maintaining a sense of proportion

i linked the title to an excellent post from Glenn Greenwald's "Unclaimed Territory".
it is much better than what i write here.
oh, well.






keeping an appropriate sense of proportion of things is an essential component for being rational.
and maintaining our rationality is our best weapon against terrorism.
if we are actually fighting terror, or fear, than rationality is perhaps our only weapon.
fear, terror, distorts the scale of risk assessment and can and usually does inflate and deflate risks inappropriately.
the desperate bands of small numbers can have little to no significant impact on the vast herd ... unless they can make the herd harm itself ... can they create enough alarm to cause a stampede? ... can they steal planes to crash into important buildings?
... will this alarm , this fear, this terror cause a stampede?

so, why do we suppose the american people aren't asking why the white house and their minions have been using terror and using the threat of more September 11, 2001 s to scare America into casting aside our individual civil liberties?

in what way exactly does this not help osama bin laden further al qaeda's goals?

i believe we are seeing the proof that we can not fight terror with bombs.

i prefer the stealth swat team units run by sophisticated law enforcement types with international support and cover, and judicial oversight. it is not impossible; it doesn't have to be illegal; it can do more than we are doing now, for much less. apprehension and extraction should be the goals. assignations and torture should be forbidden, of course. we want to put them on trial, okay?

going hyperbolic and making this into the perpetual World War Forever, we need to get a grip and demote these guys from their current vain glorification, mostly by the american bu$h.co warmongers and see these fanatics as the criminals that they are.

we are the big guys. we can even afford to give them their rights.
we do not need to be that afraid of them.
not if we want others to think we are smart.

a stampede is bad enough without these cliffs around here.

we have fundamentalist in christian, islamic, and jewish flavors making way toward fulfilling their scriptural urges for their visions of Apocalypse ... ... unfortunately some of the governments involved have nuclear weapons arsenals ...

our goal should be to apply rationality to abate religious fanaticism.
everybody just calm down.
put down the weapons.
just back away from fascism.
nice and slowly ...