Our obsession with terrorism has driven many of us into such a frenzy of fear that it often borders on the ridiculous. Last year Lynnea Bylund posted to her Catalyst blog Time To Toss The Terrorist Fear Blather, wherein she correctly pointed out that, “… peanuts and bathtub drownings are by far more dangerous to Americans at home than terrorists,” statistically speaking. But the other day I encountered an even more fundamental variety of this fear.
I met a middle-aged gentleman from the upper middle class economic. He was very curious about my frequent travels and questioned me at length about a variety of places I had journeyed to. So I asked him: “Tell me about your travels?”
“Oh, I haven’t been anywhere outside the United States,” he said quite firmly.
“Why not? Don’t you like to travel?”
“Yes,” he said and added. “But I am afraid. All these terrorists stalking us Americans and I don’t want to die yet.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “Where are these terrorists?”
“Oh, all over the world,” he replied. And they are just waiting for Americans to leave the country so they can kill them.”
I was so shocked by this bald statement that I blurted out: “That is unadulterated BS! I think there are far more terrorists in our cities and our own American streets than in the rest of the world.”
“What do you mean?,” he asked quite shocked.
Understandably, after the tragedy in New York and Washington DC on September 11 many have written or called the office to find out what would be an appropriate nonviolent response to such an unbelievably inhuman act of violence.