Unless you live in an area which is 90+% Democratic, chances are that you are very safe from violence. The violent crime rate in the US is quite low outside of the inner cities.
But politicians and the press work very hard to make Americans afraid of each other, afraid of guns, afraid of global warming, afraid of terrorists, afraid of their own shadows …. This all plays into the politicians hands.
The biggest dangers most Americans face are driving and sexually transmitted diseases. Americans are more likely to be hit by lightning than by a bullet from an “assault rifle” – but cable new networks work 24×7 to keep people alarmed about things which in no way affect their lives.
Quite obviously, the biggest danger to everyone–both those comfortably well off and those subsisting on the bare minimum–is the too-easy reliance upon unquestioned dogmas, most especially shown in the war between Conservatives and Liberals, Republicans and Democrats–it has driven the Left insane, which is what we are seeing in the Obama “administration” (laughingly called).
Reblogged this on Climate Ponderings.
With 24/7 cable news, every event is greatly overblown. Namely that an isolated event in Boston with two punk brothers is an immediate threat to the entire nation. Also made into a huge political football, with a week of finger pointing from both sides.
I was visiting cousins in the Appalachians this past week, and they spoke of leaving doors unlocked for weeks at a time, while they vacation out of town. They know all of their neighbors, and everyone watches out for one another.
In America, we have a cultural problem in the urban areas, and not a gun problem.
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
H. L. Mencken