WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU
makes you worry.
I've been doing a little research, compiling a few
facts and figures, working up to a long, incredulous post about, if not the
insanity of The Great War on Terror, at least the hyperbole of The Great Fear of
Terrorism. While we argue and discuss and debate and, politically at least,
demonize each other over how to conduct the former, we spend precious little
time acknowledging the full folly of the latter. I'm not saying we shouldn't
fight a war on terror. And I'm certainly not issuing a
bring 'em on
style challenge to any new or future terrorists.
(I'll leave that to our Commander in Chief.) But I am
suggesting that the degree to which many Americans fear terrorism is greatly,
even comically, out of proportion to the threat they actually face. Or will
ever face.
This thought has been nagging and bugging and tormenting me for quite a while -- at least as far back at the 2004 presidential election, when I read about a poll (the link to which escapes me now) that listed fear of terrorism as the single greatest concern among a majority of female voters. In small towns. In the midwest. Fear of tornados? That I could understand. Fear of taxes? Makes sense to me. But fear of terrorism? In Nowhere, Ohio, and Out of the Way, Indiana? In Boondock, Kansas, and Backwater, Iowa? Sounds like those women had been watching a lot of Fox News and maybe seen one too many of those Bush campaign commercials with the glowing-eyed wolves that John Kerry was going to set loose on their villages. It just didn't compute.
And it still doesn't.
As I watched air traveler after air traveler this week toss hair gels and water bottles into overflowing trash receptacles, and as I listened to anchor after pundit after commentator talk about this great and terrible shadow of terror under which we live every day -- which is already, of course, an absurd exaggeration; ask people who live in Iraq or Lebanon or Israel or Sudan how it feels to really live in the shadow of terror -- I decided it was time to start thinking and writing in earnest, as a way to stop that nagging and bugging and maybe, just maybe, return a little bit of the torment that so many people in our country (and especially on our damned televisions) seem so quick to imagine. And so I began to dig and to search, to look and read and Google and grumble and crunch a few numbers that I knew had to be out there, hiding in the safe and simple realities of our very own lives.
And then I stopped.
I found what I was looking for and more. And so I won't be writing the post I'd intended to write -- this one, truncated but still triumphant, will take its place and have to do -- because along the way I discovered that John Mueller of the Ohio State University and the Cato Institute had already beaten me to it. Here's my favorite excerpt, the one that says most of the things I'd hoped and wanted to say:
For all the attention it evokes, terrorism actually causes rather little damage, and the likelihood that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic. Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in “the age of terror.” However, while obviously deeply tragic for those directly involved, the number of people worldwide who die as a result of international terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny compared to the numbers who die in most civil wars or from automobile accidents. In fact, in almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists anywhere in the world is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States.
Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts...
Frantz Fanon, the 20th century revolutionary, contended that “the aim of terrorism is to terrify.” If that is so, terrorists can be defeated simply by not becoming terrified — that is, anything that enhances fear effectively gives in to them.
Which means, of course, that in many ways -- liquid-free flights and eroding civil rights aside -- the terrorists have already won. (Cue: ominous strings and plaintive wails.) If only because, in the five years since 9/11, we've pretty much beaten ourselves. And done so a hell of a lot more deeply and darkly and hysterically than they have.
Consider, for a moment, just a few simple numbers -- all of them rounded up to the nearest hundred, all of them taken from reputable sources, and many of them taken from reports and statistics issue by the National Safety Council.
Our current US Population is 298,000,000. The 9/11 death toll numbered 3,000 Americans. Which means that so far, the great Islamic Fascist Terrorist Threat, the evil scourge of a plague that some people have been comparing to Nazi Germany (World War II death toll: over 10 million) and a nuclear Soviet Union (potential death toll at the height of the Cold War: over 100 million) has killed a whopping .001% of the U.S. population. Not an insignificant amount, of course -- and I certainly don't want to diminish the horror and the tragedy of that day -- but not exactly epidemic enough to cast a great shadow of fear and imminent doom across the land.
Now. Consider that for the almost five years since 9/11, the Islamic Fascist Terrorist death toll in America is 0. And so the total Islamic Fascist Terrorist death toll on American soil in the last five years still stands at 3,000. For the sake of simple comparison, here are a few other American soil death tolls -- all of which, it should be noted, are as likely to strike in Nowhere, Ohio, and Out of the Way, Indiana, as they are on the streets of New York -- for the last five years:
Gun Shots: 300,000.
Assaults: 88,500.
Falls: 86,500.
Automobile Passenger Accidents: 80,000.
Pedestrian Accidents: 30,000.
Motorcycle Accidents: 18,500.
Drownings: 16,500.
Chokings: 15,000.
Now. I certainly do not want to dismiss the threat of terrorism in America. Especially in a week when, thanks to British vigilance and intelligence, a thousand or so American lives may have been spared from adding to those unfortunate figures. But I have no problem diminishing it. And the frenzy always swirling around it. Looking at the numbers -- and thinking about the Cato Institute's deer and bathtub and peanut allergy numbers -- for a quiet, contemplative moment free of media and political hype does put things a bit more in perspective.
After all, you won't see anyone in the current administration lobbying or lining up to fund a War on Handguns -- though it might be nice if they did -- or a War on Beatings or a War on Gravity or a War on Driving. Or a War on Walking. Or a War on Motorcycle Riding. Or a War on Swimming. Or a War on Eating Too Fast and Chewing Too Little and Not Taking Small Enough Bites Like Your Mom Always Told You To. You won't see any web pages on CNN or special reports on MSNBC devoted to living in the shadow of the fear of falling. The nice people at Homeland Security have not yet whipped up some crazy, color-coded Motorcycle Alert Level. And I doubt you'll ever hear President Bush say that we need to fight the food on our plates so we don't have to fight it in our throats.
And yet these things, far more than Al Qaeda but still far less than we might like to imagine, terrorize us still. Every day, everywhere. And yet we somehow manage to carry on, driving and walking and eating and falling and swimming, with nary a thought about how tragic and terrible our world, our lives, our fragile and frightening American days have become.
Because they haven't. At least not until that damned Bird Flu gets here...
This thought has been nagging and bugging and tormenting me for quite a while -- at least as far back at the 2004 presidential election, when I read about a poll (the link to which escapes me now) that listed fear of terrorism as the single greatest concern among a majority of female voters. In small towns. In the midwest. Fear of tornados? That I could understand. Fear of taxes? Makes sense to me. But fear of terrorism? In Nowhere, Ohio, and Out of the Way, Indiana? In Boondock, Kansas, and Backwater, Iowa? Sounds like those women had been watching a lot of Fox News and maybe seen one too many of those Bush campaign commercials with the glowing-eyed wolves that John Kerry was going to set loose on their villages. It just didn't compute.
And it still doesn't.
As I watched air traveler after air traveler this week toss hair gels and water bottles into overflowing trash receptacles, and as I listened to anchor after pundit after commentator talk about this great and terrible shadow of terror under which we live every day -- which is already, of course, an absurd exaggeration; ask people who live in Iraq or Lebanon or Israel or Sudan how it feels to really live in the shadow of terror -- I decided it was time to start thinking and writing in earnest, as a way to stop that nagging and bugging and maybe, just maybe, return a little bit of the torment that so many people in our country (and especially on our damned televisions) seem so quick to imagine. And so I began to dig and to search, to look and read and Google and grumble and crunch a few numbers that I knew had to be out there, hiding in the safe and simple realities of our very own lives.
And then I stopped.
I found what I was looking for and more. And so I won't be writing the post I'd intended to write -- this one, truncated but still triumphant, will take its place and have to do -- because along the way I discovered that John Mueller of the Ohio State University and the Cato Institute had already beaten me to it. Here's my favorite excerpt, the one that says most of the things I'd hoped and wanted to say:
For all the attention it evokes, terrorism actually causes rather little damage, and the likelihood that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic. Those adept at hyperbole like to proclaim that we live in “the age of terror.” However, while obviously deeply tragic for those directly involved, the number of people worldwide who die as a result of international terrorism is generally only a few hundred a year, tiny compared to the numbers who die in most civil wars or from automobile accidents. In fact, in almost all years, the total number of people worldwide who die at the hands of international terrorists anywhere in the world is not much more than the number who drown in bathtubs in the United States.
Until 2001, far fewer Americans were killed in any grouping of years by all forms of international terrorism than were killed by lightning, and almost none of those terrorist deaths occurred within the United States itself. Even with the September 11 attacks included in the count, the number of Americans killed by international terrorism since the late 1960s (which is when the State Department began counting) is about the same as the number of Americans killed over the same period by lightning, accident-causing deer, or severe allergic reaction to peanuts...
Frantz Fanon, the 20th century revolutionary, contended that “the aim of terrorism is to terrify.” If that is so, terrorists can be defeated simply by not becoming terrified — that is, anything that enhances fear effectively gives in to them.
Which means, of course, that in many ways -- liquid-free flights and eroding civil rights aside -- the terrorists have already won. (Cue: ominous strings and plaintive wails.) If only because, in the five years since 9/11, we've pretty much beaten ourselves. And done so a hell of a lot more deeply and darkly and hysterically than they have.
Consider, for a moment, just a few simple numbers -- all of them rounded up to the nearest hundred, all of them taken from reputable sources, and many of them taken from reports and statistics issue by the National Safety Council.
Our current US Population is 298,000,000. The 9/11 death toll numbered 3,000 Americans. Which means that so far, the great Islamic Fascist Terrorist Threat, the evil scourge of a plague that some people have been comparing to Nazi Germany (World War II death toll: over 10 million) and a nuclear Soviet Union (potential death toll at the height of the Cold War: over 100 million) has killed a whopping .001% of the U.S. population. Not an insignificant amount, of course -- and I certainly don't want to diminish the horror and the tragedy of that day -- but not exactly epidemic enough to cast a great shadow of fear and imminent doom across the land.
Now. Consider that for the almost five years since 9/11, the Islamic Fascist Terrorist death toll in America is 0. And so the total Islamic Fascist Terrorist death toll on American soil in the last five years still stands at 3,000. For the sake of simple comparison, here are a few other American soil death tolls -- all of which, it should be noted, are as likely to strike in Nowhere, Ohio, and Out of the Way, Indiana, as they are on the streets of New York -- for the last five years:
Gun Shots: 300,000.
Assaults: 88,500.
Falls: 86,500.
Automobile Passenger Accidents: 80,000.
Pedestrian Accidents: 30,000.
Motorcycle Accidents: 18,500.
Drownings: 16,500.
Chokings: 15,000.
Now. I certainly do not want to dismiss the threat of terrorism in America. Especially in a week when, thanks to British vigilance and intelligence, a thousand or so American lives may have been spared from adding to those unfortunate figures. But I have no problem diminishing it. And the frenzy always swirling around it. Looking at the numbers -- and thinking about the Cato Institute's deer and bathtub and peanut allergy numbers -- for a quiet, contemplative moment free of media and political hype does put things a bit more in perspective.
After all, you won't see anyone in the current administration lobbying or lining up to fund a War on Handguns -- though it might be nice if they did -- or a War on Beatings or a War on Gravity or a War on Driving. Or a War on Walking. Or a War on Motorcycle Riding. Or a War on Swimming. Or a War on Eating Too Fast and Chewing Too Little and Not Taking Small Enough Bites Like Your Mom Always Told You To. You won't see any web pages on CNN or special reports on MSNBC devoted to living in the shadow of the fear of falling. The nice people at Homeland Security have not yet whipped up some crazy, color-coded Motorcycle Alert Level. And I doubt you'll ever hear President Bush say that we need to fight the food on our plates so we don't have to fight it in our throats.
And yet these things, far more than Al Qaeda but still far less than we might like to imagine, terrorize us still. Every day, everywhere. And yet we somehow manage to carry on, driving and walking and eating and falling and swimming, with nary a thought about how tragic and terrible our world, our lives, our fragile and frightening American days have become.
Because they haven't. At least not until that damned Bird Flu gets here...
Posted: Sun - August 13, 2006 at 10:42 PM
Quick Links
Calendar
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
Categories
Archives
Terror Alert
Brilliant Satire
Required Reading
Traffic Count
Official Muse
Syndication
Carbolic Wear
Y Chromosomes
Some Perspective
On Tour
XML/RSS Feed
Statistics
Total entries in this blog:
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:51 PM
Total entries in this category:
Published On: Jan 16, 2009 04:51 PM