Borrowing trouble

We do sometimes have to borrow trouble when our available supply runs short, as if insufficient to the day were the evils thereof.

Powerline reports on a Minnesota story in line with an all-too-familiar journalistic trend, which I call the "Nation braces for" headline. In this case, a story reports that no one has any firm reason to suppose that the Trump administration is planning to grant clemency on the federal charges piled on to the George-Floyd convictions that landed Derek Chauvin in prison. The article dutifully reports that law enforcement has no information on any such plans. Governor Walz also has no information on any such plans. Nevertheless, "the governor and other public officials" are bracing for the inevitable riots that will result. Might as well get started on those riots right now, lest anyone be caught short on the looming five-year anniversary of the troubles.

Similarly, we were treated recently to a spate of articles about the inflation and recession that would result from President Trump's tariff policy. The actual news reported inflation abating, while the brief stock market dip corrected itself convincingly, thus revealing itself as more of a panicked reaction to distorted news than a real economic development.

None of this is novel. The climate catastrophe reported for the last 30 years has been almost 100% ill-founded predictions rather than news of genuine climate events. In each case, the nation braces for something awful that will have been caused by the bad people in charge.

An acquaintance recently remarked that President Trump deserves no credit for causing a disaster and then fixing it. It's a way of coping, I suppose, with the embarassment of predicting a disaster that never happens: as if it had happened in a kind of virtual universe but was averted there. I'm reminded of the Goldie Hawn character in "Overboard" (very worth watching) who complains, "I almost had to wait."