WORST CASE
So many people these days seem to find a certain satisfaction in citing the worst possible conditions which might evolve if everything goes as wrong as the seem to think it must.
You know the type. You, no doubt, met a your share of them in that strange time just a few years ago ago when the world faced the beginning of new century. Do your recall the near panic which occurred with many people at that time? Many seemed certain that only doom awaited each and every one of us .. all of us ... in strangely different and exotic ways. Computers, especially, were to suffer ignoble defeat and disaster. Everything that could possibly happen in a phase of war and strife, plus, abject poverty, famine and disease were sure to take place beginning in those few minutes right after midnight. I know people who stocked upon on foods, water medications and ammunition in newly constructed basement shelters to outlive the vague threats of doom sure to rush upon us as the old century died.
Where are these strange people now?
Many of then are still with us and their dedicated efforts are being expended daily in concocting the worst possible scenario detailing all the vilest misery and dismemberment of our nation in the immediate future. If you ask what they think of the situation in, let's say Iraq, or North Korea or any other hot spot of the moment - even those which are just warm - you will find they have it all mapped out in fine detail as to who will suffer the most and some will even tell you how and why. They are preparing for it all just as they did for the arrival of the year 2000!
The very individuals upon who the troublemakers of the world do not know what is about to happen. They see it all in a different light and much depends on what others do in the crisp, nervous meantime. No one ... none of us, for sure ...has such a firm grip on the true facts as has this viral worst-case prophet who remains a part of our body politic.
I meet with the situation daily as do most of you. “What do you think is going to happen in Iraq?”
I don't know. Many of the leaders of those nations involved do not know. And certainly the “Year 2000 Doom Sayer”, now a war an strife specialist, in is unlikely to be an instant-authority on all such concerns.
Be careful what you allow yourself to think, and say and even hear about the direst potential of the moment. No one can even begin to describe what it might be. I they could, and did so, no one would believe them anyway. These people who think they know for sure what is ahead for all of us, don't know the meaning of real of human suffering horror and loss. Their pictures of the worst are adult “child's play - pretending - and little more.
A.L.M . JANUARY 27, 2003 [c516wds]
