The Fear The Fear The Fear

It's been an entire twelve days since the last post. Two weeks have happened, basically. In that time, I've been listening to the Steal non-stop. They're a raucous hardcore band that sounds like the first time you went downhill on your bike as fast as you could.

Go download all their records on their official website. The title is also the title of a Defiance, Ohio record, who are nowhere near as good as the Steal, but the title's stuck with me for years. Marathon #5 before the end of this month. And now, for a drastic change in tone.

Al-Qai'da's attack on Christmas doesn't register much with me. One, I didn't know it happened until a couple days later. There's been a lot of talk about how he evaded American security apparatus, but let's be honest: he got on a plane in Europe and came into America that way. Would New York airport security have caught him, I don't know. There's a lot of fear going around that something "could have" happened and that Al-Qai'da still has a lot of pull.

Let's examine what happened. Al-Qai'da attacks usually are redundant. By that I mean, if one plan goes down, there's still another one in place. 9/11 is an example. One plane failed. Three didn't. In this case, there was one (and only one) person, using the same method the shoe bomber did, which also failed.

The suicide bomber didn't even commit suicide. What he did manage to get past non-American airport security was incendiary, not explosive. (It burned as opposed to blow up.) I'm inclined to believe that's a victory. Al-Qai'da is also known for having camps devoted to these kind of activities, so they had to know that this device was improvised and "hoping for the best".

Fareed Zakaria puts it better: On Christmas a Qaeda affiliate launched an operation using one person, with no special target, and a failed technique tried eight years ago by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. The plot seems to have been an opportunity that the group seized rather than the result of a well-considered strategic plan.

That's worrisome, but not terrifying. America is not some kind of fortress and even if it was, it wouldn't be America. America was not founded on the idea to keep foreigners and "dangerous types" out. It is meant to be a place with open arms. Those that would trade liberty for security deserve neither, Franklin said. It's worth repeating.

A young Al-Qai'da affiliate (think of the terror organization like a franchise) literally threw something together that didn't work the first time around, failed on putting an explosive on an airplane and they still managed to freak out the American public.

The fear currently going isn't logical. The evidence doesn't bear it out. There's a terrorist incident, speaking roughly, every 16.5 million departures, Nate Silver tells us. It is significantly more dangerous to take a car to wherever you're going. Those who practice suicide terror want us to be very afraid. Killing tons of people is a bonus, but the point is to strike fear a mass audience. And, like a charm, we're all very, very afraid. That's why Al Qai'da celebrated it.

And that's why I'm not at all hopeful about the war on terror.

ITT: POLITICS LOL

"I took a class on Internet and Identity and you know what the whole thesis of the class was that people's identities change when their real one is shielded by the computer" - Tionna Smalls

Remember how, not five minutes ago, I stated my general displeasure with presidential candidates? Well, I am fickle and addle-brained. Cast your third eye (that's the internet eye) upon this twilight monstrosity, which is basically Ron Paul doing what Ron Paul does best, which is to say, be a crazy, lovable bastard. Mike Gravel is similar. Okay, okay. I give. I admit it that, for once, I was... slightly hasty in my judgment. We are sons of Adam - we are fallible. Let us forget that it ever happened. I endorse any candidate, any candidate at all, who is willing to basically flip the bird to the mass of the gathered republican party, dismiss them for the wastrels that they are, screams "FOLLOW ME IF YOU WANT TO LIVE", and then leaps into the dinosaur-infested jungles, with a machete clutched between his teeth.

In short - hey, time travelers, if you're reading this, can you steal some kind of tangent universe Teddy Roosevelt to be our forever president? We'd totally owe you a solid.

Anyway, I bring this up not because I am suddenly ALL POLITICAL or whatevs, but because of YouTube. And to a lesser extent, Myspace. And to an even lesser extent, Fa-che-bewk. And their presence, and impact on modern culture, or whatever. You see, I was perusing this this unbelievably patronizing article about Kate Nash, a songstress of which I am fond, and the author brings up the good point that exposure is slowly becoming a substitute for quality, which, if you were able to decipher my terrible prose, is kinda what I've been saying all along. But it's cool. I mean, Sasha Frere-Jones, as an author, is at least marginally better than I am (remember when he said that indy music wasn't influenced by black culture? By citing the effing Arcade Fire? Yeah, man's not too hep, but it's not like the New Yorker is really with-it anyway) and hell, the dude can have his opinions or whatever. But on the point of exposure, he and I are of one mind. Which is partially what is so amusee about the current presidential race - that the standards to which we hold our pop star lady-types are actually quite a bit higher than the standards to which we hold the Executive Branch. In a way, the race to become president is less a matter of politics, and more a matter of simple celebrity. Whomsoever can make of themselves the most visible spectacle without being viewed as a dangerous madman (or at least a dangerous madman who won't let them queers get married) is going to be a winner. Which is perhaps why figures like Ron Paul and Mike Fucking Gravel (and, okay, I guess Obama is still kinda like this) favorites of the internet - they are identified as the underdogs. As surely as any real fan of music would spit contemptuously on a scion of Nickelback or Limp Bizkit (or Maroon Five or Daughtry or Li'l Wayne or Brittany Spears or...), so too does the discriminating voter wrathfully ponder who in their right mind would vote for Giuliani or Mitt Romney. There's just nothing there - an empty showcase of questionable achievements and corporate backing. In an age where exposure is increasingly becoming the the most important facet of any political movement (at least the non-Masonic ones), choosing the right candidate is not so much a matter of politics as it is one of good taste.

In that, the internet has created a sort of Blogger Brahmins, an elite caste of intelligent individuals, broadcasting the refined opinion, and formed loosely into tiny coalitions of like minded thinkers (except for us - we are far too hateful to ever have a links section). Our choice of presidential candidate, then, becomes part of our online cosmetics, our intellectual appearance. So too are we able to judge others based upon where their own proclivities lie. It becomes a matter of dangerously inbred little cliques who make choices not so much based on moral duty than controlling how they wish to be perceived. I am a freak in a schadenfreud complex with the republican party. Ron Paul all the way! I can see similar reasoning behind Zach's fondness for Mike Fucking Gravel and James's's Obama endorsement (of the three, which do you think stands the most chance of making it into the white house? HMMMM!).

I am glad that I vocally disagree with my comrades. I would not enjoy the thought that myself and all of my friends think the same way about any issue (and we are also able to almost always refrain from facestabbing each other with butter knives). There is enough groupthink and cronyism at large amidst what is arguably the largest audience ever devised - having massive appeal is no indicator of actual quality, as Sasha Frere-Jones states, and in the face of a future where everyone has their fifteen minutes of YouTube fame, we have to be aware of the debasements and personal sacrifices that come alongside the glories of wtf-ever kind of new metaverse is being shilled at us this week. Ha ha, run-on sentences. Okay. I am a grump and hate the future. THOMAS CARLYLE OUT~