Perpetual terrorism
Glenn Greenwald reports on a new article that explains why we will always be obsessed with terrorism:
Mueller and Stewart estimate that expenditures on domestic homeland security (i.e., not counting the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan) have increased by more than $1 trillion since 9/11, even though the annual risk of dying in a domestic terrorist attack is about 1 in 3.5 million. Using conservative assumptions and conventional risk-assessment methodology, they estimate that for these expenditures to be cost-effective “they would have had to deter, prevent, foil or protect against 333 very large attacks that would otherwise have been successful every year.” Finally, they worry that this exaggerated sense of danger has now been “internalized”: even when politicians and “terrorism experts” aren’t hyping the danger, the public still sees the threat as large and imminent. As they conclude:
… Americans seems to have internalized their anxiety about terrorism, and politicians and policymakers have come to believe that they can defy it only at their own peril. Concern about appearing to be soft on terrorism has replaced concern about seeming to be soft on communism, a phenomenon that lasted far longer than the dramatic that generated it … This extraordinarily exaggerated and essentially delusional response may prove to be perpetual.”
Category: Orwellian, Propaganda, Secrecy, Warmongering
About the Author (Author Profile)
Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on consumer law litigation and appellate practice. He is also a working musician and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich and his wife, Anne Jay, live in the Shaw Neighborhood of St. Louis, Missouri, where they are raising their two extraordinary daughters.Subscribe
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There is a particularly large swath of the population that needs fear, but they are selective about the fear they need. It must be a vast conspiracy: “liberals”, “communists”, “terrorists”. There is no way to give these people a fear they need which would make them choose rationally, because the nature of their need is inherently irrational, and will seek results that are antithetical to a liberal society. Freedom and liberty themselves are on the chopping block to preserve of a state of constant unfocused fear.