Every Crisis But the Crisis

John Tierney nailed it last summer: He wrote that the overarching problem we face is the “the Crisis Crisis, the incessant state of alarm fomented by journalists and politicians.” We’re in deep trouble, all day every day, and everything is a disaster, and we need political leaders to take more power so they can solve our problems.

So here comes Mitt Romney, warning in The Atlantic that we’re in a — how would one say this? — like maybe in a Crisis Crisis. And he sounds a whooooole bunch of alarms.

What are the cataclysmic threats? Here’s one: “As the ice caps melt….”

And, of course, this one: “And when a renowned conservative former federal appellate judge testifies that we are already in a war for our democracy and that January 6, 2021, was a genuine constitutional crisis, MAGA loyalists snicker that he speaks slowly and celebrate that most people weren’t watching.”

He also mentions inflation and the border and water, but here comes the solution:

What clears the scales from the eyes of a nation? Pearl Harbor did. 9/11 did. A crisis can shake the public consciousness. But a crisis may come too late for a course correction that can prevent tragedy. The only cure for wishful thinking is leadership. Winston Churchill emboldened a complacent Britain and rallied the world.

So we need to feel a crisis so we can agree that politicians need to be in charge of January 6 and the climate, so we can fix everything. The judges award maximum points to John Tierney for “the Crisis Crisis,” because yes.

Meanwhile, enraged by an energy crisis, Libyans are burning government buildings: “On Friday in Tobruk, in the far east of the country, demonstrators forced their way into parliament with a bulldozer and then set fire to it.”

Speaking of burning government buildings, Sri Lankans are lighting things on fire because the news from their country looks like this:

Germany’s trying to keep the lights on, Dutch farmers are shutting down their country in a growing display of rage over their government’s insane climate regulations…

…and the British government is beginning to fall apart, with ministers making their brutal resignation letters to their prime minister public:

Oh, and then there’s Austria, where the government officials who promulgated the national Covid mandates are now very angry that doctors hurt so many people with Covid vaccines, so DON’T BLAME US.

So Mitt Romney sees a bunch of crises, and he wants to offer “leadership” as the solution, but the one crisis he doesn’t notice — aside from the growing crisis involving food and fuel, which is related — is the crisis of legitimacy for the governing class all over the world.

He wants us to believe that we’re in crisis, but he wants us to believe the opposite of the actual crisis.

The arsonist class wants us to ask it to be the fire department, and they’re really confused by our response.

“America in is denial,” he says, as he doesn’t write about the increasingly open global rage at the governing class.

Good luck with that.