Be Afraid

I was reading yet another article today, among the never-ending stream of thousands produced by the fear-mongering machine that is our contemporary mainstream media. In today’s article, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told a high-level panel on terrorism at the World Economic Forum that the century will only get more dangerous as technology improves, and that global leaders must make some hard decisions now if they want to avert catastrophe. Chertoff said that the world is facing a critical test as it seeks to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of terrorists, and that there will be no way "to put that genie back in the bottle" if it fails.

My first thought was “damn, I hate tests, and I didn’t even know there was going to be a quiz or anything. I wish I had more time to study.” OK, so that’s really three thoughts, but the point I was coming to lies in the forth thought that I had, “Oh, it’s terrorists again today, not illegal immigrants or evolution touting hippies or gay marriage.” Chertoff was beating the familiar but effective drum that the media so love, whose beat goes something like this: “Be afraid. Be afraid enough to give up your rights and freedoms. Be afraid enough to compromise you beliefs. Be afraid enough to let us take control, so that we can protect you – even from yourself. Be afraid, but continue to consume.”

To be fair, I suppose that the alternative media are also guilty of fear mongering, they simply beat a different drum, telling us that the mainstream outlets are wrong about what we should be afraid of and that we should be afraid of the mainstream sources for this very reason. Not only should we be afraid of the mainstream for getting the truth wrong, we should also be afraid of all the things that the alternative media has identified for us as the real bogeymen. These include global-warming, dangers to our food supply, industrial pollutants, evangelical Christians, etc.

Of course, upon reading the article, I quickly checked our conveniently color-coded alert status to see how afraid I was supposed to be. I found it to be holding steady at “salmon”, not the more comforting “chartreuse” that I was hoping for, but at least it was not the truly alarming “vermilion,” which would have caused me to rush out shopping for duct tape and plastic sheeting. So I did what any good citizen would do – nothing. What else is there to do, really? Have a DHS sanctioned prescription for anti-anxiety medication filled (as long as it is not one of those dangerous Canadian-made generics)? Should I just sit there and frown, or frown and tremble at the same time? Generally, I prefer to sit and stew, and when I engage in this activity, absurd things happen.

“The Terrorists” – it is so goofy that it almost sounds like something from James Bond (Spectre) or from the Saturday morning cartoons of my youth, like the “Legion of Doom.” Where the hell are the Superfriends when we need them? We need the Wondertwins (what was up with the monkey?) to turn into some cockamamie shit and save the day. We need Aquaman talking to some fish or a squid or something. We need Batman and his little bitch Robin to throw some serious kung fu at the problem. We need a savior! What we really need is Jesusman to come back and take another crucifixion for the cause! Jesusman - I just made that up - I rather like it, but I digress - I’ll run with that later.

I suspect that the real strategy of “The Terrorists” is far simpler and far more devious than we can imagine. Just ask yourself, “what would Lex Luther (a.k.a. Osama Bin Laden) do?” His best strategy is to just hang out in his energy-independent cave, eating his organically raised and free-range Yak burgers, stoking up his fire with another renewable Yak turd or two, drinking pure glacial-melt water, simply waiting for our entire civilization to collapse, then standing up and proclaiming that Allah’s will has been done. The sad reality is that anyone wanting to destroy our way of life has to get in line – behind us.

If Hurricane Katrina (brought to you by those wonderful folks who gave you the Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004) taught us nothing else, it taught us that we are only a few days away from anarchy when faced by even a relatively predictable and normal natural event. When only two seemingly insignificant transmission lines came down somewhere in deepest darkest Ohio it caused the great blackout of 2003 in the Northeast U.S., which left tens of millions without the basic necessity of life for days. Our water supply, transit, energy distribution and food distribution infrastructures are all incredibly complex, incredibly old (Jurassic really) and incredibly fragile. What is worse, is that they are all interdependent, thus a failure in any one area will, more likely than not, lead to cascading failures in the others.

The real Legion of Doom knows this far better than do we Americans. They do not want to come here and take over, if they did they would already be here, driving our cabs, managing our convenience stores, buying our apartment blocks, cheating on their taxes and vacationing at Disney. They do not want what we have, they only want us to stop forcing our way of life and our problems on them. This is their cause, and the most effective way to defeat a cause is to take away the reason for the cause in the first place. Thus, the best strategy for homeland security is a benign and non-interfering foreign policy, or better yet, no policy at all. After all, by making a policy isn’t one addressing a situation that doesn’t yet exist, or answering a question that has not yet been asked? It is laziness and foolishness, and has resulted in our present culture of fear. Be afraid only of this, be very afraid.