When in Doubt, Panic.

Wherein Our Heroine Doesn't.

There's a lot to panic about these days, if one were so inclined.

The world situation is a biggie. Accordingly, living close to a major city (and that major city being Washington, D.C.), it seems that the world situation might end up on our doorstep (or crashing through our roof) at any time. About a year and a half ago, we weren't worried about international terrorists so much as our homegrown ones.

It's interesting to compare the speculative, international threat to the known, domestic one. The speculative threat, little spoken of but existing in the back of everyone's mind, causes clenched jaws and distant looks. The known threat caused people to talk, share plans, check up on one another. The speculative threat occasionally strips shelves bare of bottled water, plastic tarps and duct tape. The known threat provoked zigzag runs to the grocery store, the Guardian Angels pumping your self-serve gasoline, and gallows humor. We might still have felt hunted while the snipers prowled our streets and parking lots, but we felt like we could do something to keep ourselves safer.

It seems that Homeland Security's occasional proclamations, often less clear than the Oracle at Delphi, are intended to give us that something - activity to make us feel safer. But soon after a change in the "Threat Advisory," comes the inevitable question - what does it mean? Why is orange safer than red, and what can we really do about it other than suffocating ourselves in rooms sealed with plastic and duct tape? But those questions fade soon after the threat alert is dropped to yellow. Somehow, all of this Roy G. Biv posturing seems to act as a color-spectrum narcotic - it might not mean anything except longer or shorter lines at the airport, but it is evidence that "something" is being done about homeland security. Like some SUV owners, we find the illusion of safety more comforting than safety itself.

Living in fear isn't exactly the answer either. But isn't there some middle ground between denial and panic?

Posted: Monday - April 19, 2004 at 08:11 AM | |