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DRAMATICS

                                             January   7, 2013
                                             February  7, 2013

Every time there's another great issue in
the news, yet another dramatic event that
demands we all join in and feel the same way
at the same time on this great tragic
occasion, when we all of course know that
now, at last, Something Must Be Done...

I'm the odd man out.
Or one of the odd men out.
                                         The few, the proud, the odd.

I'm initially skeptical about the
reports of the dramatic event--
half of the time they're grossly
distorted, if not out right wrong;        Sometimes I decide later
then I'm skeptical about the              that my initial impulse
actual magnitude of the real              was wrong: sometimes it
problem, however dramatic the             isn't exaggerated,
current events might be.                  sometimes the problem
                                          really is pretty big.
I want to compare magnitudes:
isn't this objectively a
small problem compared to other       COMPARATIVE_DEATH
things we are not so excited about?

There are wide areas where we
just shrug things off, and others
where we wig out over the tiniest          THE_GREAT_CAR_THREAT
thing...

                                           In other words, this is an area
     Clearly, I'm a strong                 where I think our appetite for
     candidate for "most                   narrative leads us astray...
     annoying man alive".
                                                   NARRATIVE_DRIVE

                                                      RELUCTANT_STORYTELLER
                                                      SWORD_OR_SHIELD


        CIRCULAR_DRUM


             Many people really
             fundamentally seem believe
             in the veering-from-crisis               Though it's often
             to crisis model, we're all               more selective:
             supposed to join in on a                 someone who finds
             group session of wailing and             pro-war hysteria
             chest-beating.                           post-911 regretable
                                                      might still enjoy
             Myself, I tend to believe in             a good round of
             some form of rational ranking            anti-gun hysteria
             of problems in order of                  after a round of
             priority, where the scale of a           gun violence stories.
             problem is often measured in
             terms of human lives.

                      And if you're nodding in agreement
                      at that, it's probably only because
                      you haven't heard me make the case
                      that some of your own pet causes are
                      exaggerated, too.


             We've got no middle setting:
             everything is always either
             completely on-hold or some
             hysterical emergency.

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