Extremism

I have a very hard time not predicting doom from bad events that affect society. As I see freedoms erode in light of newfound threats, I feel sick to my stomach and try to figure out where we're really at on our path towards 1984.

And by newfound threats, I suppose I'm lucky that terrorists never saw Macgyver, or at least that the people in charge of airport security don't think they did. If they thought that our average terrorist were as able as Richard Dean Anderson ever entered their minds, we'd be flying naked and unconscious. Once the terrorists figure out how to just do things, instead of trying to plan large attacks with multiple planes, all we'll be left with are 3 hour waits to get on the planes and no idea what's in store for us.

The world is going through some troubling times, and you know... maybe we have to play all these silly games and give up rights to preserve us for the next couple hundred years. Perhaps at that point, things can revert to how they "used to be," and freedom and liberty can be more than long lost memories.

Or maybe that won't be the case until interstellar travel is a reality. Perhaps we're doomed to be space-limited forever, and the only things that can work in that sort of environment and provide any security at all are police states.

And yeah, I guess we're still pretty free. For now. Populations are going to be an issue for a long time, and maybe there will always be people pissed off about something and willing to die to take out someone else.

And maybe the world would fall apart if personal liberty were kept at the level that I want it at. Maybe it's really just a dream that can never really exist. I don't know.