Living in Fear
In 2013 the Boston Marathon bombings took place when two men were carrying backpacks with pressure cookers in them. They set the backpacks down along the road where people lined the streets to watch the race. After this horrific event occurred my pulse began racing any time I entered a movie theater or gas station and saw someone with a backpack. Fear of another terrorist attack was at the forefront of my mind and I was filled with terror at the possibility of being a victim of one of these attacks.
This fear, our reaction to terrorism, has been more harmful than the threat warrants (Mueller 2). It is such a large fear, when in reality the probability that an international terroritst will kill me is 1 in 80,000. This is the same likelihood of me dying from a comet hitting the earth (Mueller 2). Our false sense of insecurity has caused us to spend loads of money trying to cover all of our bases when it comes to terrorism, which, in some cases, has caused more harm than the terrorists attacks themselves (Mueller 1). All of this money has been spent because terrorism is a moral panic which is spread “because special interest groups gain benefits from ideological support, power, and money” (Victor 12). Politicians have exploited terrorism in order to gain support. Though terrorism may be exaggerated to benefit certain people, terrorists do still exist. Charles Kurzman takes a very straightforward approach in addressing terrorism in his piece, “Why Is It So Hard to Find a Suicide Bomber These Days?”. He gets straight to the point, saying, “Islamist terrorist really are out to get you”, but there aren’t many Islamist terrorists and “most are incompetent” (Kurzman 64). The 9/11 attack involved 19 hijackers, not because that was the number they wanted, but because that was the maximum number of people Sheikh Mohammed could find who were competent ( Kurzman 61). All in all, terrorism is something scary, but when you look at the facts and account for the exaggeration, it should be feared in moderation based on the reality of things.
A few months after the Boston Marathon bombings my fear began to wane as the attack became more and more distant. My pulse now remains normal whenever I see someone in public with a backpack, but the moral panic of terrorism still resides in the back of my mind.
