{"id":576,"date":"2012-03-16T11:24:12","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T11:24:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/?p=576"},"modified":"2012-03-16T11:24:12","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T11:24:12","slug":"the-whole-of-practical-politics-is-to-keep-people-scared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/the-whole-of-practical-politics-is-to-keep-people-scared\/","title":{"rendered":"The Whole Of Practical Politics Is To Keep People Scared"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Saw this great quote from HL Mencken buried in the comments to some newspaper story this week and felt it deserved more prominence.<\/p>\n<div style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><span style=\"font-size: x-large;\">The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.<\/span><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So the next time you read of some horror story and hear that<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><strong>SOMETHING HAS TO BE DONE<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Just ask yourself if what is being proposed to solve the &#8216;problem&#8217; will actually make any difference let alone make things better. It might also be worth asking who will make money or gain power, prestige or influence from any proposed solution.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">It is often said that Margret Thatcher was instrumental in starting the campaign against CO2 which came to be known as Global Warming and now Climate Change.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Apparently Margret Thatcher wanted to scare people away from using coal in order to thwart the power of the miners union. Perhaps because she felt (rightly or wrongly)\u00a0 they wanted to overthrow her government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Saw this great quote from HL Mencken buried in the comments to some newspaper story this week and felt it deserved more prominence. The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/the-whole-of-practical-politics-is-to-keep-people-scared\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,24,25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=576"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":583,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/576\/revisions\/583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jeremyshiers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}