Since the attacks of 2001, this country has gone from crazy to super, uber-paranoid. The best way to achiueve control over a person or entity is to instill fear, which in turn, produces dependence. As horrific as the attack of 9/11 were, they have proved a point pronounced by limited-government types for years - the more you introduce government as a “guardian angel” to a people, the more they fall under your control.
Example, Homeland Security produces a vague threat and boosts the rainbow scale to Code Orange, and suddenly you take a look around our major metropolitan areas - particularly D.C. where I work - and you see barricades, hordes of armed guard and missile launchers. Of course I’m scared! And in being scared, I allow my government to step in as my protector and, as my protector, they have control over my life.
I like the opinion piece that Bruce Schneier of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune wrote:
The DHS’s threat warnings have been vague, indeterminate, and unspecific. The threat index goes from yellow to orange and back again, although no one is entirely sure what either level means. We’ve been warned that the terrorists might use helicopters, scuba gear, even cheap prescription drugs from Canada. New York and Washington, D.C., were put on high alert one day, and the next day told that the alert was based on information years old. The careful wording of these alerts allows them not to require any sound, confirmed, accurate intelligence information, while at the same time guaranteeing hysterical media coverage. This headline-grabbing stuff might make for good movie plots, but it doesn’t make us safer.
