Fearing the Wrong Things: Living, And Dying, In Our Culture Of Fear

THE OCCUPATIONAL, SAFETY, and health Administration (OSHA) calculates that approximately fifty eight thousand Americans die every year in work related accidents. Roughly one hundred thousand die annually due to medical malpractice, and sixty five thousand are killed each year by air pollution. About forty thousand dies each year because they lack health insurance, and their illnesses and diseases, left untreated, take their ultimate toll. Also, about forty thousand people are killed in the U.S. in auto accidents, and about a million, or more, are killed worldwide, including a quarter of a million in China alone. Every day, between two hundred and two hundred and fifty Americans die in the U.S. from infections contracted in hospitals.Far more Americans are killed by mainstream medicine than by illicit street drugs. Yet, you never hear about any of this. Instead, you hear about street crime,,, which is actually at its lowest level in decades, you hear a great deal about something called "radical Islamic terrorism",, which is so rarer as to be virtually nonexistent. that is aside from the fact that people who commit acts of terror are not Islamic, nor any other religion, any more than members of the KKK who murder African-Americas are "Christian", though they believe themselves to be of the faith. Not only is American culture a culture of fear, it is a culture of irrational fears; we are, quite simply, afraid of the wrong things. this is because an act of terrorism draws far greater attention, and is far more 'newsworthy", than people slipping and falling in bathtubs and dying from head injuries, another form of death far more prevalent than terrorism. terrorism and violent crime are far more marketable In our attention seeking media than bacteria, or air pollution. As the saying goes: :if it bleeds, it leads". When children are shot and killed at school, which happens about forty five times a year in the United states, everyone turns on the news or social media, and watches the gruesome tragedy, over...and over. But, in truth, far more people slip and fall on uneven sidewalks or in bathtubs than are shot and killed while attending school. We don not, according to tangible, verifiable statistical reality, need a war on terrorism, a was on violent crime, nor do we need to surround our schools with barbed wire and install alarm systems in every classroom. we do need to take better care to keep our hospitals bacteria free, we need to pollute the air less, and we need to install safer bathtubs, because more children drown in bath tubs each year, far more children, than are shot in schools. But if we did all those things, where would we get our fill of sensational headlines?