The deadly politics of fear

[caraher]

Have our candidates discussed possibly ending the Homeland Security "terra warning levels?"

The one thing Clinton did in the Las Vegas debate that really disappointed me was using the "we're gonna get hit" scare tactic. I thought Obama was spot-on in rejecting use of the "politics of fear." Because if "the terrorists'" goal is to kill Americans, when we freak out about "terra" the terrorists win. See this article about the health impacts of extreme anxiety about terrorism.

After controlling for various factors (age, obesity, smoking, other ailments and stressful life events), the researchers found that the people who were acutely stressed after the 9/11 attacks and continued to worry about terrorism — about 6 percent of the sample — were at least three times more likely than the others in the study to be given diagnoses of new heart problems.

If you extrapolate that percentage to the adult population of America, it works out to more than 10 million people. No one knows what fraction of them might consequently die of a stroke or heart attack — plenty of other factors affect heart disease — but if it were merely 0.0003 percent, that would be higher than the 9/11 death toll.

I have a friend who has been disabled due to mental illness thanks to 9/11. She was in Chicago that day, but it really set her off, and all these years later she is only marginally functional. I wonder how many more people suffer crippling effects from exaggerated worry about a real but manageable threat. (And of course, we know that thousands of Americans and tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died, with many more wounded and crippled, thanks to mismanaged reactions sold on false pretenses to an angry and anxious public.)