In the May 12, 2008 issue of Newsweek, there is a large article adapted from the new book The Post-American World by Fareed Zakaria. You may have seen the author on various news programs or Sunday morning political talk shows. I find him incredibly perceptive and unaffected by political parties. In other words, he's a reporter, not a pundit/talking head.
In the run-up to the election, count on the Republicans to stoke fear in the American public to win in November. But as he points out, the world has never been safer! Why this disconnect between perception and reality? I would say it is the current administration's propaganda campaign. He attributes it to the 24-hour news cycle.
We didn't watch daily footage of the two million people who died in Indochina in the 1970s, or the million who perished in the sands of the Iran-Iraq war ten years later. We saw little of the civil war in the Congo in the 1990s, where millions died. But today any bomb that goes off, and rocket that is fired, any death that results, is documented by someone, somewhere and ricochets instantly across the world. Add to this terrorist attacks, which are random and brutal. "That could have been me, " you think. Actually your chances of being killed in a terrorist attack are tiny—for an American, smaller than drowning in your bathtub. [Emphasis mine.] But it doesn't feel like that.We need to keep perspective and soothe our fears with the facts.
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4 comments:
I read the excerpt in "Newsweek". The books sounds pretty interesting, and perhaps a good tonic for the fear-based media we're assaulted with on a daily basis.
Perspective? Didn't the Shrub outlaw that?
When is "terror fatigue" going to set in? You can only keep people whipped up for so long. I've always secretly feared that the Bushites (emphasis on "shite") will engineer a terror attack a few weeks before the election to give themselves a boost.
--Alex
Studying history is the ideal way to get perspective. 50 million people died in 6 years of World War II, military and civilian alike, while less than a million have died in Iraq in the same time. This is just one example, but in my view the world is safer than ever, and the rest is simply fear-mongering - not just on the part of Bush & Co but also our victim culture. I may get this book - the guy seems like he's on to something.
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