People old enough to remember the Before Time – i.e., the time when in most everyday matters, people who weren’t causing harm were generally free to do as they liked
So not the times MAGAs want to restore.
The first is the disincentive to have kids knowing that if you do, you’ll have to deal with “safety” seats for years to come. In some states, until the kid is a near-teenager. That is a long time to have to spend every day strapping a kid in and out of a “safety” seat every time you drive somewhere with a kid in the car. It makes you not want to drive anywhere. It makes you not want to have kids.
Oh yes, who could have guessed that parenting could come with inconveniences? If this it all it takes to not to want children, GOOD - you clearly are not prepared for the task!
There is always a degree of danger when riding in a car. It may be hypothetically greater to ride in car not buckled-up or not strapped in (if you’re a kid). But just because something might happen does not mean it will. And obsessing over the might is . . . neurotic.
What is the chances that Eric Peters feels the need to carry around a pistol at all times and his home supplied with at least one easily accessible assault rifle, so that he is prepared to fight off random attacks by random thugs?
In the Before Time, only neurotics strapped their progeny into “safety” seats. Just as in the Before Time, only neurotics walked around in public wearing “masks.”
Other things only neurotics did during the Before Times™ (non-exhaustive):
- look “both ways” before crossing the street
- “wash” their hands
- not drive while “drunk”
- not smoke at the petrol “station”
- keep household “poisons” in places where they can’t be easily confused with foodstuff
- refuse to eat raw “carrion”
- make sure they are sitting on the "trunk” site of the tree branch they are sawing off
But that was before neurosis metastasized and became normalized.
What if the “neurotics” had a point and “normal” people adopted their ways because it worked, while your ilk succumbs to natural selection?
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Of course, nothing is without risk, the efficacy of safety measures varies heavily, obsessive worry is neither rational nor mentally healthy and can even be actively increase risk by blinding you to more pressing dangers or through wrong preventative measures that can give a false sense of security or even cause outright harm, and ultimately, we have to live with the fact that there will always be a chance for things to go horribly wrong and that we have to pick your battles.
But to throw all caution to the wind, not just for yourself but for your children, out of laziness and a misplaced pride in not being a “weirdo”, as you seem to advocate, is not a good or mentally sound mindset, either, and indeed, I would argue, even less so. Both paranoia and recklessness are excessive extremes.
Further, risk management is not just about the probabilities of an undesirable event happening, but also the severity of said event. And we are talking about truly dark potential outcomes here.