Western politics in the new millennium is defined by our near-total inability to measure risks against rewards, costs against benefits, promises against unintended consequences. We only have two settings now: PANIC and HYSTERIA.
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1381925025964515330
It comes down to a loss of maturity. The ability to make reasoned decisions by comparing costs against benefits is a defining characteristic of adulthood. Reckless desire and blind panic are characteristics of childhood. Only immature societies live in a constant state of panic.
Immaturity is part of the devolution from independence to collectivism. A society that values independence treats citizens as adults and holds them responsible for the consequences of their decisions. Collectivist societies teach citizens to see themselves as children.
Independent societies value persuasion, and allow for the possibility that some will not be persuaded. Collectivists routinely stampede their citizens with blind panics and demand total compliance. Destroying the ability to measure costs and benefits is key to ensuring obedience.
Unfortunately, Americans have been bullied and socially engineered into ceding all cost-benefit analysis to their political elites, who are (a) not very smart, (b) prone to vicious political infighting, (c) greedy as hell, and (d) invested in keeping us constantly panicked.
Consequently, we're NEVER presented with honest and rational assessments of costs and benefits, or risk vs. reward, and invited to make our own decisions. We're NEVER treated like adults by our political elite. Their system only works if we view ourselves as their children.
Our political language is drenched with phrases that enforce this state of childish subservience and constant fear: "If it saves just one life," "common-sense restrictions," Crisis of X, the Total War Against Y, spending money to prove we "care" about a problem, etc.
Cloaking ideology and primitive superstitions in the mantle of "science" has further destroyed our ability to calculate risk and reward. Our political elite declared war against Reason itself, and they won. "Science" is now an ingredient in political hysteria, not the antidote.
As the last year has demonstrated, pinballing between one hysteria and the next is no way for a mature republic to function effectively and confront serious challenges. Americans devolved into children after "winning the Cold War," but the world still needed us to be adults. /end
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