The age of manufactured crises
It is time we face it: we live in an era where our leaders manufacture crises. This week, with the eclipsing of Title 42, the U.S. southern border has gone from a hot mess to a full-blown emergency. We were pushed into the conflict with Ukraine and Russia as well. Before that was the debacle in Afghanistan. Our leaders killed drilling for oil and terminated pipeline projects, which led to elevated gas prices and fueled inflation. If inflation was a concern, you’d never notice it from our leaders. They pumped trillions of dollars into the economy to make inflation worse (and had the gall to call it an Inflation Reduction Act).
Even when there isn’t a crisis, the current administration creates one. For example, claiming gun violence and trans-oppression are national emergencies. You can almost hear them, “Let’s make loans easier for people with bad credit ratings,” which is destined to ignite a housing crisis down the road. If that isn’t enough, looming on the horizon is a Taiwan crisis, the Sudan, and perhaps an incident or two with North Korea.
Rather than get in front of an issue and calm it, actions are taken (or not taken) to ensure that problems are allowed to fester and explode. Instead of applying preventive measures, the powers-that-be seem to thrive.
The Biden administration seems to have a desire to keep America in a state of perpetual red alert. This was inevitable given what happened with COVID-19. Fear was used to coerce people into taking actions that they normally never would have. It compelled usually sane people into being over-reactionaries. It turned sensible people into self-appointed social police whose aim was to turn the nation into a prison.
The government saw this and savored the opportunity that it represented. People were willing to surrender their freedoms out of fear. Our leaders saw they could shove social change down on us and that a large percent of the population would accept it; even welcome it. No matter how ridiculous the measures that the government advocated, they knew that most people would follow them. Remember sneeze guards at the checkout of grocery stores, or lines on the floor at Walmart telling you which way to walk down the aisle? As idiotic as those things were, how many simply complied?
In short, any crisis is camouflage for government totalitarian actions. Under the guise of trying to fix an emergency, the government will bypass its checks and balances and stomp on rights as a default action.
They are rarely called out on these dictatorish actions because many citizens want to be told what to do. Look at the number of how-to type books that are sold. There is a large percentage of the population that doesn’t want to think for themselves. They desire to have someone do it for them. Our leaders saw that and have learned well. They contend that the federal and state governments are best suited to do the thinking for most Americans. It is convenient and insidious.
They don’t want us to get back to any semblance of normal. If the nation moves back to normalcy, people will question the authority of the government to take extreme actions. When there is no national emergency, people have time to contemplate overreach by their leaders. As such, there is no effort to restore calm and order. In fact, this encourages governments to behave in the exact opposite way.
With an election coming up next year, this creation of manufactured calamities will be moved front and center. In fact, it could very well be the pivotal issue for Americans. Do you want to return to a steady state, where panic and fear are kept in check? Or continue from catastrophe to disaster and yield your right to free thought and action? When you evaluate candidates, which party is an agent of chaos, and which one seeks to stabilize the nation?
Blaine Pardoe is a New York Times Bestselling and award-winning author cancelled by one of his publishers in 2022. He is a regular contributor to a number of conservative sites. His conservative political thriller series, Blue Dawn, includes A Most Uncivil War, and the newly released Confederacy of Fear. This series tells the story of the violent overthrow of the government by radical progressives. His bestselling military science fiction series, Land&Sea, includes Splashdown, Riptides, Storm Surge, and Flotsam of War.
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