Terrorism, Gang Bangs, British Chaps, And More Terrorism, by Matt Shirley

Once upon a time, there was a man with an unpronounceable name who boarded an airplane bound for Detroit with a bomb in his underpants. 

Many moons before, a different man boarded a different airplane headed for Miami.  This man had plastic explosives packed in his shoes.

Each man was attempting to blow up his respective plane, doing so in an act of self-reported terrorism.  Both failed. 

Upon receiving news of these events, some eight years apart, the presidents at the time had very different responses.  President Obama, at America’s helm during the most recent plot, took 72 hours to comment on the guy who wanted to blow up everything on that Detroit-bound plane, starting with his dick.  President G.W. Bush, presiding over the country in 2001 during the shoe bomber plot, waited a full six days before discussing the foiled attempt that eventually led to a new security measure and me never wearing non-flip-flops to the airport again. 

Bush and Obama both took considerable flack for their response times.  But contrary to popular belief, it was President Bush who took a the more logical, the more patriotic, and quite simply, the better tack by waiting longer to respond to his respective terrorist calamity.

(It should be noted that I hate me some George Bush.  In my opinion he’s an unqualified simpleton, completely unfit to run any country, state, or township.  And let me be clear that I don’t think he made the right decision on purpose.  But, with those 101 IQ points churning at full capacity and with luck on his side, he did do the better job in this case.)

Recently, I listened to a National Public Radio interview in which a British man named H.J. Pufflington (not his real name—I don’t remember it) said that British responses to terrorism are much different to those we experience here in the US.  H.J. went on to explain that because of the ‘quarrels’ in Northern Ireland brought on by the Irish Republican Army and Britain’s subsequent history of dealing with local terrorism (or guerilla warfare), the UK was simply not as reactionary as the US.  The British are accustomed to terrorism, which makes them much more difficult to terrorize.

We Americans are not so used to terrorism.

Fear is a terrorist’s weapon, and instead of taking measures to combat this fear they create, we’ve decided to co-opt this weapon and use it against ourselves.  We have terror alerts (terror-alert.com), media frenzies, Glenn Beck (who comes frighteningly close to fitting the definition of ‘terrorist’ himself) and governmental and public backlash at Presidents who wait 72 hours or six days to respond to lame, ineffective terrorist plots.

Our behavior is similar to a fictitious soldier in Iraq who would enter an enemy compound, stealthily steal a roadside bomb from the insurgents and plant it in his own barracks.

Compounding the problem: the American  media thrives on fear.  Swine flu epidemics, gang wars, chemical weapons, water shortages, bear attacks, and raging gonorrhea outbreaks are all commonplace news stories. But I will not use the excuse, “It’s the media’s fault” because said media is a collection of businesses, who are trying to make money.  And fear sells.*

The government however is not running a business, and therefore has no intrinsic motive to sell such panic-inducing terror.  At least not in theory.  A governmental reaction to terrorism is necessary, of course.  But there is a difference between a sound, rational reaction, and a reaction that creates more chaos, which in turn defeats the purpose of having a reaction in the first place.  The goal is to defeat terrorism.  But creating more terror—with Red Terror Alert days, immediate knee-jerk press conferences, and the obscenely scary term “War on Terror”—does nothing to fulfill this goal.

It’s complicated, I know.

By lambasting our presidents for not responding quickly enough, it seems our government and our media want to work in conjunction with those frightful terrorists to form some unholy gangbanging trio, set to swordfight inside the American consciousness.  Thus, as the potential victims of these unwanted advances, we must have our mace cans and rape whistles at the ready.  Because while our government is partially to blame, I think we can all agree that our government is broken.  And as rational human beings and members of a society, we have to take responsibility not only for our government, but also for our reactions to that government, to the media that cover it, and to our enemies who seek to destroy it.

It’s a lot of work.

It’s one thing to be prepared, and to respond rationally to frightening situations, but it’s another to skip a flight on Christmas because you’re scared of Al-Qaeda. Or never have sex because you’re afraid of contracting Chlamydia. Or to cancel a trip to Africa because you heard hippos eat children.

Terrorism is scary.  But when we’re scared, the terrorists win.  And not in a punchline-of-a-joke kind of a way.  So don’t be afraid to touch that bathroom door handle at that seedy dive-bar.  Go ahead and drive down that not-so-friendly street with all the liquor stores.  And book that flight on 9/11.  Because if you don’t, you’re not only doing the bidding of all of these conglomerates who are trying to take advantage of your feelings, but you’re also living in fear.

And living in fear is no way to live at all.

*It would, of course, be nice for the different media outlets to add all of this to the discussion—that the constant fear mongering perpetuates the weapons that we go to such great lengths to repel—but I understand their situation.

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