Fear and Greed

Some say that a majority of Americans are willing to submit to body scanning and intrusive pat-downs because of the fear they have of being bombed while in an airplane. Indeed, it is widely believed that Americans, at the moment, are willing to put up with invasions of privacy, doing away with habeas corpus, the patriot act, even the imprisonment and torture of people because of their fear of terrorism. I guess the beauty of fear is that it is so irrational and easy to induce that powers that wish to produce it can easily do so. It seems to me the idea that Americans are so fearful is because we are constantly being told we need to be fearful, by the talking heads, newspapers, magazines, radio, and so on. Fear is extremely useful to those in power.

In the case of air travel is there any truly rational basis for fear. I don’t know how one would find the proper statistics about such matters but it would seem to me that your chances of being on a flight with a terrorist bomber is probably less than your chances of being struck by lightning. While it is true there have been a few cases of airlines being bombed, when considered in relation to the number of flights per year this percentage must be very slight. Does it really make sense that millions, probably even billions of passengers have had to take off their shoes because there once was one case of a terrorist trying to have a bomb in his shoe, or another case of a terrorist with some kind of bomb in his underwear. Is the threat so great that now everyone who wishes to fly has to submit to body cavity searches or nude scanners? Is it really necessary to conduct investigations of this invasive kind on little old ladies, and even small children? Is it really necessary to ban knitting needles and all liquids in excess of 3 ounces? I think this is absurd. And I also think that Osama bin Laden and his friends must be enjoying this to the utmost. They must think it is absolutely hilarious when they realize they have caused billions to remove their shoes because of one failed shoe bomber, and even more hilarious now that everyone has to be subjected to humiliating super-invasive searches. Interestingly enough, Israel, which has the greatest safety record of all, doesn’t find it necessary to conduct these searches.

Many of the things we fear seem to be completely irrational when looked at objectively. For example, when Pearl Harbor was bombed there was a fear that the Japanese might attack the West Coast of the U.S., as well as the fear that the entire Japanese population of that coast might be spies or subversives. Of course we know now that the fear of the Japanese that saw so many of them incarcerated was completely without foundation, but what of the fear of a Japanese invasion? Did anyone really consider the absolute logistical impossibility that would have been required to undertake such a mission? Does anyone believe, even now, that some other country might cross the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans and attempt to invade the continental U.S.? This would be madness even if it were logistically possible. And what about the fear that led to the claim that “we’re fighting them there so we won’t have to fight them here.” Is there any reason to believe that a country with virtually no navy or air force is about to follow our troops home and attack us here? How many terrorist attacks, besides the two trade center ones, have occurred? We have been told, especially by the Bush/Cheney administration that they had prevented many such attacks but these claims seem to have been greatly exaggerated and in some cases simply nonsensical.

What is it about fear that can make people believe in utterly far-fetched claims? There are people here where I live who really seemed to believe that Obama was going to stop them from fishing! This seems to have stemmed from some talk of regulating commercial fishermen to protect the supply of certain fish, a discussion that was somehow converted into Obama stopping sports fishermen from fishing, a belief so irrational as to make you wonder about the thought processes of some of our citizens. And of course there is the continuing fear, without any foundation, that Obama is going to take away their guns. I guess this fear comes from discussions in some of our highly urbanized, truly high-crime areas there may be attempts to regulate firearms. Even if this were to happen it would never apply to rural areas like this one where virtually everyone hunts, owns and uses firearms. It is as if people just want to believe and fear certain things no matter how irrational they may be. Perhaps this explains the strange, seemingly perverse, fascination people have with the overwhelming number of violent and/or horror films. Is there just some basic thrill in being afraid?

I confess to being brave enough to say I do not fear terrorists. Easy for me to say as I live in a semi-remote small town that even in my wildest imagination could not be a target. I guess if I lived near a nuclear plant or a key military base or in some of our larger cities I might be fearful, but I suspect that even those fears would be largely if not almost entirely without foundation. In a nation of millions and millions, with hundreds of thousands of sites that could be targets, and protected by highly skilled police and other law enforcement organizations like the FBI, CIA, and who knows how many more, it is of course possible there could occur some terrorist acts, but from the standpoint of an ordinary citizen they are probably in much more danger from automobile traffic, contaminated food, or other such common threats than attacks by terrorists. FDR was right, “all we have to fear is fear itself.”

Fear is not easy to define. We know it is an emotion that is found even in infants of just a few months, and we know it is related to anxiety, apprehension, worry, expectation, the unknown, and other such things. In the face of our current fear of flying there is probably only one thing that will overcome it --- greed. You can be pretty sure that if large numbers of people stop flying the fear will strangely begin to dissipate along with the overly invasive scans and searches. Of course fear will still be involved in some sense, the fear of not making enough profit, but profit will eventually win.