August 30, 2016

Creating Panic Is Bad for the Country, But Good for Politicians

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There was another stampede at an airport Sunday night, when passengers at LAX wrongly thought they heard guns being fired:

A loud noise mistaken for gunfire led to rumors that spread at blazing speed in person and on social media, setting off a panic that shut down one of the nation’s busiest airports, as passengers fled terminals and burst through security cordons, and as the police struggled to figure out what was happening and to restore order.

Far from being an isolated episode, it was essentially what had happened on Aug. 13 at a mall in Raleigh, N.C.; on Aug. 14 at Kennedy International Airport in New York; on Aug. 20 at a mall in Michigan; and on Aug. 25 at a mall in Orlando, Fla.

Spreading panic over terrorism has real effects. This is one of them. We are being turned into a nation of babies.

The number of terrorist attacks in the US is minuscule. The number of people in the US who die from terrorist attacks is minuscule. But I suppose the political advantage from scaring the hell out of people about terrorism is fairly substantial. And that’s all that counts, isn’t it?

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