisis so frequently might speak to the competence of our leaders, who if they were doing their job, would have worked out a better system. "Nah, that would require planning ahead. We'd just rather react to a crisis, and blame the crisis on the other party."
Are things really that bad? If I had that many actual crisis situations happening in my personal life, I would think about changing whatever it was I was doing. I might even decide to throw in the towel. But if you listen to the news, one would get the impression that the country is in continual chaos. Hell, maybe it is, but stopping the chaos would require some sort of regulation, and then we would have a over-regulation crisis, an intolerable situation, indeed.
I suspect most crisis situations are just bullshit, and most of the real ones could have been avoided, but that would require competent leadership, something which seems to be in short supply.
We never say thank you to the guy who made our car so good it doesn't break down for the next 25 years.
We say thank you over and over and again to the guy who keeps fixing our car on short notice every month when it breaks down again.
If you do your job so well that nothing bad ever happens, people will blame you for not doing anything. If you do your job so poorly that you're constantly managing problems in the public eye, people will applaud you for the effort you're putting in.
The current situation is merely the logical extension of just that behaviour.
I agree. Most of the problems we have now in this country have fairly obvious solutions, such as restoring Glass-Steagall and doing away with the bullshit austerity/sequester nonsense. Syria is a good example. The desire to jump to an expensive military solution versus a much less expensive and ultimately more effective diplomatic one is fairly transparent to me.
I agree with Plu and Stromboli. =D>
I might add, the press loves a crisis. It boosts their ratings. If it isn't a crisis, then they make it one.
Indeed. Politics, rational discussion, diplomacy, etc...all that crap is "boring". No one wants to hear about the everyday debates and bills that run our daily lives. We want action! Excitement! Make it scary! I want to be horrified!!
And that's what makes the news. That's why whenever a madman shoots up a school, it's news for months on end. Trials are televised every minute of every day for one dude who killed another dude. News is just entertainment anymore.
Quote from: "stromboli"Syria is a good example. The desire to jump to an expensive military solution versus a much less expensive and ultimately more effective diplomatic one is fairly transparent to me.
There's another factor. When thousands of guys and gals come home from Afghanistan and get mustered out, the unemployment rate will shoot up. Sending them, plus who knows how many others, to the Middle East because of the boots on the ground in Syria for the next 6 or 10 years will lower the unemployment rate. And lowering the unemployment rate looks good.