Chicken Little

I made the mistake of watching the local news while I was staying at Shannon's house. The anchorman literally said, "The sky is falling." I was so irked by that. THE SKY IS NOT FALLING! They were talking about the national debt and the stock market and on and on and on.

It drove me nuts because it's a complete scare tactic. Politicians want us to panic, so they can play superman. It's how they get reelected. And news channels what to keep their viewers, so they make outrageous claims such as this one.

I love what my brother-in-law Josh said about it:

"It is hyperbole. We won't default unless we choose to. Debt payments amount to about 7% of our budget so they can just start laying people off, doing furloughs, shutting down agencies etc and still keep paying the debt no problem but that sounds less dire than default and won't make people panic. You have to make people panic if you want to get your way."

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. - H. L. Mencken