Among the man-made disasters, one has received increased attention in the minds of the western world: terrorist incidents. One BBC video clip entitled “The Power of Nightmares,” argues that in the past, politicians offered dreams to the people. As people have lost faith in these ideologies, politicians are seen increasingly as managers of public life rather than as visionaries. Instead of offering dreams, politicians have restored a sort of prominence by promising to protect us from nightmares: Dreadful dangers we do not see or understand… international terrorism with vast networks. The journalist in the clip argues that such threats have been exaggerated and distorted by politicians.
There is a definite need in society to have infrastructures in place for multi-sectoral responses to devastations if and when they occur. The threat of terrorist incidents is a relatively new challenge that theoretically requires a number of the same considerations as other large scale threats (for example: war, natural disasters, and severe weather). Because there is a prospect that terrorist incidents could result in mass casualties or devastation to socioeconomic functioning, such threats do need monitoring, surveillance, and rapid response. Currently, new policy measures and military activities have taken steps towards responding to the threat of terrorism. While such steps are proactive, I have many concerns with the breadth and depth of our approaches. Most importantly, I am of the mind that this should be one of our lesser concerns in terms of potentially devastating threats. While on the agenda, disease outbreaks and natural disasters receive less public attention than terrorism and may in reality pose more of a threat to American citizens.
As is the case for other threats, public awareness is one way to better response capabilities within the population. As a basic example, educating individuals what to do if an earthquake is felt, and what provisions to have within the home have increased earthquake preparedness. But what has been the benefit of widespread public attention to terrorist threats? Politicians’ image is developed as our protectors from terrorism and the media cashes in, but what other (and whose) interests are served? Are we as individuals better off due to the media exposure, for example?
***With tremendous public awareness about terrorism, are we more prepared if something happens, or has a culture of fear pervaded our society? ***
I will close this week’s blog by encouraging you to watch a hilarious 16 second clip entitled “fear of terrorism.” Cheers.
2 comments:
David, very interesting. I hold out hope that our politicians will return to engendering hope rather than fear. Its true that we should focus on preparing for the next great (and inevitable) natural disaster, but we still live in an era where we fear attacks. That being said, Im hopeful that we will move beyond this (Perhaps January 21 2009?) and the world will return to moderate level of normalcy. Until that time, it is up to us, as future leaders, to shift our focus onto these more pressing matters.
That clip is very funny David, but I agree, we are not much closer to having a coordinated response then we were on 9/10/01. This administration is so deeply involved in trying to cover up their screw ups and running a public relations campaign instead of the country, so the fear mongering was an effective tool to keep us in line, but the tide has been changing for a while now, but I digress.
Meanwhile, despite the billions of dollars of bioterrorism money coming from Homeland Security, the police, fire, and other first responders still don't have coordinated communication systems or proper chain of command protocols, not to mention the absence of PH from the discourse and planning. It's been 5 and half years since 9/11 and we've spent most of that time distracting ourselves with idle pursuits. I think if politicking can be put aside for a moment (and really can it ever?) we can get a lot accomplished.
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