Wednesday

 

Yesterday was Hump-Day, so this must be Friday.  Happy Friday everybody.

 

 

On a different note, I was just thinking about terror.  Maybe 300 people get killed in a terrorist attack.  It could be a bomb on a plane or bullets in the street.  Hundreds of people who were going to a football match, theatre, or restaurant; just going about their daily business, all dead.  What do we do in response?  We shut down airports and subways; we close entire cities and countries for days at a time.  We bomb the shit out of someone.  We curtail our liberties, freedom of movement, and privacy.  We secure our borders; reject ten thousand or a hundred thousand refugees from violence because there might be a terrorist among them.  No matter the price, we’ll pay it.  We’ll make everyone else help us pay it.  We have to succeed 100% of the time.  The terrorists only have to succeed once.  They assemble a homemade bomb.  We spend trillions.

 

Does our response make any sense?  I’m not saying not to respond.  I don’t want terrorists to kill anyone anywhere, but the proportionality of our response strikes me.  This year, 3,000 people will die in traffic accidents in the state of Texas.  That’s just from one state in one year.  Thousands of people who were going to a football match, theatre, or restaurant; just going about their daily business, all dead.  Yawn.  It doesn’t even make the news, much less dominate it for a week.

 

It totally sucks for the people who get killed in traffic, and for their friends and family, but otherwise, is there outrage?  Is there fear?  Do we stop driving?  Do we shut down the roads?  Do we avoid gathering in groups?  People will always die; some unnaturally.  As long as it’s just a number and it’s familiar, we accept that.

 

The terrorists are right.  It’s the nature of the deaths that provokes the response they’re after.  We’re sheltering in place against a threat that pales in contrast to many other daily threats we just accept.