Politicians love to scare you. Sometimes what they want to scare you with is really true, but way more often than not, the bogeymen they wave around aren’t any more of a threat to you than demon possessed dolls or chainsaw-wielding masked maniacs.

So why bother?  Well, we’re partly to blame. We like to be scared - otherwise movies about the aforementioned demon-possessed dolls wouldn’t have eight million sequels. It’s exciting. And if someone tells us we can actually fight the Big Scary Thing, just by voting?  Who doesn’t want to feel like a hero on the cheap?

Being scared feeds our innate tribalism, and fear makes people malleable. It is the perfect tool of politicians, which is why almost all of them use fear to some extent or another.

~~~

In Nevada, we have a unique political scarecrow that is as bipartisan as it is silly – anything nuclear. Hating Yucca Mountain brings Nevada Democrats and Republicans together like nothing else since 9/11. It makes Republicans into tree-hugging hippies, and Democrats into tri-corner hat wearing states rights fanatics.

If you listen to the politicians, anything remotely related to nuclear power, weapons, or even research is scarier than Thanos showing up in Manhattan with all the Infinity Stones. I use that nerdy analogy deliberately because the “danger” posed by any nuclear material of any kind within our state borders is almost always described in cartoonishly apocalyptic ways. “Millions could die due to a single traffic accident!!!!”  (It’s quite the shift, considering just two generations ago Las Vegans considered watching nearby nuclear bomb detonations to be a fun weekend diversion and tourist draw.)

This nuclear fear-mongering reached the highest dudgeon ever with the news that the federal government had shipped half a ton of plutonium to a federal facility in Nevada along federally funded roadways, where it would be stored for some period of time before being transported yet again to another federal facility in New Mexico, all to comply with another federal court order. That this sort of thing has been going on for decades without incident is of no matter – there were votes to literally scare up!

Well, not of no matter. Because it turns out facts matter in federal court, and federal judges tend to be unimpressed by baseless comic book style hyperbole about radioactive material. When our state government asked federal Judge Miranda Du to issue an injunction against plutonium shipments in or through our state, and was given the opportunity to prove that such shipments were actually harmful instead of just speculatively harmful, the state couldn’t do it. Let me repeat that – there was no evidence presented which could demonstrate the likelihood of any actual harm coming to Nevada’s residents or visitors, and therefore no evidence to support the crazed reactions of our politicians.

Our various congressional delegates were left sputtering that the feds should have been more “transparent.”  But this is frankly insane. If you actually care about the safety of nuclear material being shipped along our roadways, why in the hell would you want information about those shipments shared with a single person more than is absolutely necessary to accomplish the transport?  Terrorism is one of the few government-warning bogeymen we have actual reason to fear, and providing nice juicy targeting data to whoever thinks he’s bin Laden’s heir these days would be suicidally ludicrous.

~~~

It’s time for Nevada to grow up with respect to nuclear energy. It’s a hell of a lot healthier than fossil fuels (and better for the environment). It kills far, far, far fewer people than non-atomic-powered motor vehicles, overeating, pain-killers, shoveling snow, smoking weed, getting struck by lightning, depression, riding a bike, crossing streets, armed robbers, or enjoying our national parks. No source of energy is without any sort of risk, but the evidence shows nuclear energy to be statistically as safe as it gets – and as renewable and reliable.

And if Nevadans really want less federal meddling within our borders, then we should start voting for people who will fight for more federal land to be given over to the state. More generally, the next time Washington politicians want to give more power over our citizens to unaccountable federal bureaucrats, whether it be in the areas of education, health care, environmental protection, or anything else, our representatives should say no.

Orrin Johnson has been writing and commenting on Nevada and national politics since 2007. He started with an independent blog, First Principles, and was a regular columnist for the Reno Gazette-Journal from 2015-2016. By day, he is an attorney in Reno. Follow him on Twitter @orrinjohnson, or contact him at [email protected].