THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

WHY WE DON'T WANT TO DISCUSS THE REAL FUTURE | 2002-02-09

Scientists in Japan have recently crossed pigs with spinach.

For the first time vegetable genes have been inserted into an animal embryo. The very idea of crossing a plant with an animal makes me a little queasy.

Most of the advances now being made in biology are repugnant to our deepest feelings. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely the reason the real future has nothing to do with what is in the media today.

Somebody is going to have to deal with the problems of population and genetics, but conservatives don't want to talk about population and liberals don't want to talk about genetics. So our media ignore the whole thing.

Superterrorism was another example of something that everybody had agreed to overlook. In 1998 I talked about this critical subject and other people ignored it. This is not because I am a prophet, but because I am not making my living in the news media. Superterrorism was a tremendous threat, but nobody wanted to talk about it.

In the article on Superterrorism, I explained why liberals and respectable conservatives don't want to hear about Superterrorism. It is threat to the melting pot. Having angry minorities in your community is less popular when they might have a weapon of mass destruction on them.

Already an awfully lot of people support discrimination on the airlines.

They spend a lot of time trying to explain that profiling is not discrimination. The difference is very, very hard to explain because it doesn't exist. Out of the blue, Superterrorism is suddenly making discrimination popular, which is what I predicted in 1998.

The Inevitable Melting Pot is becoming evitable.

In real history most "Inevitables" don't happen, and most people who think they are prophets, including the Prophets of Doom, turn out to be fools.