These Difficult Times

This just in from INAdaily.com (via Political Theory ), on the political use of catastrophes. Daniel Innerarity gets right to it when he notes that, although catastrophes may exact unfathomable pain and horror upon a populations, they also present unique opportunities. He notes that some people are so positioned that they can...

...exploit the state of emergency by reacting well to it. If we look at the things that excite the hottest political debate, we find catastrophic events such as forest fires, air accidents, floods and terrorist attacks, all of which cause the opposition to raise a howl. Whoever performs the thankless task of opposition knows that he or she has no better weapon at their disposal than a badly-managed catastrophe. This is his step up, the foot in the door. Governments understand this too, and prepare detailed plans for disasters so as not to give a chance to the opposition. Emergencies are now the stuff of political debate; routine business producing little political mileage, and left to the bureaucrats.

What does this mean? It means that, for those of advantageous position, enormous and catastropic difficulties can become powerful avenues of influence, that it is not only small and personal difficulties that can contain such meaning but difficulties of all size, scope, scale, and severity actually contain hidden forms of use. This utility, while, from a conventional perspective, of highly questionable moral fiber, is undeniable. Bruce Lee wrote: "Pain can be good. It is like the forest fire that, after burning, new growth springs.

The question then remains: What type of person, or character would or could capitalize on such a situation? Strong? Or weak? But then almost as an afterthought Innerarity adds:

Governing is something within the abilities of anyone; the hard thing is to be a good opposition. It is as leader of the opposition where you become believable as a leader of government. In the end, we voters think that the easier job can be done by one who has done the harder one. In other words, we are inclined to award the government to one who has performed the task of opposition. [Emphasis mine.]

Even upon the enormous playing field of global politics of these difficult times, difficulties are not always burdens.