NetWatcher's Guide to Everything

In the aftermath of recent events, I'm drawn time and again to the period in our nation's history just after the 9/11 attacks. I see similarities between the two; a great national emergency, far-reaching economic impact, a nation rallying together to take care of its own. Oh yah, and large portion of the population completely losing it.

After the 9/11 attacks, we were scared. In that fear, we lost sight of what was truly important to us as a country, namely freedom and personal privacy. I think the passing of the Patriot Act, the Orwellian manifesto that threatened those basic principals on which our country was founded, was proof of that. All of a sudden, overnight, terrorists were on every street corner, with weaponized everything waiting to eat your children, make long distance calls on your phones, and use your toothbrush. The mass psychological effect: everyone went just a little kookoo.

Now, in a world plagued by already high gas prices; energy crisis looming on a very mutable horizon, people have begun again to believe the second coming is upon us. Depending on the media outlet you choose to feed from, Katrina has knocked out 5%, 10%, 25%, or 40% of the US's gas production. Already, my spin-o-meter is beginning to spring to life. Amid fears that gas was going to reach $100 a gallon anyway, people armed with this new information began applying their high school economics principles and figured out that supply would be low, demand would be high, and gas would soon be attainable only by signing over family members or immortal souls. Of course, this really wasn't helped by gas station managers in certain metropolitan areas hiking the price per gallon up to the 5 and 6 dollar range.

Now here is the really interesting part....While supply would be limited for a time, there really is not too much of a shortage. But, humans are strange beasts, so after processing this impending shortage that was settling itself in the american psyche (fueled by media intervention), the citizens in droves took to the gas stations with reckless abandon. People who would not normally fill up were suddenly buying gallons upon gallons of gas.

The end result was, of course, a gas shortage.

But the irrational exuberence doesn't end there...During my trip to the grocery store (I was there personally to buy a few days of food, my normal fare every few days), what do I witness but people buying milk, bread, canned goods...stocking up. While I can only hope this was a unified showing of support for the people disrupted by the hurricane and that these supplies would somehow find their way to distribution points, their purchase intended for an unprecedented aid of suffering people in a time of great national need, reality kicked me square in the face and I realized these people were stocking up as if we were about to have a hurricane.

Basically, everyone has lost it once more. I'm not sure if a culture, now rooted in a misplaced fear of terrorism, is to blame for the massive paranoia now infecting our society. Perhaps it's the immediate nature of information exchange; the ability to see everything, not only as it happens, but again and again and again on the news and internet. Either way, people need to wake up. "Don't Panic" and get a grip.