RED ALERT!! RED ALERT!!

[mburbank]

Abbi, it isn't cyncicism, it's anti-semitism.

Frued says we laugh at what we are afraid of. But he was a Jew, which I guess means he had to laugh a lot, like me.

If I stop laughing at terror alerts, then the terrorists have won. I'm going about my business, just as Michael Chertoff advised. As I type this, I'm pretty much right under the flight path of plains coming from England to Boston, and yes, I beleive the terrorist threat is real, and has been since ye olde 9/11, during which time I've spent every workday sitting undr the same flightpath. My business as usual is laughing at absurdity. Mea culpa.

Here is my cycnical prediction based on recent history. It will turn out that American intelligence had little or nothing to do with this thwarting, which will turn out out to have been accomplished almost entirely by Brit and it looks like some Paskistani intelligence. The degree to which we turn out to have been uninvolved will initially be kept a secret, but will venetually come out. In the meantime, the administration will fear monger and talk about how spying without warrants and holding people indeffinitely without charge is more neccesary now than ever, and when it turns out that these tatics had zippo to do with it, they'll say "All we meant was it coulda if it had". If the fear pony can be ridden through the November elections it will be.

I don't think there isn't anything to be afraid of. That's not what I'm cynical about. I'm cynical about the way the administration uses fear.

Oh, and I feel less afraid of scray stuff when I make fun of it. Sort of the same way bombast, bluster and superiority make other people feel less afraid.