I see the Blogging Tories have truly given in to their terrified inner children, and have decided to try to frighten the rest of us into living in the same wretched state of fear as them.
On this page - draped in funereal black - you will find Canada's right wing on-line pundits using the dead of 9/11 to justify their worldview, issuing charges of racism against any who disagree with them, and turning our soldiers into some sort of fetish. All of this advice on condemning Islam, hating the left and exhortations for more war and increased security is gathered together on one helpful site which screams the right wing mantra - we're all gonna die!
While I appreciate the effort, no thanks. I'll take reality.
But how afraid should Americans be of terrorist attacks? Not very, as some quick comparisons with other risks that we regularly run in our daily lives indicate. Your odds of dying of a specific cause in any year are calculated by dividing that year's population by the number of deaths by that cause in that year. Your lifetime odds of dying of a particular cause are calculated by dividing the one-year odds by the life expectancy of a person born in that year. For example, in 2003 about 45,000 Americans died in motor accidents out of population of 291,000,000. So, according to the National Safety Council this means your one-year odds of dying in a car accident is about one out of 6500. Therefore your lifetime probability (6500 ÷ 78 years life expectancy) of dying in a motor accident are about one in 83.What about your chances of dying in an airplane crash? A one-year risk of one in 400,000 and one in 5,000 lifetime risk. What about walking across the street? A one-year risk of one in 48,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 625. Drowning? A one-year risk of one in 88,000 and a one in 1100 lifetime risk. In a fire? About the same risk as drowning. Murder? A one-year risk of one in 16,500 and a lifetime risk of one in 210. What about falling? Essentially the same as being murdered. And the proverbial being struck by lightning? A one-year risk of one in 6.2 million and a lifetime risk of one in 80,000. And what is the risk that you will die of a catastrophic asteroid strike? In 1994, astronomers calculated that the chance was one in 20,000. However, as they've gathered more data on the orbits of near earth objects, the lifetime risk has been reduced to one in 200,000 or more.
So how do these common risks compare to your risk of dying in a terrorist attack? To try to calculate those odds realistically, Michael Rothschild, a former business professor at the University of Wisconsin, worked out a couple of plausible scenarios. For example, he figured that if terrorists were to destroy entirely one of America's 40,000 shopping malls per week, your chances of being there at the wrong time would be about one in one million or more. Rothschild also estimated that if terrorists hijacked and crashed one of America's 18,000 commercial flights per week that your chance of being on the crashed plane would be one in 135,000.
Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.
So do these numbers comfort you? If not, that's a problem. Already, security measures—pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security guards—increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives. It's easy to overreact when an atrocity takes place—to heed those who promise safety if only we will give the authorities the "tools" they want by surrendering to them some of our liberty. As President Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural speech said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." However, with risks this low there is no reason for us not to continue to live our lives as though terrorism doesn't matter—because it doesn't really matter. We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized.
The Blogging Tories have already decided to let terrorism rule their lives. How about the rest of us?
"Fear" is what the Republican Party is desperately trying to use (again) to stave off losing one or both houses of Congress in November.. so I'm not surprised their counterparts north of the border are trying the same tactic here.
Me, I am skeert all the time about a lot of things, I have to admit.
It seems to me such a luxury those people have, worrying about terr'ists. That "Terror Watch" page of the Blogging Tories -- I would laugh, Tim, except that it really does become overwhelming when you see that much irrationality lined up, post after post, does it not?
I worry every day that one of the kitties might get sick, or that someone in my family or one of my friends will -- I guess I worry about those things because they have happened all too often. I'm afraid of cancer and my heart and what does it mean that my foot is going all funny? Especially I am worried about my brain.
I really worry that I might burn the house down, and how would I get all the cats out in time?
I so wish that those people would stop calling themselves Tories. Real Tories, as I recall them, were not given to paranoid fits -- quite the opposite.
The most skeert I've been of modern high-tech warfare lately was a week ago, during the Toronto air show. The show-offs practise for three days by buzz-bombing my place, and then they really show off on the fourth day. It is seriously bad: some of the cats hit the decks under the bed; others retreat to the furnace room. A couple of times I ended up under my desk.
And the whole time, I promise you, I was not thinking "terr'ists." I was thinking Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq. I was imagining living under buzz bombers over my home every day all day with no end in sight. It was bad enough when I knew they had no malicious intent, that they were just stupid North American boys showing off. If I weren't a North American, though, they would scare the hell out of me, all day every day.
Oh, skdadl, your fears are so grounded and grown up. You would never make it as a Blogging Winger (I agree with you about the term "Tory"), where your fears must be based on shadowy foreigners and scurrilous "leftists". Bless you for that.
I'm confused - why is it alright to condemn the Blogging Tories for the opinions of a few, and not blame the NDP for riding association resolutions?
I have heard time and time again, despite the sheer mass of loony ideas from the NDP grassroots, that these are merely the proclaimations of a random few, that most of the anti-US. anti-NAFTA, anti-WTO, Canadian-soldiers-are-terroists, resolutions wouldn't even be debated, and that the NDP as a party is much more reasonable than these resolutions would suggest.
Why, then. is the same reluctance to brand an entire group by its most extreme members not extended to the Blogging Tories?
I hate to say it guys but there is no chance of your dream the SCRACheads will stop calling themselves "Tories" ever reaching fond hope status. As long as the Conservative Party is trying to convince Canadians it's the legitimate heir to the Progressive Conservatives rather than the bastard child of the Alliance, they will continue to call themselves "Tories" at every opportunity.
But I agree with the I'll take reality option. I have a better chance of being killed during a mugging by a swarm of chipmunks as I fill up the bird feeder or being run over by a deer in the driveway than I have of being killed by an Osama bin Laden wannabe. I only wish the real threats - getting caught in Friday rush hour traffic in Winnipeg, high blood pressure (my doctor won't let me visit whinger blogs) or felling trees - carried with the same risk as being killed by terrorists. If they did, I'd be making plans for a kick ass 150th birthday party.
I'm confused - why is it alright to condemn the Blogging Tories for the opinions of a few, and not blame the NDP for riding association resolutions?
Erm... because the Blogging Tories aren't 'the opinions of a few' blown up to castigate the entire Conservative Party, but are in fact a distinct, self-defined group? It'd be more like if we complained, not that you can't judge the NDP based on the riding association resolutions, but that you can't judge the individual riding associations based on the actions of the riding associations.
Reality is what I have been living with before, during, and after 9/11/01. I have had conservatives and Conservatives accuse me of not taking the threat seriously enough to being called a terrorist sympathizer and even a few times an operative because of it. I have understood that the threat of terrorism was out there among all the other ones since I was a child growing up in the middle of the Cold War. What this post does so emphatically is demonstrate why that is the sane and sensible/logical approach, as well as denying those that use terror tactics the victory by succumbing to the fear spawned by that terror. It is too bad that those that bleat most strongly about the need to fight the so called war on terror generally tend to be the ones acting most frightened/terrified by their actions and most willing to embrace radical/extreme measures to deal with this threat to our safety, this one threat among so many other of greater probability by up to orders of magnitude.
Excellent post Tim, I may be referencing it soon in a post I am considering for Saundrie this week. This goes to the core of this fear and "shriek we're all gonna die!!!" mentality that the NA conservative movement appears to have been infected by. Life can never be truly safe even in a tightly controlled and monitored society/dictatorship/tyranny, and open societies accept a certain amount of trade off in this regard over such societies so they are inherently going to be less safe yet they are the democratic way of life we are all supposedly fighting to protect/promote. The staggering inherent contradictions between the position and reality of so many C(c)onservatives in this is a level of cognitive dissonance I find remarkable in it's breadth and endurance to date, as well as more than a little disturbing. Not to mention one of the best reasons for keeping such from the levers of power and policy making IMHO
I agree entirely with the idea that the odds of any of us being killed here in a terrrorist attack are a long shot. Personally, I consider these attacks as the attackers do, as an act of war, not terrorism. A "terrorist" as they are called would be more than happy to splatter your guts all over the pavement whether you support your elected government or not. Face it, in the middle east, Shi'ite s kill Sunnis, and thats just the tip of the iceburg. All around the world in unstable nations, people of the same skin murder each other every day in horrifying numbers. Its an everyday occurance, with very little means to stop or sow the bloodshed. THIS is end that we seek as free people to avoid. Do not sit in an ivory tower and preach that we have tolerance of all walks of life, so we are safe from the death squads. I dont think that we should fear such things, but we do have to understand that we are much, much better off than many places in the world. WE should work hard to keep that peace of mind, and at the same time, try to help others like you and me gain that freedom.
Life is much less safe in an uncontrolled society, and if you do not believe that, than why dont you go for a walk in a gang infested neighborhodd tonite at about 2am? Go down and find yourself a crack whore to talk to about fear, and as you are standing there, maybe you can learn something about what is real and what is not.
Life is much less safe in an uncontrolled society, and if you do not believe that, than why dont you go for a walk in a gang infested neighborhodd tonite at about 2am?
Fine. And then you can go and ask how safe life is for the women of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, or the Kurds and Shi'ites of Baathist Iraq, or the Christians and Jews of Iran, or the homosexuals of Saudi Arabia.
Just because the violence isn't meted out by private individuals doesn't make so-called 'controlled' societies safer.
"...stupid North American boys showing off."
If those boys - and girls, mind you - flying the jets were military, almost every single one of them would have at least one university degree, and many of them would have two. Call them misguided, or immature, or any one of a thousand other insults skdadl, and you could at least make a case for your choice of epithet, but 'stupid'?
You expose your own ignorance with that.
Ah, but here you equate "educated" with "intelligent", Damian, which is simply not always the case.
The boys at Powerline blog are all lawyers, yet they rank amongst the stupidest people to ever claim sentience. You would, I'm sure, feel the same way about Ward Churchill (as would I, in fact).
People can be well educated, yet still be profoundly stupid. This is not to say I agree with skdadl's characterization, but your citation of their university bona fides does not disprove it.
Point taken, Tim. Of course, since she doesn't know any of the pilots in question, she can't prove her assertion in the first place.
My bottom line is that I resent the assumption that because someone flies a plane for the military, they're automatically stupid.
I've met puerile pilots, vulgar pilots, and asshole pilots (for lack of a more descriptive term) in the CF. I was aircrew, and know more pilots than I'd like to, to be honest. Not a single one of them was stupid, and not a single one of them was unprofessional when it came to driving their aircraft.
Huh. Y'know, personally, if I were to describe someone as 'puerile', 'vulgar' or an 'asshole', I think I might not have a problem with tossing 'stupid' in there, too. I mean, how smart (smart, not educated, mind) can you be if you act like a puerile, vulgar asshole?
I mean, how smart (smart, not educated, mind) can you be if you act like a puerile, vulgar asshole?
A fair bit smarter than you, it seems, Garnet. Ever visit an IT department, a law office, a med or engineering school, a military unit, a political campaign, a newsroom, or a trading house? Lots of bright, intelligent people acting like asses in any one of those venues. And I could name a dozen more professions stocked with their fair share of petty, mean, and childish dinks.
Wow, Damian. You certainly outdo poor little moi in the rhetoric department.
As Tim said, even while disagreeing with me, stupidity has nothing to do with academic qualifications (it takes a pretty superficial snob to think that), and that is clearly not what I was referring to.
Now, if I were a condescending b***h, I could get all those bright young pilots off the hook by saying that I recognize that they are mostly following orders, just robotically acting out their training, when they perform stupid stunts over the very very densely populated area in which I live.
But I'm really a lot more respectful than that, Damian. I believe that those guys (maybe there's a gril among them, but I'm from Alberta, which is kind of like being from Missouri) are intelligent individuals, capable of exercising their no doubt well-disciplined minds and consciences every time they are given a job offer or a directive (as of course the Nuremberg trials taught us all that all military personnel would always have to do from that time forward), so I conclude in my simple-minded but well-intentioned way that all of those clowns who are buzz-bombing my house are up there by choice, eh?
And if they are up there by choice, then to me, they are stupid. We have had fatal crashes in this city, horribly sad of course for the pilots who went down, but so far we have undeniably been lucky that they've gone down in the lake. I live in prime crash territoire, Damian, and I cannot for the life of me see the use of terrorizing my community all day every day for four days running. Why is it done? Have you lived through it? It is hellish. And for what purpose?
Yes, I think the air show is stupid. I'm sure those guys need to practise. Let them practise somewhere where innocents are not at risk.
Ever visit an IT department, a law office, a med or engineering school, a military unit, a political campaign, a newsroom, or a trading house? Lots of bright, intelligent people acting like asses in any one of those venues. And I could name a dozen more professions stocked with their fair share of petty, mean, and childish dinks.
Yup. Exactly. Assholery crosses all gender, racial, cultural, political and professional lines. It's one of the great equalizers of humanity.
And if they are up there by choice, then to me, they are stupid.
And there we have it. You've decided that "stupid" should be a subjective term describing anyone whose actions and motivations are beyond your grasp.
Own a mirror?
Damian, I asked you to give me a good reason why they should be buzz-bombing a heavily populated area. I can't think of one. Can you? If so, could you be troubled to offer it to us?
Ever visit an IT department, a law office, a med or engineering school, a military unit, a political campaign, a newsroom, or a trading house? Lots of bright, intelligent people acting like asses in any one of those venues.
There may be lots of well-educated people in those areas, perhaps even geniuses within their specific field, but quite frankly if you cannot manage to exercise basic human courtesy and politeness, you're pretty godsdamned stupid. I don't care how many letters you have after your name, or how well your dissertation was recieved. Stupid is, as the line goes, as stupid does.