Clever Magazine, Dec. 06 " Too Frightening " (www.clevermag.com)

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Too Frightening for Words

by Dianne Kochenburg

Lately it seems as though “they” are trying their damnedest to scare the pants off of us.

It all began, of course, with 9-11. That scared everybody, rightly so. But in the aftermath, the powers-that-be have begun seeing terrorists everywhere, or the threat of terrorism. Since it’s difficult to disprove the threats, they become even scarier. So far, we’ve only convicted two “BIG” terrorists, both of them sort of dopey guys (remember the “shoe bomber”?).

So what did we do: Bush declared war on terrorism. What nonsense. We can bomb everything in sight, and drive our Humvees on every road imaginable and we will not be able to root out individuals intent on harming others. (The key word here is “individuals”. Individuals are not armies, nor are “cells”, another favorite moniker for scary people.) Our army in Iraq seems powerless and ineffectual in dealing with what's going on there these days.

Even if we “win” the war in Iraq, how will that make us safer at home? The homeland security folks are like FEMA. They haven’t done anything to protect us. Most of the security money went to fund pork barrel projects in places like Wyoming and Alaska. Our deep-water harbors are not safer, nor are our chemical plants or our electricity grid (actually, that was taken down by Enron just for the fun of it). Our highways, the internet, our phone systems, our “command and control” centers, our water systems, our railway systems are all in the same state that they were pre 9-11.

Conservative politicians are very good at making us fearful, but they usually have a political agenda in back of their rhetoric. They don't want to solve the problem of what's scaring us, they just want to frighten us enough to go along with whatever is on their agenda, and it's always the wrong fix. I sometimes wonder if those politicians lack courage, I mean real courage. They talk a mean game about standing up to the enemy but they send other folks off to do the dirty work. And this time, they got so scared they sent the troops off to fight the wrong fight, in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Now that really scares me.

Then there’s the big bird flu scare. No, not BIG BIRD, he’s not scary, even when he gets the flu. There was a what-if movie on TV the other night about bird flu striking the world and millions of people keeling over deader than do-do birds and carrier pigeons. Sort of reminds me of the old days of bubonic plague, when people actually did die in the streets by the hundreds. "They" are trying to scare us AGAIN!

Today I’m a little more afraid for the birds than I am for the humans. The bird flu is only attacking birds so far. The flu strain must mutate before it can hurt us the way the movie depicts. There are lots of germs and flu strains and other genetic stuff that, if mutated, might do some harm, but so far that hasn’t happened. If you don't understand genetics or how things mutate, it's easier to scare you. Remember Ebola? That was billed as a really big deal but it flopped right after that Dustin Hoffman movie. These un-mutated germs, bugs, viruses and so forth have been around for thousands of years and nothing really horrible has happened since the bubonic plague, unless you count that swine flu epidemic of 1918. And believe it or not, that was nearly a hundred years ago, way before flu shots had been invented.

So why are the powers-that-be getting us all het up about the flu? Could it be they want us to seal up our houses and crawl under our beds quivering so we won’t notice what’s really going on? That's what I'm thinking.

Then there’s global warming. That frightens me even though I probably won’t be around to see its most tragic effects, but my kids will, especially if we keep denying that it’s a problem. Isn’t it interesting that the politicians get to analyze the scientific reports and studies and decide whether the threat is real. The majority of politicians are lawyers who learn how to take any piece of evidence they get their hands on and twist it any which way they can to get the answer they want. Facts mean nothing to them. Now that really scares me.