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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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I've ways had a suspicion that some of the induced hysteria at least in the US was - for some people, on some level - an attempt to hurt Trump.

After Trump got covid, took Remdesevir, ended up fine, and made a public statement to the effect of "Don't be afraid, dont let this take over your life", the unanimous response of 'responsible people' as typified by Andrew Cuomo was "You should be afraid! Covid could kill you!"

I still think about this occasionally; how pathetic it was and out of sync it was with the national character we apparently pretend to extoll. How smart, serious people promoted neurotic, debilitating worry, and the Clown Prince was the one being sensible and imploring some healthy perspective - and then chastised for it despite being ultimately vindicated over time judging by everybody's behavior over the following years after his loss.

I think that’s a part of it, but I think there’s a large contingent of the establishment that are just generally safety-ists and think that it’s always unacceptable to downplay a risk. Some if this comes from working in agencies. The number of things that to the mind of a regulator that are “dangerous” are really crazy. The manufacting process of all kinds of things give of some (usually small) amount of chemicals that in sufficient amounts might cause a problem. And I recall listening to an interview with someone studying people allergic to chemicals in clothing. To hear this woman talk, clothing (at least as manufactured today) are full of toxic chemicals, release micro plastics, and are manufactured using other toxic chemicals. To a person who sees the world in this manner, the entire planet is toxic. Add in the other things that might be dangerous, and these types are constantly ringing alarm bells. Some caution might be warranted on occasion, but the entire regulatory system is full of chicken littles warning that a practice is dangerous or a product if full of toxic chemicals.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that the vast majority of modern Americans go most of their lives in pretty safe conditions risking nothing more serious than paper-cuts and shin splits. So without a healthy perspective on risks in general, they tend to take it to absolutely bonkers levels of risk avoidance. A healthy relationship with risk is that you look at your own levels of risk against other factors. People who work in more risky industries tend to get that. An electrician works with electrical equipment every day. That equipment, if he makes a serious mistake can kill him, and he damn well knows it. He also knows not to make that mistake and to take precautions so he doesn’t make that mistake. You can go down the list of other skilled labor or factory workers or whatever, and they all have risks inherent to their work. They have to get over the fear to function.