Atmospherics

I see lots of fancy maneuvering in the political sphere. If I were an airplane pilot, I'd use some metaphor about wing flaps.

I'm not experiencing too much turbulance though. We're very used to unpopular and/or crooked politicians and CEOs so this is pretty standard scenery.

True: globalization is messy. But our telecommunications infrastructure is working pretty well, enabling big picture views.

Per What the Bleep and related literature, it's quite possible to become addicted to fear. If the fear level doesn't feel high enough, one worries about "losing touch with reality."

These differences in fear level may be intergenerational as in "those dirty hippies just don't fear the communists enough, or they wouldn't be skipping off to Canada, leaving their country undefended against falling dominos."

But that's not to say those hippies were living without fear. Maybe the difference was less a matter of fear level than of fear focus.

They listened, as wide-eyed children, to Eisenhower's military-industrial complex speech, and took it to heart. Some even joined Canada's clandestine services to fight their own personal dragons and demons.