Digby on Giuliani adviser and ex-FEMA head Joe Allbaugh and his ilk:
And hey, if a natural disaster or terrorist attack comes along that they can use [as] an excuse to pillage American territory, they'll be happy to get in on that action, too. (It sure puts their denial of global warming in a different light, doesn't it?)
To disaster capitalists employing The Shock Doctrine, we can add various Millennialists who are actively seeking the Rapture and sundry other Survivalists, cultists, and solitaries. There are quite a lot of people who are in love with Apocalypse and any number of End Times scenaria.
Living from crisis to crisis is also a characteristic of addicts and their families, Anne Wilson Schaef wrote in When Society Becomes an Addict. And who among us has not been involved with at least one alcoholic and their family?
Addicts and their families live from crisis to crisis. Every event or issue is perceived as a major turning point, and one barely ends when the next one begins.
I have believed for some time that crises serve the purpose of giving addicts and their families the illusion of being alive. When they have a crisis, they are at least feeling something.
ACtually, crisis orientation is also a very subtle form of control. Creating a crisis feeds our illusion of control because the crisis is something we have created. Even when the situation gets out of control, it is satisfying to us because it is our situation and we made it. A skilled crisis-causer can weave a crisis out of the most mundane event. Getting the kids off to school, making a decision on the job, planning what to have for dinner, telephoning a friend - everything is done in a state of panic.
A colleague of mine is becoming aware of how frequently she turns ordinary living into a crisis. As she struggles to contront her own illusion of control, she is finding that she has fewer crises to contend with. The more quickly one relinquishes the illusion of control, the less crisis-oriented ones life becomes.
We see this crisis orientation on a system level, also. There is no doubt that a crisis is good for the economy and keeps the public believing that our government is "doing something." Sometimes we need to create a crisis to give ourselves a role and feel needed.
Anne Wilson Schaef
When Society Becomes an Addict
pages 43-44
ISBN 0-06-25484-9
We like to hype ourselves up on our own adrenaline (or is it dopamine?).
We like to scare ourselves.
However, Be Prepared is always good advice.
That's one reason why I say
Solar IS Civil Defense