Peter Krupa

At the risk of destroying any chance I might have of winning public office in the near future: Can someone please tell me why Americans spend so much time worrying about terrorism? I’m really impressed how often the topic comes up in all sorts of contexts in U.S. discourse, despite the absence of a sustained pattern of terrorist attacks.

The State Department loves to label distasteful governments/groups - Syria, FARC, North Korea - as “terrorist” or “state sponsors of terror” as if that somehow makes them ideological allies. Occasionally I run across chintzy action TV shows and movies where beefcake characters express their desire to go out and kill “terrorists,” as if such a status were self evident.

Meanwhile the Office of Motherland Homeland Security (tagline: Preserving Our Freedoms) spends billions of dollars every year on weird grants designed to defend against evil in terrorism hotspots like Annapolis, Maryland.

“Since 9/11, tourist areas are targeted by terrorists… ” Sgt. Johnson said. “Annapolis is the capital of Maryland. These days, I guess anything can happen anywhere.

Right! Except these days, nothing is happening anywhere! Spooks and State Department bureaucrats will tell us, hey, we’ve foiled tons of plots since 9/11, and you snot-nosed kids don’t even realize what kind of stuff has almost killed you in the last seven years.

But with the U.S. government’s track record, if hordes of terrorist boogymen really had been trying to blow up the Homeland since 9/11, at least one of them would have succeeded. Really, it can’t be that hard. Also, keep in mind that the people “protecting” us are the same ones who’ve been lying to us since the Mexican-American War, so frankly, I’m not buying it.

The truly interesting thing is how Cold War terminology has carried over into the 21st Century. The American imagination has been encouraged to think in terms of anti-Western “-isms.” Today we have simply flipped one “ideological” threat (communist, communism) for another one (terrorist, terrorism). Seriously, next time you hear a commentator or politician talking about the threat of “terrorism,” just insert the c-word. Suddenly, it’s 1962 all over again.