Our National Security + Something About Tits

Article today in The New York Times - or, as I call it, "The Times" - points out the fact that here in America we tend to not do stuff until it’s pretty much too late:

We have a dangerous habit of taking warning signs seriously only after a catastrophe has taught us what they meant. None of this requires believing catastrophe is inevitable or even likely. It requires accepting that if the worst outcomes are preventable, the moment to prevent them will necessarily come before the evidence is complete, before the costs of delay become obvious.

We should not confuse uncertainty with safety. We should not wait for the warnings to become wreckage. And we should not need another commission report to tell us, after the fact, that the systems were blinking red.

"But Xmastime", you say in the voice of Craig “Ironhead” Heyward from those soap commercials (RIP), “didn’t you point this out almost 20 years ago, also giving this phenomenon the delight name ‘TITS UP’?”

Sigh. Yes I did, faithful readers, YES I did:

We never seem to do anything as a country these days until shit goes absolutely tits up. TITS UP - this seems to be our modus operandi now; if you want any change at all, you hafta wait for complete disaster. Until global warming completely destroys a part of the country we give a shit about, nothing will be done on that. So to keep the auto industry in the status quo is to set us back years again re: alternate fuels and energy et al. because unless they HAVE to change things, they won't. Why would they?

Don't bankroll them, make them go tits-up...and WHAT DO YOU KNOW, I'm guessing they'll "all of a sudden" start coming up with ideas they should've been implementing a long time ago.