Washington's (and the complicit media) obsession with the Christmas Day underpants bomber and the need to not only find blame, but to demand reactions to "make us safe" made me realize that we collectively have become the five year old who needs his parents to scare away the monsters from under his bed at night. How else can you explain the fear behind the Fox poll showing a majority of respondees wanting to waterboard Abdulmutallab?

It's ludicrous to think that there is any system that could offer us *perfect* security. Forcing us to stay seated for the last hour of a flight? What's to say the next bombing attempt won't be during take-off, or even in a crowded terminal prior to boarding? Richard Reed forced us to remove our shoes; will we now have to strip naked, thanks to Abdulmutallab? And how do we enforce this from foreign airports, since Abdulmutallab boarded a flight in Amsterdam? Or maybe it won't be airline-related at all. Lex at Scholars & Rogues:

What i don’t understand is the idea that Americans are entitled to perfect security. Here we are (and for the record, all the troops stationed everywhere in the world are you and i) crashing around the globe and blowing shit up, yet those of us in God’s country should face no threat. And for the most part, we don’t face any threat. Nobody’s bombed any of the weddings i’ve been to over the last few years. I’ve never thought, “I don’t think i should go downtown, because somebody might suicide bomb where i shop.” I’m convinced that the Canadians will launch their plan for world domination any day, by invading the social and evolutionary cul-de-sac of America where i live. But as of yet i have not had to contend with RCAF close air support in the neighborhood.

Still here we are, gripped by fear and willing to submit to whatever the organs say is necessary to protect us.[..]

I’m not being glib nor am i underplaying all those “very real dangers” that we face in the post-9/11 world. I’m saying that if we don’t want to live with the dangers then we might want to stop provoking them. I’m saying that there is no such thing as perfect safety and security; you are going to die someday and you probably won’t go to heaven. And i’m saying that our government consistently overplays any actual threats (and their probability) in order to control us through fear.

The intent of terrorism is, by definition, to terrorize. If we have reached the point where we can no longer have anything on our laps or use the restroom during the last hour of a flight, then the terrorists have succeeded in doing just what they had hoped.

I still have to--on occasion--chase out the scary monsters from under my little one's bed. I do this by mocking them: I've told her that they can't stand the smell of my perfume, because they know I am a ferociously protective mama and much scarier than any of them could hope to be. So I spray a little bit of my cologne around her room and she feels better, knowing that familiar scent will keep the monsters away. I acknowledge the fear, but minimize its importance. I would much rather not have my government be the parent who focuses on the scary monster so much that it becomes bigger and scarier than anything that could fight it.

Is it so difficult to not be treated like a five year old?