ext_13053 ([identity profile] arctangent.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] meanfreepath 2010-06-01 10:45 pm (UTC)

Re: Unrelated to the main topic, but I'm having a tough time controlling my emotions in this respons

I don't go to bed worried that I might wake up for the last time to a barrage of rockets. Nor do I ever bother to contemplate the possibility that I might be blown to bits or maimed by a suicide bomber every time I board a bus or go shopping.

The Republican Party tried to use this exact logic after 9/11 to claim that any and all foreign-policy actions taken by the USA were justified because otherwise we would all, from that point forward, "live in fear" of dying in 9/11-like attacks.

The issue, of course, is that whether one lives in fear of something is distinct from how high a probability that thing has of happening, and the main reason there were in fact people living in fear of their own personal hometown being annihilated by a barrage of suitcase nukes/hijacked passenger planes/rapidly expanding clouds of weaponized anthrax was the Republican propaganda itself.

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