Culture of Fear
August 20th, 2006 - 8:11 am
What happens when two non-white men get on a plane and speak in a language no one else understands? The passengers revolt and refuse to fly until the men are removed, naturally. It didn’t help the matter much that they were deemed to be inappropriately dressed either.
Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches.
Let’s see … the temperatures in Malaga, Spain, the flight’s origin point, are in the high 80’s. The temperatures is Manchester, England, the flight’s destination, are running in the mid to low 60’s. If I were getting on a plane to Manchester today, I can assure you, I would be wearing a sweater (jumper) and my leather jacket. Perhaps the pasty-white Brits returning from holiday in Spain don’t think temps in the 60’s warrant wearing warmer clothing, but those of us not acclimated to such chilly summer temperatures might very well think otherwise. Good thing I’m white and don’t tend to speak foreign languages in airports, or I might be the cause of a passenger revolt too. Of course, first you’d have to convince me to get on a plane in the first place, and good luck doing so.
And of course no one ever checks their watches while sitting around airports, do they? No, of course not. It would be completely silly to want to make sure your flight is taking off on time, or to worry about making a connecting flight, or to just be anxious to get where you are going … or to just be bored. Back when I used to find myself spending far too much time sitting in airports, I probably checked my watch every two minutes for all the previously listed reasons. Apparently, checking your watch while in an airport is a sure sign of a terrorist plot, though you might have to have darker skin for that to apply.
The terrorists are winning, if they haven’t already won. Racism is also winning. It’s a sad that so many in the world today are letting fear drive their lives and motivations, but that’s what is happening all around us. Fear of anyone who is different, and in most cases that means different skin tones, different languages and different cultures. It’s definitely an Us Against Them world these days, and I don’t see that getting better or going away anytime soon. It’s only going to get worse until we manage to segregate ourselves into neatly organized groups of similar individuals … and then we can blow the world up in some way after a bunch of skittish Brits have a panic attack because someone different from them dared to wear weather appropriate clothing and look at their watches.
Had I been in charge of the airline, I would have handled this a whole lot differently. You don’t want to fly on a plane with someone who has been through the same security checks you’ve been through? You want to walk off the plane or refuse to board, because there are two men on it that make you feel scared? Fine … don’t board or don’t get on the plane. Go try to exchange your ticket or buy a new one. Those two men have as much right to board a plane and experience a flight as hassle-free as anyone else, including the lily-livered persons who caused this panic in the first place, and to fold to the desires of a panicky bunch of vacationers implies in its very nature that you either a) don’t trust your own security measures and b) the panicky bunch have more rights than the brown people that scared them. Neither is a message an airline should want to send out to the world.
Oh, and the two guys that caused all this ruckus? They were questioned for a few hours, put up in a hotel room, and then sent on their merry way to Manchester. They’ll probably let it go and not make a stink about it, but had this happened to me, I wouldn’t rest until the true troublemakers on that plane were as publicly scorned and humiliated as I had been, and the airline in question had apologized publicly. I’d probably get a few lawyers involved as well, just for good measure. Either the airline needs to admit its security measures are so lax that terrorists could get on their plane and cause a problem, or they need to admit they trampled the rights of two people who’s only crime was being brown and speaking a foreign language.
2 Responses to “Culture of Fear”
Oligarchies throughout history have promoted ignorance because it is the most cost-effective means to achieve division and conquest. The stigma of stupidity has long since disappeared in this country, and our English friends are right behind us.
It wasn’t the men the passengers feared the most it was the violence they might be capable of which translates to fear. Things haven’t changed all that much since the days of the Wild, Wild West in America. Back in those days the terrorists were known as Billy the Kid, Jesse / Frank James, Butch, and Sundance, and many others.
In later years they were known as Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, Al Capone, well you get the ideal. One difference about all of these people was the fact that they looked like everyone one else and they all came from similar backgrounds, which in turn put them in the same category as the majority of the nation, which was being dirt poor in desperate times. This caused them to share something in common with the majority hence many of them were considered folk heroes.
The so called terrorists of present day are not people from foreign lands that are noticeably different from us for they only serve to distract us from the real terrorists who still talk the same why we do, dress the same way we do, and look the same way we do and 99.9 % of them were born and raised in America.
Some of them hold political positions, some hold executive positions with prestigious companies, some hold medical degrees, some hold legal degrees, and yet Americans turn a complacent and blind eye to them all the while when they are doing more damage to our Freedom than all the terrorists put together could ever achieve in the next hundred years.
Next time you go to fuel up instead of wondering how much more you will pay at the pump with your next fuel purchase ask yourself how many more excuses are the fuel companies going to be able to come up with to validate their ever increasing prices and don’t stop there ask yourself how much longer will our government allow them to get by with it.
Arabs, Katrina, cost of production, depleted supplies, and now the pipeline. What’s next? Something like “In consideration of the upcoming Presidential election we don’t foresee things going our way anymore because we will no longer have a President in our hip pocket so the next few months we are going to charge the hell out of you while we can.â€
The numbers speak for themselves.
“Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion.â€
.John W. Schoen
Senior Producer
MSNBC
July 21, 2005
Exxon Mobil Corp. reported $8.4 billion in first-quarter profit yesterday, as members of Congress outraged over high gasoline prices hastened to propose measures that would boost taxes on oil firms, open new areas to drilling and provide rebates to taxpayers but would not necessarily alter prices at the pumps.
The earnings outstripped the oil giant’s profit in the first quarter of last year. Given current oil market conditions, analysts said, that puts Exxon Mobil on track to break the $36 billion record profit it made last year.
In Congress, anger over gasoline prices brought action in the Senate to a screeching halt yesterday, with Democrats interrupting debate over an emergency military spending bill to protest a key oil company subsidy. In a highly unusual move, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) waged a solo filibuster on the Senate floor in an attempt to force a vote on a provision that would halt support for what Wyden said was about $35 billion for oil and gas companies. “This is the big one, folks, in terms of energy subsidies,” Wyden said during the five-hour standoff. “This is the one where there is no logical case . . . when oil is $70 per barrel.”
Steven Mufson and Shailagh Murray
Washington Post Staff Writers
April 28, 2006
As you can see the this price gouging has been going on since 2002 and beyond and what pray tell has our government taken upon themselves to do about? Why of course they want to give them 35 billion dollars of your hard earned tax dollars in energy subsidies.
One last thought on terror. When you get old and gray and come down with heart disease or some other like horrible affliction and have to take three ( or more ) prescriptions that total $900 a month just to survive be ready for some real life terror. Under the new Social Security drug plan you will still have to pay about $30 co- pay for each one and half way through the year be ready for your insurance company to send you a letter saying that you have reached the approved limit of drug coverage and that for the rest of the year you will have to pay full price for any medicines you may need to survive the rest of the year.
The real terror is that you will be paying about $60 to $70 a month from your Social Security check each month ( to our government) for the privilege of being terrorized.