Pig Spotting


A Rethuglican--well, Michael Bloomberg--chose NOT to overdramatize the threat of terrorism, but instead, sought to put it in proper context: yes, a threat, yes, something to take seriously, but no, not something to obsess on to the the point of literally pushing everything else beyond the event horizon.

"There are lots of threats to you in the world. There's the threat of a heart attack for genetic reasons. You can't sit there and worry about everything. Get a life. You have a much greater danger of being hit by lightning than being struck by a terrorist."

There's much more worth reading here, here and here.

Professional hysterics, residing as they do in the land of lunatic wingnuttia--and their minions of amateur rock throwers--pretend they're the only "serious" ones re: the threat of terrorism (while, interestingly, they willingly attach themselves to the highest flights of fantasy when it comes to "making Iraq a democracy")...meanwhile, even as they shout about the sky falling down because someone wants to take a blowtorch to the Brooklyn Bridge--and even as Team Bush shovels million dollar no-bid contracts to their political cronies as a consequence--life, with all its challenges, goes on.

Rudy Giuliani exploits 9/11 like a teenage Asian prostitute as he shamelessly prances across the country. But most Americans face dangers OTHER than terrorist attack, and he knows it. So too does every other person with more than a few functioning brain cells.

Hell, there's hardly a town of any size in this country that lacks a neighborhood where the average person would last maybe twenty minutes without being assaulted or worse. There are probably plenty of lunatics around who wouldn't mind assaulting you--or worse--for all sorts of dumb reasons, ranging from them not liking the grin on your face to being angry that you can afford a $75 dollar pair of tennis shoes to them being furious that you cut them off in traffic.

Add to that the people who don't want to kill you...but might end up doing so through sheer negligence...like that nutjob taking on his cell phone and changing out the porno DVD...while racing his goddamned Hummer down I-10 during rush hour. Or his comrade in arms, the guy huffing a spraypaint and gasoline mixture from behind the wheel of his semi.

And that doesn't even take into account legitimate accidents, which can also leave you just...as...dead. Then, like Bloomberg notes, you've got things like diseases, genetic or contagious.

Or maybe, you've got a federal levee system that fails during a storm. Or perhaps there's a slow acting but smoldering, grinding fury just waiting for a spark to set off a conflagration.

In other words, life is a struggle, and life has risks. And we--as individuals AND as a society--should act like adults, take the risks into account, and respond APPROPRIATELY. Life is both too short, and is too serious, to engage in the sort of ugly fearmongering that truly is definitive of the modern GOP.

Except, I guess, in the case of Bloomberg (some guy named Atrios uses this to suggest that Mike doesn't have a future in Rethuglican leadership. I think he might be right). Meanwhile, I'm gonna keep my eyes open lest I get whacked upside the head by a flying hogzilla.