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SUSAN ASCHOFFTerrorism. Flu. Hurricanes. Our list of fears grows more weighty each day, however remote the risk. Why can't we all calm down?
The land of the free has become the home of the afraid.
A Lakeland dentist says he's treating many more patients for teeth grinding because of stress.
A Tampa high school principal suspends five students for wearing flags from other countries during Hispanic Heritage month, for fear of trouble.
A senator, citing national security information, closes his Capitol Hill office because he's frightened for his staff's safety.
America the uneasy.
"We've gotten into this unfortunate groove, which I call the culture of fear, in which we get one worry after another," says Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California and author of Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.
This shared sense of dread is primed daily by global tragedy and niggling personal problems.
It is nuclear weapons and uncollected brush. It is brutal beheadings and teaching to the FCAT.
It is political candidates who rail against uninspected cargo containers and aborted fetuses and who appear to want to scare us to the polls. Their audience listens, if only to blot out their inner fretting over bald tires and nonexistent college funds.
"I wish Mr. Kerry were better able to articulate how America is going to get its groove back," writes New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, lamenting the multiple-layered security checks simply to enter a government building.
"Somewhere along the way we've gone over the top and lost our balance."
Our collective distress, many will say, began with the 9/11 attacks. But then we united against a common enemy. Now we are at each other's throats. We are angry, besieged by fear mongerers.
Fear sits on a stack of doormats, waiting in a snaking line for plywood at Home Depot. He is a Bermuda-clad prophet of doom. "Yeah, this one's gonna hit us and it's gonna hit us good. I've already got a generator and 50 gallons of water. You?"
Fear walks a downtown St. Petersburg sidewalk as a police officer confronts protesters. Bystanders wonder if what they thought was peaceful politicking is sinister. Are the marchers dangerous? Is the cop?
Fear forms a 600-deep line outside a St. Petersburg Publix for flu shots after government officials announce this winter's supply will be halved. When told there are only 300 doses, shouting ensues and police are called to keep order.
Those waiting are senior citizens, at greater risk of serious complications from flu, which annually kills more than 36,000 people. Seeking prevention is positive, not panic, right? Every year almost 2.5-million people in the United States die, most from heart problems, cancer and accidents. The I'm-getting-mine rush is out of proportion to the threat, the same unmeasured agitation felt when a gas-pump nozzle is found sheathed in plastic, the tank run dry.
It is only one service station.
It is only the flu. We've been suffering, and living, with flu viruses for centuries.
Be ye not afraid. Wash your hands.
"Because of the mass media, everyone gets worried at the same time. You get tuned to just be looking for worries," says John Paling, research director of the Risk Communication Institute in Gainesville.
A reasonable human being knows his level of fear is unreasonable. The chances of dying of the flu or of a terrorist attack are extremely remote. But the subconscious is busily piling up mongerers' alarms. President Bush asserts that challenger John Kerry cannot protect us from terrorists. If Kerry wins, implies his vice president, you die. Senate candidates Mel Martinez and Betty Castor accuse each other of coddling a terrorist. This is actually frightening, not because of the accused plotter, who has yet to be tried in court, but because of what it says about the people who would lead us.
Candidates are purveying fear the way they used to divvy pork.
No message of hope is to be heard.
"In every recent presidential campaign, the level of fear mongering goes through the ceiling. This has been true since the 1980s," says Glassner. In 1988, Willie Horton made African-Americans scary. In 1992, scary was teen pregnancy.
"A very efficient way to motivate people," Glassner says, "is with fear."
One of the people in a hundreds-deep line for flu shots in New Port Richey is a remarkably calm 80-year-old named Leo Dlugolecki, who survived colon cancer seven years ago and is staying with his daughter after his Punta Gorda home was damaged by Hurricane Charley.
Like Job, he carries on.
"The flu shot," he says, "is insurance."
The insurance of vaccination against illness. D batteries against the darkness. Strong leaders against the evildoers.
School administrators double-checked the locks after a computer disc found in Baghdad contained information about school bus zones in Lee County. Only later did the observation come that the data was easily accessible on the Internet and may simply have been legitimate research.
The threat to school children is not mujahedeen. Rebecca McKinney, a 16-year-old Clearwater High School student forced to dart across a six-lane highway to catch the school bus, was struck by a truck. She died Oct. 10. School policy bans such dangerous stops, but no one made sure that all stops complied.
While we get twitchy worrying that flu's aches and fever will strike, almost 100,000 Florida children are on a waiting list for health insurance, portending a lifetime of compromised wellness.
FBI agents question thousands of Muslims and visit mosques across the country for fear terrorists will strike before Nov. 2. Muslims, beginning their monthlong observance of Ramadan, fear harassment or even detention for questioning in the simple act of going to pray.
Their neighbors, noting the FBI's interest, equate head scarves with bombers.
"Facts are always filtered through the overriding emotions. It reduces people's ability to look at other (facts) so you're no longer scared," Paling says.
A person can decide to be optimistic, to look for hope, to quantify threats, he says.
Take a deep breath. Be fearless.
- Susan Aschoff can be reached at aschoff@sptimes.com or 727 892-2293.