living in terror for the sake of fear

Right now there are about 32,500 stories on Google News about bird flu. That is insane. I am sick and tired of seeing stories on the news about what the latest thing is that we should be afraid of. Terrorism in America happened long before September 11, 2001. The traditional media have been bombarding us with stories of unsafe drugs, consumer products, technology (remember Y2K?) roads, potential biological agents (remember the killer bees?) for at least a decade.

Why? Because fear sells. People tune in to learn what they should avoid and what they need to be concerned about. The Bush administration knew this as people in the ad business, so they sold fear to sell the president's policies and ultimately, his reelection. We had to be afriad of Saddam, a non-threat. Of social security collapsing. Of dirty bombs. Of "what kind of message that [Democratic policy] sends to the terrorists/evil doers." Enough is enough.

Americans need to kick their fear habit cold turkey, and the media need to stop feeding into the cycle of fearmongering. Enough exposes. This country was not built on living in fear, but living free. Free from fear in fact, we fought to keep British troops out of our homes and lands (see the 3rd Amendment), from tryannical rulers, from fear itself in World War II.

I for one am not going to live in fear. Avian flu is not going to happen any time soon if at all. It is like monkey's writing hamlet. While we were busy being afriad, Soviet nuclear caches go unguarded, Iran has started up its nuclear program, North Korea has build more nuclear weapons, and Osama bin Laden is still alive making silly attempts a truce. Forgive me if I don't watch the Oprah on bird flu and don't stock up 3 weeks worth of food, medicine, and batteries.