Don't give in to stupidity - part 1 (We have nothing to fear but fear itself.)

"In the late 1930s, as Britain refused to adapt to the new realities of war, Winston Churchill observed, "The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences."

- George W. Bush


Today, while I was at work, I was hearing all sorts of news.
First of all, the supreme court of USA legalized gay marriage nationwide. Good for them. Seriously.

Second, IS seems to have let all hell loose, wherever they had the opportunity. This worries me, because it worries other people. The news these days, are mostly bad. Religious fanatics, cold war, racism, it is a hell of a stew. People get frightened. Fright is contagious. It makes people stupid. It makes people do stupid things. Like throwing their freedom out the window.
I'm of course talking about the Patriot Act, the famous piece of American legislation, where people in power capitalized on the fear of the powerless. The personal freedom and rights of any and all citizens was greatly reduced. Fear mongering also let them start a couple of wars against people they had previously trained and armed themselves.*
Europe has had it's own share of terrorism, both religious and political motivated, but so far we've not gone totally overboard on cutting civil rights. Sure, we've got new security routines at airports and we had to join said wars, but hey, a deal is a deal, and we are all members of the club called NATO and so on.
But as the threats increase, we seem to mess up. The police in Norway are now armed with firearms in most situations.  We recently cut down on transparency in political processes. This seems to be solely for the sake of bureaucracy, but it doesn't make it any better. Damn you world, you are making me smoke actual cigarettes at home again. Anyways, I predict that terrorism will be a prevalent story in the news for some time. There will be speculations about threats to Norway. There will be questions about how well we are prepared for worst case scenarios. All this at a time where our prime minister already is worried about Russian spies,*** and an elevated threat level in Europe because of the situation in the Ukraine. More about that in part 2. Point is, people will be stupid. I implore people to not be so. Let the media and politicians rant and rave about the dangers of the world, but for blogs sake, let's not buy into it  ourselves. Please don't believe the hype, and don't let your political representative misrepresent you. When the government limits your liberty, the terrorists win.**** When you are afraid, the terrorists win. When we bomb the shit out of some country to kill the terrorists, we generate more terrorists and the terrorists win yet again. When we arm the rebels to overthrow the regime we don't like, we end up arming IS. Terrorists win. This is not counterstrike. This is the real world. Only damn way to beat this is by not being afraid and therefor not stupid.

Anyways, gay marriage, eyh? Textbook example of people being unafraid from the supreme court. Use your brain if you are going to hate something, it is a big decision. Don't use your heart or guts for hate, those are for loving and eating.


*This will be another case of everything is connected to everything else, as you will see in part 2**
**If you bother to read it that is. But take my word for it, everything is connected to everything else.
***Of all things to worry about....
****And so does the government.  Yes, they do, don't argue.