Future Tense: A Path Out of the Nightmare of 9/11

The Old is dying and yet the New cannot be born; in this interregnum, a variety of morbid symptoms appear. -- Antonio Gramsci

Recently I approached the tollbooth on the Bay Bridge in Oakland, headed toward San Francisco. To pay the $2 toll, I handed a dollar's worth of change and a dollar bill to the attendant. Immediately, he ordered me to "Open up the dollar bill!" At that befuddled instant, I looked at my hand and saw that the note was slightly crumpled along with my change. And then it dawned on me...this guy thinks there's a deadly dose of anthrax hidden in the folds in my bill.

Every time someone pulls up to the both, this toll collector worries it might be the last car he ever sees. I guess there is a chance I could be armed with a batch of anthrax from a secret Berkeley lab, as part of my dastardly plot to eliminate all toll-takers, but really? It was hard to keep from screaming, "What are you doing to us? Don't let them do this to you!"

We've all had similar encounters and experiences -- locked doors at the public TV station; searched trunks at the movie theater parking lot; long lines of cars and trucks as security stops traffic. Personal behavior of all kinds has been altered by countless expressions of fear and concern, not to mention the nightmare at the airports.

We've all read the endless stories of planes diverted and airports shut down, of thousands of people evacuated and millions inconvenienced. A plug is accidentally pulled on an X-ray machine in Seattle, and thousands of people get yanked off of already-boarded planes. During that incident, passengers on more than 50 flights already in the air were searched a second time, after their flight landed. Some airports were completely evacuated.

Many cases of racial profiling have been reported in which planes did not fly because there were passengers who looked Arab. Airports across the country have become security-hysterical armed camps. This despite the fact that there's no reason to believe anything is likely to happen at the huge majority of locales, and despite the fact that before 9/11 the last successful air highjacking was more than 10 years ago. Although trashed and scapegoated by practically everyone, airlines safety records -- as opposed to their service to passengers -- have not actually been that bad. Remember, the highjackers took over the four planes apparently with material that was permitted on board.

Welcome to Paranoia USA, a country where many seemed to have abandoned common sense and critical thinking, where there is zero tolerance for scenarios with a million-to-one odds, where fear and insecurity pervade too many aspects of daily life. Paranoia is a normal response under severe threat. It arises out of a focus on danger and our need for self-protection. But when the fear is more imagined than real, when the fear becomes indiscriminate -- as in, "There are terrorists in every city ready to set off bombs at any moment!" -- then it creates an environment where people are eager give up their rights and give unconditional support to their leaders, no questions asked.

People become paranoid when they feel threatened. When we are afraid, we seek comfort by trying to pin the blame on a perceived aggressor, and we rationalize any behavior that makes us feel safer. Paranoid people feel justified in their cruelty. In a paranoid vision there exists no moral wrong, protection justifies all other acts, no matter how violent or prejudice. It is in this environment that racism and zero-tolerance mentalities thrive.

The present environment of overcompensation on security precautions undermines our ability to differentiate real vulnerability from overblown fear. When people start to see danger everywhere, every dark-skinned person is a potential suicide bomber, the man in a bow tie is a spy, any airplane could go down, the Golden Gate Bridge could blow up any day and there could be anthrax in a rumpled dollar bill.