Stop Exaggerating

During the 9/11 attacks, one of the hijacked planes, Flight 93, failed to achieve its mission. Why? Because the passengers, having gotten wind of what had been done with the other planes, charged into the cockpit and brought down the plane. While Trump and Clinton were still campaigning last year, one blogger wrote wrote that Clinton would take the country “off a cliff”. Therefore, he urged:
“2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die.”
Now, of course, the boot is on the other foot. Anti-Trump campaigns are based on the same fear of Trump destroying “everything”.

Everything?, snorts Alan Jacobs. He rightly calls out the rampant exaggeration on both sides:
“This absolutizing of fright reminds me of the expanding scope of disasters in superhero comics and movies: People will die! — no wait, a whole city will be destroyed! — A city? Small stuff. The planet will be vaporized! — A mere planet? The universe will disappear in a puff of smoke! — Just this universe? No: all the universes there are or ever were or ever will be! All gone!”
Ok, you say, but surely that can’t do much harm. Think again, warns Jacobs:
“Such escalation of rhetoric means the deflation of care. All this pearl-clutching disguised as apocalyptic prophecy is not only intellectually vacuous, it’s counterproductive. You scream long enough and people stop hearing you, you become just another element of the background noise. If you are concerned and want others to share your concern, tell us precisely what you think will happen, why you think it will happen, and how you think it will happen.”

Jacobs is bang on target. We can see this tendency everywhere:
-         In every European election from the Netherlands to France, a near frenzy of doomsday scenarios is getting kicked up (Russia is hacking the election! The extreme right-wing might win! etc etc).
-         In India, violence in Kashmir or Maoists killing CRPF jawans will trigger outrageous fears that the whole country is falling apart! Every move of a Yogi will be scrutinized and made to sound as if the man rules not UP, but the whole of India!
-         In the West, they call anyone they don’t like a Nazi. In India, the leftists will call anyone they don’t like the equivalent of the Taliban.

All such ridiculous exaggerations dilute away even genuine concerns or fears. And then of course, the other side stops listening altogether. Maybe it’s time people remembered the story of the boy who cried wolf and start telling things as they really are instead of screaming all the time that the country or the world is coming to an end…

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