Color Blind? 2
This began as a response to a comment by Melani to my last posting on the terror alert system. However, I opted to make it a new post rather than keep it in the comments. Thanks Melani!
The threat-level-thingy was a big deal when it was implemented after 9/11. However, even then it became a rather obscure thing, rather quickly. For instance, who would ever allow it to fall to the "low threat level" status? Imagine the heads that would roll politically if we were in such a status and a terrorist actually struck? No, to cover butts, the status has to remain at some sort of reasonably frightening level.
The next problem is the massive expansion of the application of the term terrorist. Lots of things are considered terrorist acts today that would have simply been basic criminal offenses before. In some communities, gang activity is now classified as a terrorist activity. Some folks consider non-violent demonstrations to be a form of terrorism.
If you expand something broadly enough, and apply it often enough, people tune it out. We don't live in a safe world. We never have - 9/11 didn't change that, it just brought the reality home to more people in our country. How many people a year are killed in automobile accidents? if you want to get freaked out, check this out. Yet isn't it odd that we don't have a threat assessment for traffic? That would be silly. People can't predict when a traffic accident is going to happen.
Precisely. And I'd argue that we aren't very realistic to think that we can measure - in any real meaningful way - when terrorist acts are more or less likely. Anti-terrorism efforts are going to be constant and on-going. They're going to catch some folks some of the time. And other times they're going to miss something important and lives will be lost. People need to exercise common sense at all times, and a basic awareness of their surroundings at all times. This might be helpful in reducing terrorism, but it could equally reduce car accidents and any number of much more real and frequent dangers in our lives.
But life will remain tenuous. The world will remain dangerous. And we need to come to a peace with this in some manner or go crazy from fear or anger or both.
The threat-level-thingy was a big deal when it was implemented after 9/11. However, even then it became a rather obscure thing, rather quickly. For instance, who would ever allow it to fall to the "low threat level" status? Imagine the heads that would roll politically if we were in such a status and a terrorist actually struck? No, to cover butts, the status has to remain at some sort of reasonably frightening level.
The next problem is the massive expansion of the application of the term terrorist. Lots of things are considered terrorist acts today that would have simply been basic criminal offenses before. In some communities, gang activity is now classified as a terrorist activity. Some folks consider non-violent demonstrations to be a form of terrorism.
If you expand something broadly enough, and apply it often enough, people tune it out. We don't live in a safe world. We never have - 9/11 didn't change that, it just brought the reality home to more people in our country. How many people a year are killed in automobile accidents? if you want to get freaked out, check this out. Yet isn't it odd that we don't have a threat assessment for traffic? That would be silly. People can't predict when a traffic accident is going to happen.
Precisely. And I'd argue that we aren't very realistic to think that we can measure - in any real meaningful way - when terrorist acts are more or less likely. Anti-terrorism efforts are going to be constant and on-going. They're going to catch some folks some of the time. And other times they're going to miss something important and lives will be lost. People need to exercise common sense at all times, and a basic awareness of their surroundings at all times. This might be helpful in reducing terrorism, but it could equally reduce car accidents and any number of much more real and frequent dangers in our lives.
But life will remain tenuous. The world will remain dangerous. And we need to come to a peace with this in some manner or go crazy from fear or anger or both.
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