Eduard Weather Drama

Maybe I’m writing too soon and too glibly as the real storm should hit my area around 1 p.m., but dang. The drama around a thunderstorm seems excessive. My mom called my yesterday from Michigan and proclaimed that a tropical storm cometh. She’s very concerned about the weather. I pay little attention unless I’m flying on a plane, and even then I don’t pay enough attention as my three-hour, storm-delayed trip to Michigan demonstrated. I would have packed healthy food. Alas.

The technology of advanced warning is fantastic, don’t get me wrong. In 1900, Galveston Island lost most of its inhabitants because a hurricane struck and there was no advanced warning. So warnings are good. Even this tropical storm popped up in the Gulf seemingly out of nowhere, so it’s nice to have the radar and NOAA stuff.

My concern is that there is little perspective. Non-stop crisis mode makes for apathy. The boy who cried wolf and whatnot. I thought of this, too, at the airport, when I heard the Orwellian speaker system drone out the words, “We are at Threat Level Orange (Code Red being nuclear annihilation, I suspect), please watch your belongings…” blah, blah, blah. What good does that do? In the back of everyone’s mind now, after 9/11, people just watch more. Do they need to be reminded by a loudspeaker to pay attention?

And another thing: I want this cleared up. Will listening to my iPod during take-off crash the plane? I can tell you the answer to that: NO it won’t. I know that it won’t because I listened to it three times. The last leg of the journey, an aggressive stewardess who got off on her power just a little too much checked my iPod to make sure it was off–“plane mode isn’t good enough, it has to be off”. Why? Why does it have to be off?

The big winners in all the scare-mongering are the impotent little men and women who suddenly have lots of power over the compliant and brow-beaten masses. Should a terrorist attack happen in the sky again, it won’t likely be Skippy the Stewardess who saves the day. Most likely, it’ll be the average guy wedged into 13D taking the fight to the enemy. And when the hurricane hits, the government won’t save us. Their lack of planning can make saving ourselves a lot more difficult, but we’ll still have to feed, protect, and rebuild ourselves.

I don’t like freedoms taken away by needless scare-mongering. There are enough real dangers out there. We don’t have to manufacture them.

Cross-posted at MelissaClouthier.com

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