Heads He Wins, Tails I Lose
Somewhere in my rambling, I think it was Graems blog, democrats were berated for not taking seriously enough the threat of terrorism.In the commentors world view they were being manipulated into this lackadaisicle attitude by cynical politicians, the exact mirror view of anti-Iraq war exponents. Its a wacky world and while I'm not technicaly a "democrat", I think Lewis Lapham nails this one again in his Harpers Notebook essay, Going by the Book, wherein he writes that the journal Foreign Affairs "compared the total number of people killed since Sept.2001 by Al Qaeda or AlQaeda-like agents operating outside of Afghanistan and Iraq to the number of people who drown every year in bathtubs." Also .."the lifetime chance of an American being killed by an act of international terrorism is about 1 in 80,000, the odds roughly equivalent to those of being killed by a comet or meteor."
The advantage in argument that someone has in accusing me of being a naive ,heedless, chump is that the second some new "plot" is discovered or heaven forbid some bomb actually goes off he can prance on his bandwagon while I am forced to wait for eternity to create a proof that fearmongering is unwarranted. Proving a negative is never a position you want to be in.
Meanwhile, I am wondering just how many jelly beans it would take to make a thousand-square- foot mosaic of Ronald Reagans face, a mural that could be placed somewhere on Wall Street where they are just now celebrating the DOWs climb to 12000. Perhaps I am rich? My capitalist complicity extends to owning a couple Mutual Funds, maybe I could go invest my windfall in some Louisiana development, where the Army Corp of Engineers is allowing folks to develop wetlands without review "to help the poor people of Katrina". Right. Those big hearted engineers.
posted by troutsky @ 11:02 AM
8 comments
8 Comments:
As I get it, you're more likely to be killed by an asteriod than by one of Al Qaida's Ahmeds, more likely to be electrocuted by your toaster than being hit by an asteroid in the first place, you don't know how many jelly beans you need to create a Reagan portrait, but you need 2000 portraits of dead soldiers to create a Bush portrait, half a million dead in Iraq to start people to think about it, 1000 dead children in Lebanon to atop an aggresion, all Palestinians of past present and future, and one good cup of coffee to make me happy. For the moment.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
I think there has been a grand total of zero sleeper cells found in the US. That commentor was an idiot. They want to fight terror by using terror. Throw water on a drowning person.
I think I have a better chance of my dog eating me for breakfast.
Music,art, literature, coffee, not necessarily in that order.Buddha, Allah,Yahwe,Krishna,Coffee.
What we need to worry about are bee stings,does anyone realize how many people are killed by bees every year? I don't mean to dishonor the dead of 9/11 attacks but believe they would be horrified (and feel dishonored) to know how their deaths were manipulated.Will this realization be enough to cause people to rise up?
Hmmm... tragedy as comercial brand... where did I see this one before?
BTW, down with them terrorist mosquitoes and jihadist bees!
The advantage in argument that someone has in accusing me of being a naive ,heedless, chump is that the second some new "plot" is discovered or heaven forbid some bomb actually goes off he can prance on his bandwagon while I am forced to wait for eternity to create a proof that fearmongering is unwarranted. Proving a negative is never a position you want to be in.
Precisely right. Try this: since the only way we can be completely safe is when no one has a chance to harm anyone else, we should simply become an autocratic state.
Actually, don't worry about it too much. Historically ignorant morons are going to believe government keeps them safe. Quite simply, liberty suggests too dear a price.
Right. Those big hearted engineers.
Hey now! I'm well on my way to becomeing an engineer. Of course, I'd rather be a writer of sorts, and I'll refrain from discussing the nature of my heart, but actually your point is pretty valid.
I've written all kinds of neat things in the school paper, all apparently for naught. All that calculus and physics can make it hard to concentrate on the big picture.
Not for naught my friend, we can't know all the ways we might influence people and events.You make people think.
Post a Comment
<< Home