The word crisis distracts from the real problem: political inability

Eand years ago Arnout Jaspers, author of the lying book The Nitrogen Trapon talk show Today Inside. He was asked by presenter Wilfred Genee whether or not we had a problem with nitrogen. Well, Jaspers was reluctant to admit that we had a problem with nitrogen, ‘but not a crisis!’. We have ourselves to blame for this crisis, we could simply adjust the standards a bit, then there wouldn’t be much to worry about, says Jaspers.

He is one of the quasi-salonfähige ‘experts’ from the penopausal team around Syp Wynia. The former Elsevier man not only publishes booklets about radical right-wing opinion makers such as Wierd Duk or Roderick Veelo, but also about men of a certain age who disguise themselves as experts. In addition to the Jaspers mentioned, think of ‘immigration experts’ Jan van de Beek and Jan Latten, or ‘climate expert’ Lucas Bergkamp. Their actual expertise varies quite a bit, to put it kindly, but they share their right-wing ideas and need to influence public opinion. Without exception, they are fanatical tweeters who also speak out aggressively on matters that have nothing to do with their supposed area of ​​knowledge – ‘woke’.

Silly media editors are still impressed by seniority, and Wynia’s foxes regularly appear on television, where rarely anything remains, as Jan van de Beek did last week On 1. Their expertise is as knowledgeable as disinformation is information, but that matters little; sowing doubt is enough. The gentlemen form an underestimated part of the radical right ecosystem, in which the Hitlerian speech of Eva Vlaardingerbroek or the so-called ‘mild’ repopulation story of Wilders in Hungary naturally attract more attention this week.

That said, Jaspers is right about the word crisis, albeit unintentionally. Uri Rosenthal was once asked to define the word crisis, you used to be able to ask VVD members that kind of thing, and he came up with ‘an event that deeply affects the functioning of an organization or a social system and which creates uncertainty and profound decisions have to be made under time pressure’. In that definition, the crisis comes suddenly, unexpectedly, and should therefore also be something temporary.

Corona was clearly such a crisis, but many other things that we now call a crisis are clearly not. Nitrogen, the housing market and even climate change; These are all problems that we have created ourselves by ignoring facts and postponing sensible policies, under pressure from financial interests and out of fear for the electorate. Problems that worsen, from bad to worse, making the situation more and more acute; especially in the case of climate change, this can be considered an emergency. But they are not crises. The sliding scale of worsening means that the problems mentioned do not suddenly disappear, like crises, but long-term efforts are required to turn the tide. And even then the way up will also be gradual.

We are now being presented with the bill for the free use of the word crisis by the formation of the brown right, which wants to declare an asylum crisis, because people have heard somewhere that you would suddenly no longer have to adhere to international treaties. The qualification of crisis thus proves itself once again as a sign of weakness, a term to disguise cowardice, or to give the user of that word anti-rule of law options. The word crisis almost always distracts from the real problem (not a crisis!): political inability.