When This Flight Attendant Tells You to Sit Down . . .

Kenny McCormack writes:

This is, alas, simply not true. Every day of every one of our lives
proves the opposite. Violence is always present, though generally
submerged below the surface, in the form of the constant threat of it,
should we step out of line. But its presence is always necessary.

It is entirely true, despite appearances to the contrary. All significant
advances in society have been made possible in part by an absence of violence.

What you say is true in a statistical sense, but not in any real sense,
because isolated instances can and do have wide, far reaching effects.

The effects of terrorism are no greater than paranoid, frightened, cowardly
people make them out to be.

Terrorists depend on the hysteria of their victims to accomplish their aims,
since they don't have the means to reach those aims in any other way. All too
often, their victims are willing accomplices. But if victims do not react,
terrorism dwindles to insignifcance.

I'm going to talk, of course, of 9/11. In a statistical sense, this was
an obscure, isolated event. But think of its consequences. It
propelled us into all of our current wars, for which the bill is
something like $5 trillion and growing, with no end in sight. It fueled
the administration of GWB, which has caused untold damage to the
fabric of our society, the costs of which will be felt for decades to
come (if we ever recover, which we probably will not).

Whose fault is that? Not the terrorists'.