Who’s afraid of The Terrorists?
By This is a sincere question. I’m not a particularly courageous person by any means, but I can say with considerable confidence that I’ve never felt any actual fear of terrorism. I mean I was a little freaked out on 9/11 itself because it was such a surreal day, but even then I didn’t feel any sense of personal danger or anxiety.
For any American (at least any American who isn’t patroling the streets of Mosul or trying to run down a story in the hills of Afghanistan) to be afraid or anxious about terrorism seems to me as peculiar as being afraid or anxious about being eaten by a shark, or murdered by a serial killer. After all, sharks and serial killers exist, but if I went around obsessing about the possibility of being victimized by either I would be considered cowardly, or paranoid, or both. Now if I were diving for abalone or surfing Mavericks it would be understandable to be a little anxious about sharks. But, when it comes to terrorism, 99.99% of Americans aren’t surfing Mavericks — they’re in a shopping mall in Topeka, inside of which (apparently) a good number of them are worried about land sharks.
And that’s what I think fear of terrorism is: cowardly paranoia. It’s treating a real but extraordinarily small risk as if it were vastly more significant than it actually is. Which is to say that, over the last eight years, we’ve made indulging in cowardly paranoia the centerpiece of much of our national policy. And making cowardly paranoia the centerpiece of our national policy has become a very bipartisan thing.
As I say, I’m not claiming to be a brave person. You know what scares me? Pancreatic cancer. A friend of mine died of it last week. It’s a relatively rare disease, but 100 Americans are diagnosed with it every day. Most will be dead within six months. That’s something I can understand being afraid of. But terrorism? Is anybody actually willing to say, yes, I’m afraid of terrorism, in same the way it seems perfectly reasonable to admit you’re afraid of cancer, or unemployment, or a broken heart, or an unchained Rottweiler who is casting a cold eye on you as you run past him on a deserted country road?
Who are these people?