Where Does America's Fear Come From? 926
An anonymous reader writes "While far from a dictatorship, the United States has employed a number of paranoid tactics that delegitimize its democracy. And the motivation for doing so is — fear. That seems to be a long way from 'So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is...fear itself: nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and of vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. And I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.' Where is the U.S. heading?"
Control... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Power (Score:4, Insightful)
I take it you've been dealt an above average hand then.
Is it fear ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think the primary motivation for massive surveillance and such things is fear. In my opinion it is about control and power. Being able to silence any opposition before it gets organized and knowing in advance which groups dissent is growing gives you the power to stay in control longer. Fear is only used to gain acceptance of the public: think of the terrorists etc.
Re:Control... (Score:5, Insightful)
It is "Fear and consumption".
A way to keep the populations under control. The Roman Empire used "Bread and circuses".
2000 years, and nothing has changed.
Where Does America's Fear Come From? (Score:5, Insightful)
Two big sources (Score:5, Insightful)
Second: guns. Having a gun is a sign you are afraid. What are you afraid of? Ans: all the other people with guns.
There is no easy answer to these problems as they are deeply rooted in human nature and are probably survival instints. Just ones that were developed as cavemen but have now got way out of control.
Re:It's Obama's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Lol Trust me Bush did more damage in one year than the whole of the current presidents will ever do.
The rest of he world is either crying over their dead or alternating between amused and disappointed in US actions since 9/11.
Guns, healthcare, climate change, Iraq war, summary execution without trial and with innocent victims, It's like watching a bizarre right wing satire show. If it was fiction it would be hilarious.
Re:It's Obama's fault (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear comes from (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:While far from a dictatorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Control... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Power (Score:5, Insightful)
For the hundredth time.
Capitalism does not reward hard work.
It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
The whole point of the "capital" in "capitalism" is to NOT have to work hard. It's an economic system which takes advantage of human laziness. You may think this is good or bad, workable or unworkable, but that's still how it is.
The hardest workers I've ever met are all dirt poor. They either lack the fortune or the inclination to make money - IOW they're either disabled, dumb or idealistic. (And note well that there's nothing wrong with being any of these, with the proviso that being thick does not include wilful ignorance.)
Fear used to control (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Control... (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going with that analogy - some of us prefer to be sheep dogs. Sheep are just sheep, after all. Some of us are not sheep, and are incapable of reacting as sheep. Of course, we run into another problem - the government is incapable of distinguishing between wolves and dogs. Anything with fangs must be a predator, and dangerous.
I'll keep my fangs, and damn the government. And, damn the mindless sheep as well.
Re:Is it fear ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's Obama's fault (Score:4, Insightful)
Didn't take long to disintegrate into partisan politics, huh? As Falconhell already pointed out, Herr Bush instituted most of the stuff that Obama plays with today. Think about it, Herr Coward.
Re:While far from a dictatorship... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the sense of merging of corporation and state, America's as close as the world has got to sustained Italian corporatism, i.e. fascism in the pre-Hitler sense.
(Hitler wanted the same thing, but he also wanted a land war in Asia, and that's where he went too fa.. oh wait. Seriously though, America is fascist, for the traditional European definition of fascism.)
Re:Fear and Paranoia... (Score:5, Insightful)
America has largely stood alone, with only two neighbours whom it outnumbers or out classes technologically there has never been anything to fear from them.
The American people have lived in a fortress surrounded by (vast) ocean.
Pearl harbour penetrated that and look at the response.
Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh attacked from within and look at the response.
Same with the 9/11 attacks.
Americans haven't ever lived with the threat of violence, except sporadically. The response is disproportionate, but that's largely natural to unfamiliar circumstances.
Re:One very big change (Score:5, Insightful)
When the soviet union imploded the USA needed to invent other enemies, they found: terrorists and paedophiles.
This is not about protecting human life, the number killed so far by the USA in drone attacks in Pakistan [wikipedia.org] (2,830) is about the same as the number killed in the 9/11 attacks [wikipedia.org] (2,978); then start counting the number killed in Afganistan (Coalition casualties: 3,395 [wikipedia.org] civilian casualties (an order of magnitude more) [wikipedia.org].
A century ago, Progressives (Score:3, Insightful)
1. The Big Senate [thirty-thousand.org] no longer represents the people meaningfully.
2. The Little House [usconstitution.net] no longer represents the 50 States United, or offers any thoughtful feedback to the Big Senate.
3. The federal government has eminent domain over your wallet [usconstitution.net].
4. DC is printing money at will [wikipedia.org], demolishing the value of what you think is in your wallet, and obstructing reform.
5. We're all modern monetary theorists [unitedliberty.org] now.
So shut up, peasants, and avert your gaze when your Progressive Overlords pass by.
The path, not the position (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fear and Paranoia... (Score:5, Insightful)
We like our oceans, it keeps us away from all the "crazy" people in the world.
Note, I know they aren't all crazy, but considering that most Americans don't even have a passport, much less have ever left the country, to a large number of Americans, the USA is the center of the Universe.
If anyone even makes noise about coming over here, the general reaction is, "bomb them". And if that doesn't work, then you aren't using enough bombs.
The irony is that much of the hate towards America is caused by America's own actions. On the flip side, we do need to protect our interests overseas, the world is very much smaller than it was 100 years ago.
There are no easy solutions.
Re:Two big sources (Score:5, Insightful)
The one thing that defines a free man, is the right to keep and bear arms
The ONE THING? So nobody is free unless they have the right to a gun? So nobody in any other country, who doesn't have a gun-carrying laws possiby be free?
C'mon. Just a little common sense or a second of thought would make it obvious that the statement has no truth to it whatsoever.
Re:America's fear comes from... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ask your progressive friends how much they depend on MSNBC for news, and ask your conservative friends how much they depend on Fox News. Also ask them what they perceive the news to opinion ratio to be on each. That's the real difference.
We're asking the wrong question (Score:5, Insightful)
This post assumes that the actions of the federal government are in response to people's fears. That's your problem right there, you've got it backwards. It's the government who is acting in bad faith to begin with, and is then just looking for some cover to excuse it.
You didn't really think it takes $4 Trillion to catch a bunch of terrorists, did you?
Re: Power (Score:5, Insightful)
Capitalism does not reward hard work. It rewards marketability and cunning investment.
Actually, what it rewards most is having capital. And what it punishes most is not having capital.
If I have capital, I can invest it, not particularly cunningly, in S&P 500 ETFs and get a not-terrible return for doing no work at all. At worst, I'll be pulling in 0.5% from my bank with it. If I collect enough capital, then I don't need to do any work whatsoever and I'll be able to live comfortably by demanding other people's work in the form of purchases.
If I don't have capital, then anything that I buy will be done on credit, making it more expensive than if I had bought it outright. For example, if I use a credit card to buy food and don't pay it off right away, than the cost of my groceries is at least 25% higher due to the payments to the credit card company. So that means that because I started with less capital (for whatever reason), I actually have to work harder to pay for the same things that the person with $150K lying around can just buy.
An example from my day-to-day: I was lucky enough to be born into a family that could afford to pay for my bachelor's degree. That gave me an income of $2400 or so higher than classmates who started out earning about as much as I did. 2 years later, that translated into the just under $5000 I needed to buy a car to get to a better-paying job, saving me about $3000 a year in car loan payments. So now I'm basically earning $5K more than an equally-hardworking and responsible colleagues and classmates, and that allows me to save up for all sorts of things more easily than they can. The uneven playing field happens to be tilted somewhat in my favor, solely because I started with assets rather than debts.
Re:America's fear comes from... (Score:5, Insightful)
That looks at the percentage factual reporting vs. opinion reporting. That's a completely different question from the accuracy of the facts.
Example:
Foo reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. The American president has green skin. Only Martians have green skin. We should not let the fate of America be controlled a Martian."
Ratio of "fact" reporting to opinion reporting: 3:1 (three "fact" sentences, one opinion statement). Number of actual facts: 1.
Bar reports: "The most powerful person of the U.S. is the president. However his power is not absolute. But his power should be absolute. It is not a good idea to divert some power to the congress."
Ratio of fact reporting to opinion reporting: 1:1 (two fact sentences, two opinion sentences). Number of actual facts: 2.
The fact/opinion statistics would prefer Foo. However Bar, despite its higher and obviously stupid opinion part, has only actual facts, and even more of those than Foo, where two of three "facts" are fake.
Now I have no idea about the quality of facts of Fox vs. MSNBC. All I wanted to point out is that the statistics you quoted is completely unrelated to this question.
Re:A century ago, Progressives (Score:2, Insightful)
" OTOH the problem with cutting government spending is that it involves firing people, which reduces salaries for everyone by increasing the supply of available labor while reducing the demand for said labor."
This has got to be the thousandth time I've read an analysis of debt from a Progressive that fails to account for the fact that government is only a redistributor of income. Any decrease in spending is an increase in the amount that taxpayers can keep for themselves.
The question really comes down to market efficiency. Collecting taxes to direct an economy is obviously less efficient than letting the economy spend its own earnings. The overhead of administration alone makes government spending generally a raw deal, efficiency-wise.
***FEAR*** as a very powerful tool (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA sez:
And the motivation for doing so is â" fear
Dunbal sez:
Nothing has changed because basic human nature is the same. This is the way it will always be. So you get to choose whether you want to be part of the herd near the edge looking for the wolves, or oblivious somewhere the middle, or if you want to be a wolf. Being near the edge isn't a problem because you see the danger coming, so you get a head start. Being in the middle, you don't even realize the danger is there until the whole herd is moving.. And of course being a wolf has its own unique advantages: you get to eat mutton and you get to watch the whole herd fear you. But you have no herd for protection and in trying times, the other wolves don't mind eating wolf, too
Both the above have failed to realize that there is another entity in the picture --- the one who puts ***FEAR*** in the midst and use it for its own dastardly agenda.
A true analogy : Fish farmers who ship live fishes in flexitanks used to be troubled by the large number of fish turned belly up during the transit, and finally someone found a simple way to solve the problem --- they put a live crab inside the same flexitank with the fish.
Because of that one live crab, the fishes were pre-occupied with fear throughout the journey, and as a result, up to 95% of the fishes arrived at the destination still alive.
Same thing happens in the United States.
Because of the fear that has been instilled by the government the people forgot about everything else and willingly surrender their rights, their liberty, their privacy, just so they can remain "protected".
Re:Two big sources (Score:2, Insightful)
In an environment with a lot of criminals (who don't care about gun laws) you are less free if you aren't allowed to also own guns. It's rather simple really.
Also, having a fair chance to kill anyone who tries to physically coerce you is not even about human freedom, that's the basic freedom that every animal enjoys.
Re:Control... (Score:5, Insightful)
some of us prefer to be sheep dogs.
All of us prefer to be sheep dogs.
In reality, practically none of us are.
The dozen or so that are, we all know by name and most of them are dead already.
Re:Fear and Paranoia... (Score:4, Insightful)
With the exception of the waiters in Paris, you mean.
I live in Paris... the waiters are fine. The tourists are a pain in the ass.
Re:One very big change (Score:4, Insightful)
But at least always insisting on personal freedom and the right to privacy made the population sensitive for any infringment on both, keeping the surveillance in check.
Re:Two big sources (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as Americans think gun ownership equals freedom, they will be unable to realize that their freedoms were taken away. Gun ownership is about insecurity and making someone else afraid, with the obvious implications for the case where it's the other person who is armed.
And, of course since other countries don't have gun ownership "freedom", Americans think other people won't notice if you take away their real freedoms. But in fact other peoples appreciate freedom and are immensely resentful when it's taken away.
Re:America's fear comes from... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A century ago, Progressives (Score:4, Insightful)
Last I read the Constitution, the Senate represents the States, and the House represents the people.
Re:Fear used to control (Score:2, Insightful)
Except - here's the interesting thing: Americans aren't poor by any reasonable standard.
Here's "poverty" in the US: http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/09/understanding-poverty-in-the-united-states-surprising-facts-about-americas-poor [heritage.org]
For example, the average "poor" person actually has more living space (square footage) than the average NONpoor person in Sweden, UK, or France. More than 40% actually own their home.
80 percent of poor households have air conditioning. In 1970, only 36 percent of the entire U.S. population enjoyed air conditioning.
92 percent of poor households have a microwave.
Nearly three-fourths have a car or truck, and 31 percent have two or more cars or trucks.
Nearly two-thirds have cable or satellite TV.
Two-thirds have at least one DVD player, and 70 percent have a VCR.
Half have a personal computer, and one in seven have two or more computers.
More than half of poor families with children have a video game system, such as an Xbox or PlayStation.
43 percent have Internet access.
One-third have a wide-screen plasma or LCD TV.
One-fourth have a digital video recorder system, such as a TiVo.
Read the report; the "poverty" line is just a label, and a politically useful one. There's a vast political machine that exists mainly because it's message is "you don't have enough stuff, we'll take it from those guys (who have way too much) and give it to you". The amusing/sad thing is that the people saying that are the same group of guys that have "too much". PRECISELY the same bunch.
The message is convincing to two groups of people: ...which currently exceeds 50% of the electorate.
- those who are simply greedy and want "more"
- those who feel guilty about what they have
Let's put it another way: the US is the richest country the world has ever seen, and is yet unable to live within its means. This would suggest that the sorts of choices that leave a person "poor" are not limited to a social class, but are endemic to the system, top to bottom.
Re:Nothing new (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope you notices that the referenced article is from a German perspective. The Germans have seen several totalitarian regimes in recent memory and at least the more sophisticated Germans can by now recognize the warning signs. These warning signs are glaringly obvious in the US.
But keep kidding yourself. Just remember that you lose all rights to complain when your nation has gone down the drain.
Re: ***FEAR*** as a very powerful tool (Score:5, Insightful)
Just in case you missed , it is not the government selling fear thus time (WMD Anyone?), but rather the right wing media. The left media can spin as well, but are simply outclassed by outlets such as fox, which has ingrained itself as 'mainstream'. I have friends from over seas who laugh when they hear Obama is called an extremist.
Death Panels, socialism, communism, dictators, taking your guns, scandalegate, climategate, gay armageddon, etc.
The list just goes on and on. I turn on Fox 'news' and they literally have huge flashing red warning banners about whatever talking point is on the menu for today. I hear my right wing friends whispering about the dictator in office, the Muslim friend of the 911 terrorists. The saddest part is that they truly BELIEVE these stories.
The media is far better equipped at selling fear than the government. The current crop is ripe for the picking.
The reason? It allows those who are really pulling the strings, like the big money behind every political engine, to control things in a way that makes business more profitable, regardless of the real cost.
Re:***FEAR*** as a very powerful tool (Score:2, Insightful)
+1 BINGO!
Re:A century ago, Progressives (Score:5, Insightful)
Which means that in practice a decrease in spending makes the rich better and the average person worse off. That's fine if you believe the purpose of a society is to cater to the aristocracy, which many americans seem to. But of course such attempts to re-establish strict hierarchical power structures of feudalism are going to meet with pushback; pretty much the only reason they are possible at all is that many people are arrogant enough to think they'd be along the lords rather than the serfs.
Realization of unsustainability (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that the fear at the top has come from the realisation that the way the US works is unsustainable in the long term. I am thinking primarily of the debt-based economy that is based on economic growth to function, the large dependence on oil and the effects of global warming becoming more apparent.
These are smart people. They understand that change from post-WWII model is inevitable and that this change may not come easy.
There is a large probability of future social unrest, riots and organised armed resistance against the ruling caste, so they do what they think is necessary for them to retain control of the country in the future. This is what I think is the real reason behind the de-democratisation of USA.
Re:Fear used to control (Score:5, Insightful)
Is America a democracy? It only has one more party than the Soviet Union did. And the candidates are those nominated by the powers that be. So how much choice does a voter actually has? And what does it matter, when the vote-counting process is highly suspect?
Re:Fear used to control (Score:2, Insightful)
Why would you believe piece of propaganda like this from Heritage Foundation? Seriously! Where you should have immediately said "wait, this can't be right" is by looking at wealth disparity in the US. It's almost comical how people grab onto propaganda and wave it around like it's the best flag ever.
The Heritage Foundation tries to paint Ronald Reagan as a savior. You remember, the guy who brought us "Trickle Down Economics" cutting the wealthiest people's taxes while increasing lower and middle class taxes. The guy who claimed to want to fix the trade imbalance with China and made it 10 times worse? The guy who ran the first bank bailout program, Iran Contra, REX84, and more! [wikipedia.org] And don't give me shit about Reagan breaking the USSR, he didn't. The USSR was going to collapse under it's own weight no matter who was in office.
Heritage Foundation is "good" propaganda, so I get that people can be duped by it. Good propaganda always has just enough truth to seem plausible.
Posting as AC to spend some mod point, so lets see who can guess my login.
Re:Two big sources (Score:4, Insightful)
Well can you have an anti aircraft rocket then? A gun is not much use if that government has jets and rockets to bomb you...
Are those the only two options? Could it not be that the right solution is for the government to get rid of its jets and rockets and bombs and nuclear bombs, or must we always escalate to total annihilation and tyranny?
Re: ***FEAR*** as a very powerful tool (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't CAGW government selling fear?
Isn't trying to pass gun control laws instead of mentally ill control laws selling fear?
Isn't shutting down national parks at extra cost because non-essential government workers are furloughed selling fear?
Isn't ignoring a debt ceiling because of promised financial doom selling fear?
I mean, certainly, the whole Benghazi thing was the opposite ("no, no, no terrorism here, just a nasty you tube video"), although arguably it is supposed to make us fear bad movies put up on youtube.
Of course you're right on the whole gay armageddon - there's no doubt that the gay marriage war has been lost by the far right, and the only thing left is a holding action...but do you really think the government isn't selling fear anymore?
America is full of pussies. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's as simple as that, and I am an American myself. I sure as hell wasn't one of the masses crying for "protection" and for the government to infiltrate every aspect of every citizen's lives back when 9/11 happened. My exact thoughts at the time were something along the lines of, "shit happens. People will get over it." Only, apparently I was wrong about people "getting over" it; if they really did, we wouldn't have the dragnet of mass surveillance placed upon us by the federal government as we do now and find ourselves forced to figure out how to reclaim our 4th-Amendment rights (and others).
All 9/11 did was make the whole horde of pussies come out in droves and produce legislation to help drive the government into the ground and weaken its people. The worthless yellow journalism that is the mainstream news sure as hell didn't help much. If that is what the terrorists wanted (to erode the U.S. into a rogue, fascist government with powerless citizens), the Americans didn't put up much of a fight, because that is exactly what they got and with no trouble at all.
The way I see it, the real "terrorists" are my own government. Its citizens need to grow a pair and quit going apeshit over "terrorist attacks" and stand up for their rights and freedoms. It's ironic the way people sharply and strongly react to even just the word "terrorists"; why no talk of all the *wars* going on? Why does no one give a fuck about those, some of which the U.S. is directly a part of? How did people get such a strong hatred of terrorists that kill, and not their own government that does the same fucking thing *on their own behalf*? Looks like another win by the mainstream news corporations, which no doubt have their own political agendas.
That was Bin Laden's plan all along. (Score:5, Insightful)
Read "Bin Laden - The Man Who Declared War on America. [amazon.com] This was published in 1999, before 9/11, and as a result is a reasonably hype-free biography. It quotes bin Laden during the years he was building up his organization.
I'm doing this from memory, but one of the key points bin Laden made to his followers was that, to defeat the United States, it had to be weakened first. He was writing this in the 1990s. (Situation in the 1990s: USSR was history, previous US war was four days of total victory over Iraq in Kuwait, balanced budget in US, US economically dominant in world, most of world wanted to be more like US.) He discusses how to weaken the US. Bin Laden specifically discusses how to make the US paranoid and more heavy-handed, and thus a less competent opponent and a less desirable alternative to Islam. That was the goal of his terror campaign.
Mission accomplished.
Re: ***FEAR*** as a very powerful tool (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't CAGW government selling fear?
Isn't trying to pass gun control laws instead of mentally ill control laws selling fear?
Isn't shutting down national parks at extra cost because non-essential government workers are furloughed selling fear?
Isn't ignoring a debt ceiling because of promised financial doom selling fear?
Short answers: No, No, No, and WTF?
Longer Answers:
1. CAGW is a solidly demonstrated model. Some other theories based on it don't have quite that much evidence yet, but still have some pretty strong chance of being right. In just the last decade, we have had two hurricane seasons which started earlier than what was considered the 'safe' season starting date or lasted beyond the 'safe' ending date. We've had a season where they literally had to add names to the lists to cover all the storms and another that came close.
In the US, we've had a tornado season where there were over 500 storms confirmed on radar, when the worst season before it was around 350 (and yes, you can break that data down to look at just the places where doppler radar has been around 20 or 30 years or more, and see the same exceptional spikes in locales where we have a good, long term average for radar data, not just eye witness reports).
We've just had a typhoon this year that is estimated to have been off the top of the measurement scale. Most of the worst storm events, such as The New Orleans and New York hurricanes, weren't even part of those unusually bad overall seasons.
We've had all sorts of records for rainfall or droubt broken in spectacular ways, in places where the weather records go back hundreds of years, or for some parts of Europe, 15 hundred to two thousand or so, and the high and low rainfall regions shifting shows patterns on large scales consistent with AGW related theories. All that's simply facts - if it makes some people afraid, well, they are still facts. People are repeating them because some people are denying they are facts, not just to cause fear. If some people suspect it's all connected to the more basic AGW theories, well, I suspect a lot of it is, although I'm open to alternatives until and unless the data builds up enough to be more certain.
2. Several of the proposed gun control laws you mention included background checks as their first and foremost part - Background checks ARE "mentally Ill control laws". Proposed by the "left" - shot down by the NRA.
3. The sequester was supposed to force the two parties to find better solutions. By definition, it didn't make sensible cuts, for example, it cut the IRS budget, when that meant there were less taxes collected so the problem automatically got worse. Criticising the sequester because it didn't have a bunch of sensible exceptions is criticising it for being exactly what it was supposed to be. What's your alternative, give one side 100% of what it wants and only then start negotiating? Gee, if only the sequester had forced congress to come together and pass a budget without using any of that unpleasant force part...
4. This question makes no sense. The people who want to raise the debt ceiling don't believe the promises of financial doom. They are the ones arguing that we should not be afraid. The people who want to keep the debt ceiling do believe the promises of financial doom, and so rightly or wrongly want us to be afraid of what happens if the others ignore those promises. Are you really claiming with a straight face that the "left" are the people fear mongering about the deficit?
Re:A century ago, Progressives (Score:4, Insightful)
When the cost of a resource increases, and the pay doesn't increase in about proportion, that's inflation.
No, actually, that's not inflation. That's just redistribution of wealth from labor to capital. Inflation means that salaries rise too.
Re: ***FEAR*** as a very powerful tool (Score:4, Insightful)
You misunderstand what the debt ceiling is. The debt is already incurred, meaning we are already obligated to pay for that existing debt. Raising the debt ceiling allows congress to borrow as needed for short term income to pay off incoming debt. It does not authorize additional spending or incurring any new deb (only congress can do that with spending bills). I assume by 'doom', you are generalizing. We've already seen one immediate affect of not raising the debt ceiling the last time they failed to do so. Our credit rating was dropped, costing us billions more in interest, much like your interest rate spikes if you miss a payment. This isn't rocket science. Our credit worthiness allows us to do things that a poor credit rating does not. It's really just that simple.
The root cause of 'spending' is Congress, not the debt ceiling. The right has turned the debt ceiling into some bogeyman without any context as to what it is, and why it's necessary to raise it.
If you are looking to address a spending problem (ex: live within our means), then tell congress to stop authorizing such spending. They control the purse strings. Playing with the debt ceiling is like giving your children your credit card, letting them max it out, and then refusing to pay the bill when it shows up in the mail because you think it was irresponsible to let you children max out your card.
Regarding your 'mentally ill' statement, a mentally ill person could certainly harm someone with a knife for example. but it's unlikely they could commit mass murder without being stopped. They could do the same with a rock, but again it's unlikely they could kill 20, 30, or more people before being disarmed and contained. I suspect you knew that before you put up that particular straw man argument.
For you climate change question, you are making an assumption that the short term result is harmful, when in actuality, one may see an increase in growing seasons. That doesn't mean it's not harmful, but rather shortsighted to assume that those changes will remain beneficial. Eventually when the increase begins to affect planetary ecosystems to such a degree that they break, you are faced with flooding, increased storm activity, etc.
As to short term damage, you need only look at the last few decades of increased storm activity, both in number, and in power.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-10/record-typhoon-damage-shows-aquino-s-task-in-philippine-tragedy.html [bloomberg.com]
Here in the US, we also had two record storms that caused billions in damage. Each considered a 'storm of the century' except they both happened in the same decade (Katrina and Sandy). As the temperature increases, climatologists predict even more increase in storm severity. You are providing yet another straw man argument that says "Look here..short term, this hasn't caused any issues at all". The same could be said for poison, until it reaches a toxic level.
That two week 'vacation' as you call it had a larger impact than simply sending people home for two weeks. Those two weeks without pay affected every business that takes such money in, affecting their bottom lines, which in turn affects the goods that they order and produce. The work that would have been done in those two weeks became backlogged, causing new work when they return to also be delayed. Any fees and fines that would have been collected by the government were lost revenue. Any contacts that the government would have spent would be pended or cancelled, causing more ripples in the business sector. The CBO estimates that the shutdown costs about $300 million a day in lost economic activity. The shutdown was never just about 800,000 people being sent home for two weeks.