Terrorism is thankfully a rare occurrence. This may be one of the reasons why we Americans are so bad at reacting to terrorism – from random acts of violence against Muslims, Sheiks, and other in the aftermath of September 11th, to the completely useless department of homeland security, which only serves to perpetuate bureaucracy we just haven’t gotten it right. Researcher have apparently showed that we also react by reducing our overall level of trust – one of the things which helps maintain an orderly and functional society.

One way that public opinion shifts is toward increased expressions of distrust. In some ways this strategy has been actively promoted by our political leaders. The Bush administration repeatedly reminded the public to keep eyes and ears open to help identify dangerous persons. A strategy of vigilance has also been endorsed by the new secretary of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano.

Nonetheless, the breadth of increased distrust that the public puts into practice is striking. Individuals threatened by terrorism become less trusting of others, even their own neighbors. Other studies have shown that they become less supportive of the rights of Arab and Muslim Americans. In addition, we found that such effects extend to immigrants and, as well, to a group entirely remote from the subject of terrorism: gay Americans. The specter of terrorist threat creates ruptures in our social fabric, some of which may be justified as necessary tactics in the fight against terrorism and others that simply cannot.

The biggest problem of course is that the people we allow to have the loudest voice on this matter are those with a vested interest in convincing us that terrorism is real and recurrent – politicians, consultants, and others who make money by scaring us. The more they talk, the more we react. The more we react, the more we distrust each other, the more money we spend, and more economic costs and time delays we endure, and the more we damage society. We have done more to damage the fabric of our society than Bin-Laden ever did. To quote from Bruce Schneier, Refuse to be terrorized!

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 19th, 2009 at 4:14 pm by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.