November 26, 2006 2:55 PM

Thank God for the Mainstream Media, without whom we'd have NO IDEA what (or who) to fear

How Americans are living dangerously

Shadowed by peril as we are, you would think we’d get pretty good at distinguishing the risks likeliest to do us in from the ones that are statistical long shots. But you would be wrong. We agonize over avian flu, which to date has killed precisely no one in the U.S., but have to be cajoled into getting vaccinated for the common flu, which contributes to the deaths of 36,000 Americans each year. We wring our hands over the mad cow pathogen that might be (but almost certainly isn’t) in our hamburger and worry far less about the cholesterol that contributes to the heart disease that kills 700,000 of us annually. We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. Six Muslims traveling from a religious conference were thrown off a plane last week in Minneapolis, Minn., even as unscreened cargo continues to stream into ports on both coasts.

We’re very good at worrying. All you need to see are the sales figures for Xanax to understand how anxious we as a society truly are. Understanding and evaluating risk is crucial to our continued existence as a species. Now that humanity has evolved sufficiently, though, we’ve reached a place where we as individuals rarely face a truly life-threatening risk. Sure there’s disease, and bad luck, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Realistically, though, we here in the First World have little to worry about on a day-to-day basis…which makes our current level of paranoia so difficult to understand.

What, really, do we have to worry about? With so many potential risks seemingly all around us, how do we sort through the static and decide which risks are worth ratcheting up our anxiety levels over?

Thankfully for us, the Mainstream Media is on the lookout for us. The downside, of course, is that with the media market so competitive and fragmented, every outlet needs a hook…and what provides a more convincing hook that total, abject fear? Fear of terror, fear of AIDS, fear of bird flu…fear of…well, ad nauseum, ad infinitum.

Tonight at 11:

ARE YOUR CHILDREN SAFE?

IS THE FOOD YOU EAT SAFE?

ARE THERE TERRORISTS LIVING IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD?

ARE THERE CHILD PREDATORS SECRETLY GROOMING YOUR CHILDREN AS THEIR NEXT VICTIMS?

ARE THE MALTED MILK BALLS ON YOUR GROCER’S SHELVES THE LATEST WEAPONS IN THE ARSENAL OF THE TERRORISTS?

IS NANCY PELOSI SATAN IN AN ARMANI SUIT?

It’s all pretty silly, but all one has to do is to pay attention to the news to see what fear is doing to us. We’re terrorized by six Muslim imams praying before a flight. We live in mortal fear of a couple kissing on a Southwest Airlines flight. The sight of a mother breastfeeding her baby is enough to get that mother kicked off another flight before it even leaves the ground. We’re now being conditioned to fear hair gel, toothpast, and sports drinks. It’s gotten silly, really, but then how is are the ever-growing number of media outlets to set themselves apart from one or another? By creating fear and by keeping us afraid, they create their own captive audience, which is eagerly awaiting news of when they will once again be safe.

If there’s one thing that sells in post-9.11 America, it’s fear. We all want to be safe from anything that might threaten our continued existence. Media outlets and the White House capitalize on this so they can portray themselves as protectors of our best interests. The current Administration has developed the marketing and packaging of fear into an art form. How was the war in Iraq sold to us? We were convinced that because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, we had reason to fear that they might use these weapons against the American homeland. It would seem that we as a sheeple have lost the willingness, not to mention the ability, to think critically and question the assertions of our leaders. 9.11 taught what can happen when things go horribly wrong. Now that we’re at war, of course, we should brook no dissent, because that will only signal our weakness and lack of resolve, something the “enemy” can and no doubt will exploit at their earliest opportunity.

Only when we live in fear of the “Evildoers” will Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader and his neo-Conservative cohorts be able to exploit that fear for their own ends. How else do you think they convinced so many people to “re-elect” Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader in 2004. It wasn’t that the man put forth any new ideas or proposed any programs to make this country a better place to be. No, his campaign was predicated on convincing the American sheeple that a vote for John Kerry was a vote for weakness, vulnerability, and for a man who didn’t have the cojones to take the fight to the “Evildoers”. By playing the fear card, Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader was able to convince more than 54 million Americans to “stay the course” by voting for the known quantity in the White House instead of a “girlie man” like John Kerry.

It would be nice to think that the American sheeple are intellectually agile and demanding enough to demand that our leaders demonstrate leadership, foresight, and the willingness to focus on reality. Sadly, a majority of Americans are willing to settle for a President who couldn’t lead his way out of a wet paper sack, has the intellectual agility of a soapdish, and allows his advisors to create their own reality.

Nice going, eh?

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on November 26, 2006 2:55 PM.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.... was the previous entry in this blog.

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