Summary: 'Anyone who honestly recalls the 1970s, with Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation and the energy crisis, cannot really believe the present difficulties are unrivaled.' - Robert Kagan
Quick Quote by Robert Kagan on the fallacy of America's Decline
BLOT: (06 Apr 2012 - 12:28:34 PM)
Quick Quote by Robert Kagan on the fallacy of America's Decline
I need to take time to write out a post or multiple posts on three important fallacies that I think are being used, by advertisement-dollar-seeking news outlets, to drum up a panic and to instill an addiction to news coverage: the false claim there is a cultural war going, the false claim that there is the necessity for partisanship, and the false claim that we have to decide right now or the nation will collapse. It would take too long for me to get into any of these, though expect a post about the false cultural war soon, but let's look at Robert Kagan quote on the lattermost:
Anyone who honestly recalls the 1970s, with Watergate, Vietnam, stagflation and the energy crisis, cannot really believe the present difficulties are unrivaled.
As taken from this article: The Big Bang: Zbigniew Brzezinski and Robert Kagan on the State of America.
And I agree. The notion that a single president, be it Bush or Obama, is going to be singlehandedly bring down a country is nonsense. References to Nero—in conjunction with both Obama and Bush—surface, but that is always problematic1. Besides, the burning of Rome that many use as the final metaphor for what { ... | Nixon | Ford | Carter | Reagan | Bush | Clinton | Bush | Obama } will do the country is falsely assuming that the burning of Rome was the end of Rome. Believe it not, classical civilization knew how to survive. Much like knowing that gas prices adjusted for inflation show a number of spikes equal to and sometimes greater than current prices2 is important, knowing your historical metaphors and their truthiness and how it all fits together is really important before you start yanking the wheel of the country left and right to avoid a wreck that is always a possibility, but not necessarily right there. I would suggest that overreaction is worse than under-, but that's just me: a simple guy who doesn't think Nero destroyed Rome. What do I know?
1: reports of Nero's tyranny are likely exaggerated and might originally had to do more with the wars that broke out shortly after his suicide than anything to do with his reign, though currently it probably has to do with his historical—and maybe or maybe not actual—aspect as a major persecuter of Christians.
2: Admittedly, the mean is lower.
OTHER BLOTS THIS MONTH: April 2012
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