Phony Baloney

So the New York subway terror threat was a hoax. Even before it was revealed to be untrue, this incident had me thinking about how easy it is to be a terrorist when those you seek to terrorize are so jumpy or paranoid or, say, deliberately kept in a state of perpetual fear for political reasons.

The perpetrator of the “hoax” had only one weapon: his mouth. Yet he successfully “terrorized” one of the largest cities in this country. He could only do so because the fear of what he threatened preexisted and he was given a wider voice by authorities and the media.

Being diligent is one thing but the constant overblown rhetoric, alert codes and phony associations made to terrorists (cough- Iraq -cough) leads to a state of fear that allows the otherwise powerless to terrorize. Those that facilitate this fear seeking political gain (cough- Bush administration -cough) are also terrorists in a general sense or at least facilitators of same.