Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste

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One of the most perplexing things about our news cycle these days is just how much of it seems urgent, all the time. X needs to be fixed now! Y will happen if we don't do X!

Sure, there's high time preference thinking involved. If X doesn't pass right now, then it may be years before it's considered again. But more than that, the perpetual crisis mode that we're engaged in makes for both an anxious and calloused citizenry.

Yet this persists, because crises allow for power capture. There are fewer questions and the urgency drowns out dissenting voices. Do you want grandma to die? Do you want Putin to destroy the world order? Do you want Al Qaeda to commit more terror attacks?

The crisis and urgency also build in a natural excuse for those in power. If they do make a mistake, which they often do, then they can always say "things were so urgent at the time and we had to do something." So seldom do they mention that it's an urgency they themselves created.

We've seen this with financial crises and even the recent pandemic. But far more potent is the threat of war. Most leaders end up doing horribly immoral things during war, even if they were committed, ethical people before. That's the nature of the beast, the lust to win trumps all.

Which is why the current year seems so ripe for abuse. There are many events that could easily devolve into crises, manufactured in one way or another by the powers that be. Economic and public health emergencies are, in that sense, the *best* we can hope for. Limited war and political revolution, about the average and world war the worst case scenario.

Yet there is good news. We don't have to let them take this power. We can slow the roll of government power accumulation. We can opt out of their authoritarian policies with protest. We can refuse to be manipulated by their propaganda. And perhaps we can avoid the inevitable suffering that comes from such power grabs.