Fear Itself
Many articles that are meant to be “sensational” really just convey facts that play on many of our mostly irrational fears or the “gut” reaction described beautifully by author Daniel Gardner in his book The Science of Fear. These articles attempt to grab your “gut” long before providing more rational data (i.e. boring stuff) to your “head” that counters that fear they hope to exploit.
I’ll try to identify the “irrational” fear and please note that some of the fears may be somewhat rational until you look at other risk factors. You’ll have to decide whether the media just wants to attract consumers or have a real political agenda. I’ll opine – you decide.
ANNAPOLIS — Maryland lawmakers will debate today an increase in the sales tax on alcoholic beverages and how to subsidize troubled horse racing tracks as the General Assembly pushes toward midnight adjournment. [It is extremely interesting that the Maryland elected officials are looking to tax citizen who prefer to imbibe while at the same time give money to (although “subsidize” sounds much better) folks who run another “sin tax” operation leaving little doubt who has better lobbyists.]
I don’t know if you saw the suspense movie, When A Stranger Calls, but when the police made this call to the young lady in the house, chills went up my spine. The stalker was actually inside the house where everybody assumed that she was safe. Where we all think we are safe.
provides a direct insight into the substitution of common sense for bureaucracy in America. Common sense and responsibility is replaced with tens of thousands of pages of rules that promote inaction rather than progress. Having worked for many years in government I can attest to the ability of civil servants to skillfully avoid decisions contrary to the letter of the regulation even though they make complete sense.