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.

Hateful Screed; Politics Edition!

Benazir Bhutto has been killed. It is a sad day. The primary impact is always one of loss - here was a person who let us understand the movement she represented, who was willing to die for it. That kind of political devotion is unheard of in America, which brings me to point two of why the day is sad - our own political race, and how the candidates are going to try to use the death of this noble person in order to further their own careers. If they mention it at all, that is. I understand most of the republicans have something against People Who Are Not White, and want to hide them all behind fences.

I once recall hearing that although you are white and American, it does not mean you don't suffer - just that your suffering pales in comparison with what other people have to go through. Which is true. There's been a push with recent American policy to appeal to use what sounds like the logic of the suburbs internationally - the fence metaphor returns. If you don't like your neighbors, block them off. Don't do anything to upset your important neighbors, too - the US can't come down too hard on president Musharef, because if they did, where would the US stage it's forays into the middle east? How many people even know or care about what's happening?

Before I am swept away by the tidal pull of despair, I must try to come clean about some things. I am cynical because deep down, I feel that I'm helpless in the situation. I'm not even sure that if I knew how I could help that I would. At my core, I hate politics, and all that they stand for. I think that they're nothing but an outlet for the most vile, bullying, putrescent pieces of semi-sentient human waste to achieve something resembling, in it's most exterior aspects, a respectable life. I even hate the candidates I like. There's nothing admirable about public office. It's a circus of balding old men and their sycophants, mistresses, and saducees.

And the worst part seems to be that, like a disease, it's spreading. Ted Haggart, Larry E. Craig, Rush Limbaugh. People who abuse the faith that the public has in them, who lead tiny, pathetic shadow-lives behind the public image that constitutes all that they really are. Say what you like about Marion Barry, at least DC knew what it was getting when they re-elected him.

Why do these drug addicted whoremongers get to continue with their unusually wide-stanced ways, whenever someone so generally admirable as Benazir Bhutto gets blown up? The American Political/Fame system seems to be irreversibly corrupt, where one achieves power through falsehood, lowest-common-denominator appeals, and apparently, the guiding hand of Satan himself. The person who stands up is the person who gets cut down. I hate to sound like them, I hate the thought that this post even echoes something that they might suggest, but perhaps ignoring the problem will no longer make it go away. The American Way, anymore, is about access, and as long as you have an iPod, radio, satellite radio, TiVo, elaborate smoke message system, or effing telegraph, these people are going to be worming their way into your life. We're like Whatsisbucket in A Clockwork Orange, tied to a chair, and forced to witness not atrocities and horrors, but rather, the overwhelming cowardice, lies, and pabulum of the modern age. Is it any surprise, then, when America produces not monsters, but yawning, gawking sociopaths, unable to feel anything other than greed?

I, too, am a victim. I strive for something resembling legitimacy, morality, respectability. Would I even be able to recognize it, if it would present itself? Probably not. I am one of the yawners, the gawkers, the ones who casually shrug off increasingly depressing systems of jurisprudence in favor of talking about who should have "won" Tila Tequila's show. I may be suffering, but it does not mean that I have any idea to what degree others are in pain. I can only hope to take some lesson away from the assassination, some aspect of Benazir Bhutto's work, that maybe there are worse things that can happen to you besides death - you can live a life of complete mundanity, dulling your senses from a universe full of wonders.