Don't give in to stupidity and fear - part 2 (History repeating.)

"In the defense of our nation, a president must be a clear-eyed realist. There are limits to the smiles and scowls of diplomacy. Armies and missiles are not stopped by stiff notes of condemnation. They are held in check by strength and purpose and the promise of swift punishment." - George W. Bush


Surely you read part 1? Good.

It is time to Stock up on canned food for humans and cats alike, according to media we are heading for a new cold war. Well, color me impressed, I really didn't think we would let it get that far. But I like to be prepared, and I've got very little faith in people in general, so I actually have a small stockpile of durable foodstuffs. I'm not a survivalist nutcase, I'm a realist, or so my cat keeps telling me. When everything goes wrong, I will be stuffing my face with delicious baked beans. I also have canned ham if the zombies come before the Russians.*
I'm not actually worried, the headlines are always dramatic, or someone wouldn't be doing their job very well, but there is some truth to it, the situation between Russia and, well, the world**, isn't cheerful. But as they say, it takes two to move their bodies together to a complicated early 20th century Latino rhythm. Meaning, what the hell are you all up to, what on earth are you thinking and what can I do to make you stop being stupid? These are not rhetorical questions. Somehow, we let this happen, ignore the problem or just grumble about evil Russians.
This will certainly help just as much as the good old "duck and cover". If only the Japanese had heard this phrase, thousands would've been saved. But then again, I suppose the point was to kill them.

The point of a cold war is not to kill anyone, as opposed to the famous hot wars. Well, isn't that a good thing, not killing each other, I hear no one in particular ask. Yes, I answer, and most people manage that every day without entering a verbal agreement with his neighbor that neither part will firebomb the other's house.
I sometimes talk with people in Eastern Europe, and they tell me the tanks are rolling through the streets where they live. At first I was surprised, now it seems commonplace. NATO is showing muscles, just in case Russia invades anyone they shouldn't. And I'm totally confused as to why we are entering this particular scenario again. Surely, the Russians love their children too. I mean, come on, here I was, thinking the nuclear arms race was more or less over, and we could worry about other things. But no, of course not, let us worry some more about nuclear holocaust. Our parents had such a blast digging token shelters in their gardens, we simply need to bring that back. We can pretend we live in Vault 13, it will be amusing, haha.

But wait a second. I just said the point of a cold war is to not kill anybody. Where is the danger, and what exactly is the point? Well, the danger comes from the politicians, corporations and international organizations that stoke the fires. They are clearly not good people. They might even be slightly unstable, have substance abuse problems or just be plain evil. For the most part, they just tend to prioritize money and power over everything else. And these people are the same people with the finger on the big, red nuclear buttons, or  maybe they just control said finger, it doesn't really matter. What really gets me, is that these are the same people with access to fallout shelters that might actually work. Do not for a second believe that this brewing conflict is about difference in ideologies, politics or even ethics. If the world cared even the slightest about Putin knocking off the political competition by making them dead, protecting Russians in other countries by invasion, promoting hate crime against gays or just being insanely macho, we wouldn't have given him the Olympics. The point of a new cold war would only be about money. And possibly power for the sake of power.
I hate to say this, but the damn hippies and conspiracy theorists were right on this.

USA has had a wartime economy ever since WW2. They spend insane amounts of money on defense contracts, new hardware, ships, planes and gadgets. More than any other country in the world, probably more than most other countries combined. If you hadn't noticed, the American economy hasn't been all that hot lately, neither has that of many European countries who happen to be a part of NATO, for that matter. It would be impossible for USA to change gears to peacetime economy at this point. They have used small and big wars to fuel their economy for 70 years. If the war wasn't hot, then the cold war would work just as fine until something better came along. You think I'm making this up? Use the internets, google it. War all the time. Reagan even made his own Star Wars project for blogs sake. Russia now being somewhat a lesser threat than back in the glorious USSR times, it seems the threat rests more firmly on the European countries. This works even better for USA, it's even a boon for Russia. All the better if this is mostly a regional conflict. The region still needs loans, equipment and suitable cultural entertainment.***

So why do I insist that everybody are stupid? Except for the obvious reasons (and fear), we live in democracies.**** This means we elect representatives to carry out our will. I love the term "public servants", that is exactly what they are, at  least in theory. So in a way, we are responsible - No, I don't care if you didn't vote for this or that person or didn't vote at all, you are still responsible as a human blogging being. Please, please use your grey matter, be aware of what is actually going on, question the news and don't give in to fear. The fear-dollar is big enough as it is.


*It's a classic. Zombie apocalypse and ham are like hand and glove. For some reason.
**Except those countries not bordering to Russia, not a close partner to USA or a part of NATO, so we are mainly talking about USA and Europe. You know, the world.
***See, I said everything was connected!
****If you, the reader, somehow has managed to read this from North-Korea or similar, I salute you.