The sun, for starters. Also lightning, choking on a chicken bone, drowning in the bathtub, and people who text and drive. But probably not terrorism.

Source: What to Be Afraid Of

Timothy Egan has I point that has never left my mind since the first World Trade Center bombing… It’s that we really need to put our fears in perspective.

Ashe says in his piece…

So it goes. Life is full of risk. Every day brings a minor calculation with the possibility of mortality: cross the street on red, get on a plane, jog in the heat.

It was encouraging, then, to watch the congressional debate this week over the Patriot Act, and realize that we are learning how to be afraid. At least, we’re starting to put the infinitesimal risk of being killed by a terrorist in perspective.

Yet… will any thing really change? Hasn’t the money gotten too big? Don’t too many have their hands out for their very own piece of that pie?

We’ve spent over a decade militarizing the police… Turning flying into a trial of idiocy… Letting our every word and movement be spied on by our own government,  that it would be almost if not completely impossible to put that genie back in the proverbial bottle.

Too many politicians with too many little bureaucratic fiefdoms to protect to ever rein in this little monetary fiasco…