Talk About Domestic Violence, Not Terrorism

The way Republican candidates (and to some extent, government) constantly whip up fear seems obviously stupid (yet insidiously effective) to me. Today's Star Tribune carried a commentary that compares them to a therapist who tells a patient his fear of spiders is accurate and that spiders represent a real threat to him.

This is clearly not the way to live a reality-based, let alone happy, life.

My favorite part of the commentary was this:

If terror attacks were to receive the same amount of media coverage as, say, domestic violence — a far more lethal threat — they would probably soon be a relic of history. They would cease to exist because the cost of conducting attacks would outweigh their benefit to the perpetrators. This is precisely what happened in the 1980s to terrorist groups such as the Baader-Meinhof Gang and the Red Brigades when the European media started losing interest in them.

The media are also part of this problem, of course, because fear drives audiences and sells ads.