Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Perspective: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get a Grip
I know there are millions of brave, decent conservatives. My apologies to those folks for the following. But good grief, when did the Republican Party become infested with what sound like so many loud, whining cowardly pundits? One second Reagan is up there standing toe-to-toe with the Rooskis, negotiating cool as a cucumber with 20,000 nukes pointed at him, and the next thing I know, the likes of Limbaugh or the crew at Powerwhine and Freeperland, are all shrieking like a class full of tweaked-out, neurotic fifth-graders having a panic attack every time OBL pops up in a grainy video with a rusty AK in the background. What the hell happened to the GOP I once knew?
Death and injury are every bit as tragic as they are inevitable for human beings. Understandably, we worry about both, we all cry and mourn when either strike, especially with ourselves or those we love playing the starring role. And I have no desire to down play the loss that anyone feels when someone they love is struck down, be it by terrorism or leukemia. But ...some perspective maybe?
Heart disease and cancer will claim about 1.5 million American lives each and every year. As far as accidental deaths (~100,000/year), motor vehicle accidents far and away lead the pack (+40,000/year), with accidental poisoning and falls in place and show1. You can play with those stats all kinds of ways. But the bottom line is that over the course of a civilian lifetime, the odds of falling victim to Al Qaeda rank somewhere between falling off a ladder to your death and being struck by lightning inside your home.
How does Al Qaeda compare with past threats?
This is a UR-100, NATO designation SS-11 "Sego". The SS-11 was one of the workhorses making up a significant portion of the land based Soviet nuclear deterrent. These weapons initially carried a single one-megaton nuclear warhead. Later versions carried up to six 300-500 kilo-ton devices in a single MIRV configuration (The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima yielded about 15 kilotons). Between 1970 and 1985 there were well over 1000 SS-11 missiles and later, larger variants deployed throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in both silo and mobile launcher systems.
Had the SS-11s and their buddies been launched at the US during the cold war, they would have reached their targets in a few minutes and converted some 20 million US citizens into plasma. Many millions more would have died in agony over the next few weeks in ways too horrible to contemplate. A full Soviet attack would have turned every major city and military base into a smoking, glassy, radioactive crater. Let's put it in perspective by way of pictures:
H-bomb test Castle Bravo shown to rough scale behind lower Manhattan with the two World Trade Centers for reference. The skyline has actually been made larger (By maybe a factor of ten as near as we can figure) for purposes of clarity--in actual scale it would be so small you wouldn't be able to recognize it. Now multiply that by a thousand to get a handle on the cold-war. Yes, 9-11 was a shocking tragedy, as was Katrina, Oklahoma City, and the nation rightfully mourned them all and many more like them. But in even a limited nuclear exchange with the former USSR, there would have been no nation left. Photo work by Karen Wehrstein (Artist tip jar)
The Cold-war is just one of many threats we've faced that exceed the danger posed to America from Osama bin Laden by orders of magnitude. We also survived Hitler, Imperial Japan, the Kaiser, a Civil War, and the British Empire--the latter one twice by the way--just to name a few.
In that historical context, reading or hearing a bunch of yelping GOP crybabies incessantly screeching in craven horror that Al Qaeda is the worst, gosh-darn biggest bad-ass threat we've ever faced is, frankly, an act that has grown tired and embarrassing. And when they yammer, time and time again, that it's not enough for them to be quivering under their beds, they insist the entire country crawl under there and obsess along with them, while they lay in fetal position swaddled in their faded George Bush security blanket squawking in fear, it's enough to make Burt the Turtle duck and cover in disgust.
Here's a message for both our homegrown Neoconservative, bloggy, gutless wonders and the Jihadi nutcases overseas: I grew up in the cold-war, my parents went through WW2 for crying out loud. We are not paralyzed with fear over Osama. Despite your best efforts, I'm not obsessed with terrorism. Sheesh, I barely even think about it. I face bigger statistical risks, in every way, every day, and on every scale, just driving across a set of railroad tracks and down the interstate smoking a cigarette in the rain, and I don't worry much about that either.
And if you want me to be afraid for my very nation's survival, Jebus H Christ, you damn well better be able to wave around a threat considerably more convincing than a rag-tag group of zealots who shit in caves and beg other people to put on suicide belts sporting a rip cord detonator.
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Another thing...
The farther the conservatives live from New York, the more they are pissing their pants about "terrrism". Here in Phoenix they are practically having heart attacks. It's a toss-up which they are more scared of, a handful of medieval fanatics living in a cave on the other side of the world, or gays who want to marry.
- No More Mr. Nice Guy!
Eyes Wide Shut
Hello Sir,
An individual bases his choices on the mere desires of his personal body. I hungry, I eat. I tired, I sleep. I horny, I jerk off. But, as we grow into adulthood we balance our egoistic desire with social roles. You, Mr. Darksyde, have a role here on the blogosphere of inciting debate regarding freedom, perspective and empiricism. That role, whether my opinion matters or not, is a good one. There are plenty of roles one can name that are most pressed into service towards society, whether we like them or not, become a part of so and sos name. Society added the doctor's title to the name of one Jack Kevorkian. The title indicates a societal role. This role provides a service to the nation which you or I do not. He is meant to facilitate health. Okay, bad example. But, the point is that doctors lose their anonymity because the role they play is one meant to serve society. Their mail is addressed to this honored member's title. There is no time at which they are not in some way reminded that they are servant to the people's health.
We do the same for imams, rabbis and priests. The societies they serve believe that their religious leaders have given up a large measure of their individual ego in order to fill the role the community's expects. They are addressed as their title and they must, at all times, be aware of the responsibility and behavior their society attaches to that name. The same goes for the President. The funny thing is that the President's job is to protect the life, liberty and rights of Americans. The role the President assumes, if he is not corrupt, is that of a protector of every single American and he is given powers to do so. He is meant to protect Americans even at the disadvantage of non-Americans.
As this concerns your perspective, it matters not if you personally are scared of the terrorists or not. It matters not if they be militias, terror cells, communists, nation-states, religions or what not. It matters not if they use AK-47s, 300 kiloton atomic bombs, nukes carried in briefcases, a microscopic virus or a spade, the President has a duty to protect you individually and the nation as a whole from these threats big or small. The President is not presiding over world opinion. He presides over the agencies that are, in theory, meant to protect your life and liberty. There are national health agencies dedicated, if they be uncorrupted, to lowering the risk of lukemia and all other diseases. This is a part of the Executive Office's role in government. If AIDS isn't quite the threat it once was does that mean we should ignore it? I think not. We hope to irradicate that threat completely. We are not paralized with fear by OBL. Neither should be be paralized by contempt for his threat level. The threat to Americans today is not one single man hiding wherever it is he hides (my guess is NYU). The threat comes from Islamic nation-states that are growing their arsenal of weapons that would resemble the threat the Soviets were. We came out from under the mushroom shadow. One does not want to return to that shade. As the type of person who is critical of the illogic of religious fanatics just think what some of the blond haired, corn fed Jesus freaks would do with the bomb. Multiply that threat by a million when you consider that the military checks and balances of the means to war in Iran are those religious freaks for Allah in Iran. They make no cover up for their intentions. They let Mike Wallace do it for them.
We can discuss whether the President is filling his role in the best way or not but if you expect the President to accept a level of danger that you personally find acceptable then you are asking whoever is filling the presidential role for the moment not to do his job.
Many Miles, Many Shoes
BoNo
Wow. Long comment from
Wow. Long comment from BoNo. Not much of a point.
Darksyde appears to me to be saying "let the fuss be made over *serious* threats--those that actually kill a lot of Americans."
If something like 9-11 happened every single year, your chance of eventually running out of luck and dying in a terrorist attack would be 1 in 1,000. Seriously. Do the math. In the meantime, your chance of eventually dying of heart disease is 1 in 3. Your chance of eventually dying of cancer is 1 in 4. Those are serious threats.
I bet we could do something about them without ablating the civil liberties that make America America too. If we could just winkle the conservatives out from under the bed, maybe they could help.
wow
I don't read political blogs, so it is possible that some intelligent person out there has already written something very similar [not that I'm implying you are copying], but damn I wish I had written it first. I've felt that the comparisons made to past wars and conflicts by today's neocons were piss-poor, and always told them why. However, the way that you phrase this against the issues we should be spending our billions and sweat and blood and tears on: cancer, heart disease...awesome post.
tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
Lucretius
Is Osama alive anyway?
Great post....
And hey, why are we worried about OBL anyway... I mean has anything really verifiable been seen or heard from him in years?
We do need to worry about religious extremists (of all kinds), the immediate threats are from Islamic extremists of course, but there are longer term threats from other religious nutter, that we need to keep an eye on.
In the meantime, live life, enjoy...
cheers,
Robert.
This oughta be posted
This oughta be posted everywhere! So funny. So true.