A special note about this shirt: Considering the large amount of ink on this shirt, it will be printed with a water-based ink. The colors are not as brilliant, but the printed areas of the shirt will be softer and breathable unlike traditional plastisol screen prints.
Ah, security theater! Is there nothing more achingly banal than taking off your shoes, throwing away your nail clippers and showing a disinterested wage-earner your shampoo so you can get on an airplane?
Quick! Who knows what the terror alert level is right now? Who is affected by it in their day-to-day activities, or more tellingly, who cares? I suspect the answer to both of those questions is, “very few” and rightly so.
The terror alert scale is more like a punchline or a political tool for scaring the masses than something useful. The threat levels are, by DHS‘s own admonition, meaningless to the public; they won’t say what triggers an alert level, which means it can be anything from a true threat to this country to political manipulation. (An accusation that officials within the department itself have made as well as resigned over.)
said it best…
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
That’s the whole point of terrorism, after all, is it not? To paralyze? To turn advance into retreat? It seems to me like the Department of Homeland Security in the United States (along with quite a few of their counterparts in other countries) has acquiesced nicely to terrorist aspirations by creating quite a bit of useless fear themselves.
Here’s some things you should spend your time worrying about instead of terrorist threats: (source)
- You are 13 times more likely to die in a railway accident than from a terrorist attack.
- You are 12,571 times more likely to die from cancer than from a terrorist attack.
- You are six times more likely to die from hot weather than from a terrorist attack.
- You are eight times more likely to die from accidental electrocution than from a terrorist attack.
- You are 11,000 times more likely to die in an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane.
- You are 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack.
- You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack.
- You are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack.
- You are 1048 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack.
- You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocation in bed than from a terrorist attack.
- You are nine times more likely to choke to death on your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack.
- You are eight times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist.
So the real problem with terrorism is fear itself. Considering the above, we should all get on with our lives, otherwise they win.
‘Nothing But Fear Itself” goes on sale on the home page January 1st, 2010 at 12:00am (US CST). Enjoy…
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