All American Fears: From Terrorism, to Food and Global Warming

Europe — Italy included — is on full terror alert. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio attended a press conference last night in Times Square after the Islamic State circulated a video of New York “targets.” The CIA is complaining that its work is less efficient now that cuts have been made to wiretapping. Wasn’t it nice when we had the luxury of enjoying all those worries that actually weren’t at all worrisome?

The list is endless. Salt and sugar, for example. Coke and wine. Or butter. Or anything fried in sunflower oil (warns an English professor). And the latest “panic” about red meat and Parma ham, set off by a World Health Organization report. All these things do great damage, say the scientists. And except for when each research findings contradict another (yes, this happens), disapproval for health reasons by medical professionals are obviously well-founded because these things “can increase the chance of a shorter life.” Be that as it may, however, in exchange you get a few small earthly pleasures.

One even bigger regret is that one no longer fears the end of the world. Global warming, remember that? Or rather, climate change. The only one still putting this at the top of the list alongside security threats (“Absolutely,” he emphasized, after the Paris attacks), is Bernie Sanders. The senator who has his head in the socialist clouds of Vermont thinks he still has the green populace of environmentalist Democrats behind him. I wouldn’t be so sure. He allowed himself the wonderful luxury of playing “savior of the world,” attacking at all costs the energy companies or fracking and gas corporations which have produced admirable results in achieving energy independence from the Arab states and OPEC. I personally do not think any green advocate in Europe or in the United States has ever lost sleep because it (might) be a couple of degrees hotter in Stockholm or Montreal in 2100. But wasn’t it wonderful, back in the day, to share Obama’s existential terror as he cried in Alaska for the glaciers that won’t be left behind for our grandkids, if we don’t act now.

The biggest luxurious fear that has been lost is, without a doubt, invasion of privacy. This concern or battle against the National Security Agency and the secret services — that at their worst, protected our technological opportunities — even had a “hero”: Edward Snowden. It is to him, and to Obama, that we owe the undoing of provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act (the response of George W. Bush and Congress to 9/11) under which phone calls could be intercepted and recorded. Liberals and libertarians, spoiled by years without attacks and without terror, have provided a voice to those who felt they were kept under surveillance and oppressed; they have used the information Snowden collected illegally to incite the most fatuous and impalpable fear: the horror of Big Brother.

These worries were all approved, politically correct. They filled our lives with shared, solemn participation. Then the scene was blown apart by the Islamic State which wiped out all our little complaints and substituted them with something truly frightening. We call them “violent extremists” as Obama likes it, or “radical Islamists” as all normal people call them, or “bastards” as CNN’s Jim Acosta referred to them during a press conference in Turkey (“Why can’t we take out these bastards?”) Islamic State group soldiers have beaten our elitist priorities and catapulted us into the real world, full of real fears for our lives and the lives of our loved ones. Just walk through the streets, sit down in a shop or a stadium and you are at risk of bombs going off, machine guns being fired, being stabbed by a knife. Not just in Israel but anywhere in the civilized West; in Marseilles, for example where a Jewish teacher was stabbed by three individuals claiming to belong to the Islamic State group.

To get our feet back on the ground, we must take CIA Director John Brennan seriously: “In the past several years, because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there has been some policy and legal and other actions taken that make our ability, collectively — internationally — to find these terrorists much more challenging. And I do hope this will be a wake-up call, particularly in some areas in Europe, where I think there has been a misrepresentation of what the intelligence and security services are doing by some quarters that are designed to undercut those capabilities.”