In A World Of Skeptics And Pundits, We Need More Alarmists
From TV News To Social Media, Inaction, Downplaying Danger, And Remaining Calm Is The New Panacea For All Serious Issues.
“Under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. We have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. We have never seen a totally sane human being.”
― Robert Anton Wilson
“We all see only that which we are trained to see.”
― Robert Anton Wilson, Masks of the Illuminati
Photo by Malvestida on Unsplash
August begins, and the record-breaking long Hot Summer grinds on across the nation.
I listen to the constant click and whirring grind of the central air conditioning compressor fan going through its startup and shut down cycles more through a perceptual filter of immense gratitude, and less with one of immense anxiety, knowing that so many people across the American West and the Northeast are suffering from record-breaking heat. Strange, but there is some comfort in knowing you are not alone.
Wherever we live, none of us are escaping it.
In Maine, my former state of residence, friends and acquaintances, who usually buck up against the inevitable cold and snow of the Winter months with good-natured fortitude and character, are complaining loudly. Power bills in rural Maine have been steadily climbing for decades. Rate and price increases for electricity and heating oil were, and are, one of the drawbacks to living there. Now, that is likely true across the entire country.
Politicians promise to hold utility companies accountable, but the reality is that even the Governor of Maine is at the mercy of the maximum profit/minimum services business model perpetuated by the companies that make up the global energy market.
Resources are higher priced than ever and are definitively at a premium. History proves that we will go to war at the drop of a hat over resources. All of these hard truths are framed, of course, by the pundit class through the false narrative of “saving” Freedom and Democracy, ideas meant to deceive that literally have no basis in reality.
When I lived in Maine, the power company, Bangor Hydro Electric, (since absorbed by other corporations under new names) aggressively cut costs on manpower: work hours, maintenance of the severely abused power lines, and meter reading, all the services that most benefitted the consumer in terms of reliability of service and fairness in pricing. Rate hikes were as common as the inevitable power outages during frequent Winter storms.
There has been no relief in decades from rising energy prices, despite the recent, unending stream of self-congratulations by the political class due to the relatively slight drop in fuel prices. Gas prices are STILL high. This deceptive, temporary, short-term, “good news” is then amplified by the pundit class, and the vital long-term messaging from the alarmists is obscured.
In 1998, I lived through a life-threatening disaster, along with thousands of other Maine residents, during one of its worst ice storms in History. I’ll never forget the three-week wait before power (and life-sustaining heat) were restored, as the storm had caused millions of tree limbs to break, dropping directly on power lines, and in turn pulling the supporting poles over. Power supply lines were down for hundreds of miles.
Bangor Hydro Electric workers, aided by other utility companies from out of state, slowly made their way down the electrical grids, but prioritized restoring power to occupied residencies over those vacated by the Summer population. At that time, there was no GPS, fast Internet, or SMS messaging. I grew increasingly alarmed as each passing day dawned without relief.
Finally, one morning at my place of employment (which had its power restored in the town of Bar Harbor weeks before) a local radio announcer, his voice filled with urgency and alarm, was interviewing a utility company spokesperson for Bangor Hydro. The spokesperson urged that if your power had not been restored, it was due to the fact that the utility workers couldn’t possibly know if a house without power was occupied, and didn’t have the time to knock on doors to check to see if a residency was, in fact, occupied.
His advice was to immediately fashion a sign and affix it to the nearest utility pole, or spraypaint directly to a piece of plywood leaning against the pole, a literal message of distress: Power Is Off!
Delaying, he continued, could mean an even LONGER wait for the restoration of power.
This was the equivalent of the shipwrecked castaway on a tropical island scrawling “HELP !” in large letters on the beach sand, in case a search and rescue aircraft overflew. Within hours of making a sign our power was restored. The photo below shows you just what a Maine Winter can do to the power poles, visible in the center.
Just my observation, but it’s sort of an unspoken Maine/New England/ Puritan ethics tradition to soldier on in the face of adversity and stifle the urge to complain. The media, defined as the pundit class, the referees, or neutral arbiters of opinion, have often been at fault for being agents of unwarranted optimism in the face of disaster. That is especially true today in 2022 but in an alarmingly perverse way.
The economist and writer Umair Haque is an alarmist. Many people would say a “doomer” or doomist. This is likely due to the fact that, unlike the “good news” or related inconsequential distractions offered by the corporate media and pundit class, Umair faces reality and backs it up with well-documented facts and scientific research.
Two of his recent article sparked multiple mini revelations for me and I would urge you to take the time to read what he is saying about Climate.
There is no good news here.
Two points made within the context of the article stood out for me.
One, Haque defined, with incredible clarity, the difference between Alarmists, Skeptics, and Pundits. The vital messaging we need to face climate reality is constantly distorted through this skewed feedback loop, and thus, no one could possibly understand the extent of the damage and the impending danger. To quote from the article:
“You’re correct to say that we don’t really live in democracies. We live in technocracies. And in those technocracies, the way that “the future” works is this. There are the alarmists and the skeptics, whose job it is to guide and orient decisions. Then there are pundits, who’ve taken on — somehow — the role of mediating between them. And finally, there are the leaders who make decisions.
This is a crazy system, and it yields absolutely terrible, fatal results. What happens goes like this.
The alarmists — I’m one of them — are learned people, experts, thoughtful scholars, careful observers. The skeptics, on the other hand, are second-rate thinkers. They are ideologues and sloppy, wishful thinkers and non-empiricists. The alarmists look at trends, realities, facts, and connect various dots, establish causal relationships, conduct science. The skeptics come along and say: “But this has to be wrong! You alarmists!”
How many people know, for example, that reducing carbon emissions at this point will not reduce global temperature rise, as past carbon emissions don’t dilute or dissipate, but remain in the atmosphere like a thick blanket? I confess I didn’t. So we can only, possibly, in a best-case scenario, DELAY the inevitable rise, not turn it around.
There is no scientific basis that government legislation, often referred to as “addressing” climate “issues” will stop anything. The pundit class and the skeptics promote these unscientific and illogical fallacies, because as Haque notes:
“The job of the skeptic is to abuse you — and the job of the pundit is to normalize it.”
The abuse perpetrated by skeptics and pundits couldn’t be more evident than in the absolutely insane pursuit of global war and man-made extinction events by the “leaders” of the United States. All in the name of spreading the heaven of freedom, but, in reality, resulting always in the hell of permanent destruction and economic malaise, and possible extinction.
I offer the opinion that younger, forward-thinking alarmists like Umair Haque would be the best advisors to aged, octagenarian leaders rooted in the past, who are near death themselves, and therefore, unable to embrace creating a future in a sustainable, habitable world. Presumably wiser, but never demonstrating that wisdom, all they know is subservience to financial capitalists and the Military Industrial Complex, in a world that has to have resources micro-managed for minority profit, and taken through brute force and military might. A world, that, if it continues to adhere to this destructive pattern, has no viable future. Period.
Consider the dangerous misadventures of the aged and mentally challenged Speaker Of The House Pelosi, the third most powerful person in the US, putting herself and her staff at risk by defying the Chinese government. China, a nuclear superpower (despite being downgraded by the pundit, skeptic, and political class to having a “modest” nuclear arsenal) has clearly and unequivocally stated that they view Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan as a military provocation. Long, destructive wars have been ignited over far, far less.
(Update: As I write this, Pelosi is tweeting that she landed in Taiwan apparently without incident, for now.)
How is it possible that even younger, seemingly progressive “leaders” like Representative Ro Khanna, full of hubris, could lapse publicly into stupid, dangerous, bellicose rhetoric like he recently exhibited, escalating tensions even further?
The alarmist in the above example, if one existed, would say that taking on Russia by proxy, and simultaneously provoking China into a military conflict, is putting the world on the knife edge of an existential crisis. Instead, the neutral pundit, Blitzer, simply thanks Khanna for his time, instead of doing what he should have: questioning Khanna’s sanity and forcefully pushing back on the narrative. One thing that is always a point of bipartisan agreement, without debate or controversy, is the pursuit of war and the money to fund it. The missing element, the alarmist, points out sociopathic tendencies and doesn’t waffle around with inanities of polite, made-for-TV decorum. They call out the insanity and stupidity. One thing is certain, when the “opposition” party moves in alignment with the party Khanna allegedly speaks for, the danger is certainly at hand.
Perhaps, if you tend toward human empathy and concern, you are an alarmist yourself, and if you’re like me, you vacillate between rage and depression at the state of where the Western world is now in terms of the total capitulation and inaction in response to the spread of global disease. It’s bigger than just COVID now.
Despite the fact that Monkeypox is exploding and has been officially declared a global health emergency, and that even long eradicated diseases like polio are showing up again, the predictable response is downplaying any alarm.
The highly paid skeptics are ushered into TV studios with calming sets and warm lights by the pundits, amplified on corporate and social media, and the myth of safely living and co-existing with the pandemic disease spreads further. In fact, the skeptics are being put in charge of messaging AND policy in New York City, a bastion of denial.
No better example than the 79-year-old President of the United States, in multiple series of staged events pretending that he is fine, if a little under the weather. The subtext of the message is “Don’t be an alarmist, I’ll walk away from this in a few days folks. I’ll keep busy instead of resting. I’ll take Paxlovid, the latest Big Pharma miracle cure, and be “back on the road” in no time.” As if the population was best served by the appearance of “action” or activity instead of an aged man using common sense and resting. The alarmists have always said, and continue to, that COVIDs effects, even in “mild” infections and reinfections are long-term and don’t exhibit immediately.
Alarmists deserve better than this. They’re smarter than the people in charge, and in the long run, usually prove to be right. When you can, amplify the voice of intelligence, reason, and caution over the overblown and ignorant voices of skeptics and pundits, They don’t care about our well-being, they make their living being paid not to. Stay Safe and Thanks for Reading.
Update 08/2/2022: There are some alarmist news sources urging caution and reporting that some contingents of the Taiwanese people now have a “fear of war”.
“But then Pelosi’s visit was confirmed and the mood shifted. News sites ran polls, with almost two-thirds of UDN’s respondents saying the visit was destabilising. Talk radio discussed preparation and escape plans, and walked listeners through their growing anxieties. At one point more than 300,000 people around the world were tracking her flight on FlightRadar24, before the site crashed under load.”