Let's talk about terror. It's the new black. The president spoke about it last night, and it seems to be overwhelming Americans. One one hand, I want to remind everyone that the odds of being injured in a terrorist attack are still lower than the odds of being injured by many more common hazards in life. It's been said that we are so bad at judging relative risks that we will be afraid of being killed by a terrorist, so we light up another cigarette.
Still, I am seeing terror a lot of places where others apparently don't. I'm going to be exploring that topic for a while now, but let's start with the media terrorizing the truth. This is not as dramatic as the terrorism-by-soundbite and graphic images we're seeing every day, but it's really a larger threat to us all.
Personally I've had it with the way that this election is being covered, on the basis of all of the candidates. The insistence of American media of treating every election like a horse race is becoming oppressive. The tendency to be "fair" by considering all statements, no matter how egregious, on the parts of the candidates as noteworthy is worse.
Donald Trump announces he would like to ban all Muslims from immigrating into the country? This gets more or less the same weight as the President speaking on gun control and violence in regard to terrorism. Or basically anything Bernie Sanders says. It's all the same - a candidate says it, we'll parrot it back.
Sometimes people need a little bit of guidance to understand that Donald Trump really is a whacko and that he continually suggests that his presidency would gut the constitution, put citizens in jail (or worse, kill them - since he seems to believe that we should just routinely kill the relatives of anyone involvedin a terorist act). The people promoting this sort of divisive racist talk are the same people who are terrified of Sharia Law taking over the country. It's exactly this sort of loose irresponsible talk that is growing terrorists around the world, and the press and our country are happily playing into those hands.
The press really needs to start calling out lies, calling out irresponsibility on the part of candidates (and yes, for both Democrats and Republicans). I'd like to think that the people of the country can tell the difference between responsible politicians and people who are not playing with a full deck, but the polls and the candidates being fielded for president (and - let's face it, for state political office in Wisconsin) lead me to think that this form of discrimination is not working. The press, individuals, bloggers, and others really need to start hammering on this - the 2016 election is less than a year off, and frankly I am feeling terrified for our country. This is one of the faces of terrorism. More tomorrow.