Although its thesis is farfetched (short, unfair summary: transgenderism causes wars) and its nostalgia for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, a Cold War communist front group, is grating, Peter Baehr’s “The Peace Women” offers interesting insights, including this one:
Long gone are the days when citizens were enjoined to “fear only fear itself.” Instead, we are told to fear without respite. In the past decade alone, Westerners have been deluged by panics over Brexit, Donald J. Trump (ongoing), covid, Russia (ongoing). Today we are told that, without draconian action planned and executed by experts, the planet is in danger of a climate apocalypse. A fear that arises spontaneously is, usually, a natural response to the perception of danger; fears that follow in quick succession are almost always orchestrated. Philosophers dispute whether zero is a number, and mathematicians say that it can be treated as a number, but when politicians invoke it, zero is neither a number nor a non-number: it is a portent that life is about to get a lot nastier. The most obvious results of such alarums – Net Zero, Zero covid, Year Zero – are suspended parliaments, rule by decree, internet censorship, skewed data, corrupted science, and a poorer society, especially for the already poor.
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