The Veiled Chameleon: January 2005: Michael Crichton: State of Fear

Michael Crichton: State of Fear

Just now, at the top of google news were two stories on the Michael Crichton book, State of Fear:

A Right Winger Attacks Global Warming

and

Interview: Jasper Girard Meets Michael Crichton

Read though them and tell me which author was sober and well reasoned and which one engaged in hysterical histrionics.

Then keep that idea in mind when you read political columns. You'll see that it fits a very strong pattern.

Buy the Book Now

I read it because George Will compared it to Atlas Shrugged. I understand the similarities (and there are many, some not particulary laudible), but State of Fear is not nearly as ambitious of a project as was Ayn Rand's magnum opus. I suspect that it'll rise fast, then die quickly, in part because he's probably right on his primary argument: that the current environmental "crises" exist primarily because humans feel a need to fear something, and not because any crises actually exist (in fact, he cites references to studies showing that the beginning for the term "crisis" showing up hyper-frequently in the media coincided at almost exactly the time that communism fell - with nothing left to fear from "The Cold War", humans easily fell prey to specious arguments about an impending environmental catastrophe). When humans find something else to fear (and perhaps Islamic fundamentalist driven terrorism will do), the environmental hyper-fear will fade away.

But that's not the point of my writing tonight. Instead, I was just struck by the tremendously different tone of the two writers of the above linked articles, then further by the aftershock of realizing that it fits a pattern which began at just about the time George W. Bush was elected president in 2000.