Instapundit Glenn Reynolds on Fast and Slow Disasters for America
In his weekly USA Today column, Glenn Reynolds, a.k.a. Instapundit, ruminates on Lightning Fall, a novel that depicts three massive, simutaneous terrorist attacks on the United States.
While [author Bill] Quick, a San Francisco tech guy, doesn't always quite capture the idiom of official Washington, he's got a good sense for its actions, as opposed to its words. "Never let a crisis go to waste" is the motto of our ruling class, and Quick's illustrations of how politicians of both parties respond are, unfortunately, all too plausible in general.
And even without such overt disasters, Washington continues to run up debts future generations won't be able to pay, to pass bills that no one has read, and to engage in policy experimentation whose consequences will be borne not by the experimenters, but by the experimented-upon. The results are likely to be poor.
Which raises a question for voters now: We have so far avoided the kind of terrorist-inspired disasters that Quick has striking the West Coast and New Orleans. But what do we do about the slow-motion disaster that's ongoing in Washington, D.C., today?
Lightning Fall sounds likes a good read. Buy it from Amazon ($3.99 Kindle, $20 paperback).
If you've got 20 seconds to spare, watch Reason TV's micro-disaster movie, "Governent Shutdown: Planet of the Apes Remix":
