Originally posted at TomDispatch.
Let’s start with the basics. In an era when the U.S. seemed to have no
great power rivals on the horizon, its national security state was expanded
to monstrous
proportions and given the “right” to commit acts ranging from
kidnapping
to torture,
surveillance of its citizenry to assassination,
based on the horrific events of a single
day and on a single danger: the slaughter of September 11th and the
threat of terrorism. In those years, before Donald Trump even began stirring
the pot, Americans were already consumed by fears of a danger that, in the United
States at least, couldn’t have been more minor. In the process, we essentially
terrorized ourselves into a new world.
If you want to worry about real dangers in American life, start with vehicles,
not terrorists. If you’re smart, in fact, don’t give another thought to
Islamic terrorism and stay off the roads. In 2015, the U.S. saw the largest
percentage rise in death-by-vehicle in the last half-century: more than
38,000 people slaughtered and 4.4 million injured. And in the first half
of 2016, those figures rose by another
9% with no end to the carnage in sight. Unlike our war on terror (and
the seven
conflicts that now go with it), no one’s likely to spend trillions
of dollars dealing with such deaths, even though they add up to more than 12
times those of 9/11 annually; nor, on a more minor scale, with the deaths
of Americans who simply fall out of their beds, are hit by lawnmowers,
or are gunned down by toddlers.
In most recent years, each of these dangers has equaled or exceeded deaths in
the U.S. from Islamic terrorists (or the disturbed
individuals who often masquerade as them). And yet, in case you
haven’t noticed, no one is investing in a national security state apparatus
to prevent them, nor is the country convulsed with worry about killer lawnmowers
or armed toddlers, even as fears of being taken out by Islamic terrorists continue
to grow (especially among Republicans).
By now, a way of life built and funded on this singular fear has – thank you,
Osama bin Laden – transformed our national security state into an unofficial
fourth
branch of government. Add in one other development: a new media
landscape has also been built on such relatively rare moments of terror in our
world. In this year of the never-ending Trumpian news cycle, just about
the only thing guaranteed to break into it and monopolize our onscreen attention
is the sudden slaughter of people by someone claiming allegiance to, or inspiration
from, ISIS. You can practically chant the names of the places where this
has occurred: San Bernardino, Orlando, Paris, Brussels, Nice – or rather, where
this has occurred to people we identify with. (Few are likely to be chanting