More Ze Frank Brilliance (or, More Reasons Why I Am Beginning to Think That George W. Bush is the Number One Enemy in the So-Called "War On Terror.")

I love today's vlog from Ze Frank. Hang in there past "dickweed" and you'll see what I mean. Here are a couple of quotes that I find particularly insightful:

"The strategy of terrorism is to use isolated acts of violence to instill fear and confusion into the population at large. A small number of people can incapacitate a society by leveraging our inability to understand risk. ...This despite the fact that even with the risk of airplane bombings it's still more dangerous to drive your car or smoke cigarettes. ...One way to deal a blow to the effectiveness of terrorism is to deal with the terror itself.

...The governments responsibility is to make sure that fear and terror are not disproportionate to the reality of the situation. Today the President said 'This nation is at war with Islamic facisists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom to hurt our nation.' Generalized statements like this which instill nebulous fear without specific information are exactly in line with the goals of terrorism."

the show with zefrank

By the way, it is this same kind of take on reality that I have been trying to present to people about the city for several years now. If you watch the TV news you'd believe that most black men get a mugshot instead of a senior portrait when they turn 18. Reading between the lines, you'll learn that if you visit certain neighborhoods, you're bound to get shot, robbed, stabbed, or whatever. While it is true that those things happen, there are still a world of probabilities on your side. Most likely, the only thing that will happen is that your heart rate will increase and you will try to stay cool while a few young men cross the street in front of you. Grateful from having returned home from your imagined brush with urban violence, you will tell about your adventure at the water cooler and dinner table, thus perpetuating the cycle of fear. But in reality, all that happened was nothing. You were safe. You got home safe. But you got caught up in the hype and so reality looked a lot different than it was. And because of that, good people like you will stay away from neighborhoods like mine and rob us of the pleasure of your gifts while your neighborhood will stay bland and boring and, so you believe, "safe."

Okay, let me get off this soap box.