Calculating the Fear Quotient

A story about the Lucas – Davis Congressional Race in Northern Kentucky had this bit of information.

“The Center for Immigration Studies asked voters nationally and in 10 battleground districts with tight congressional races what issues loom large as they decide which candidates to support Nov. 7. In the 4th District, immigration ranks third, behind "Iraq/terrorism" and "health care/prescription drugs."

Thirteen percent of district voters surveyed said it is their most important issue, and an additional 44 percent said it was one of their top three issues.

An additional 31 percent said immigration was important, but not in their top three. Only 10 percent said it wasn't important at all.

Taxes, education, moral issues, jobs/economy and taxes ranked below immigration.”

The Republican mastery of the politics of fear and lack of reasoning is evident in this conservative district. Let us only consider Iraq and Terrorists for a moment.

On September 11, 2001 terrorists killed 2,973 people. As of October 2006, 2,740 Americans have been killed in Iraq. And we won’t even talk about the Lancet report on civilian casualties published in October 2004: “Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100 000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.”

And let’s also look at what is happening at home during the same time period.

According to the Center for Disease Control fire arm deaths claimed 89,951 lives in the United States during 2001-2003.

Strictly from a body count perspective we shouldn’t be afraid of terrorists.

Perhaps we should be afraid of George Bush, he is getting close to, and will probably exceed, causing as many American deaths as Osama Bin Laden.

Or perhaps we should be afraid of the NRA. I wonder how many Americans would be alive if Congress had the guts to go against the NRA and we had spent $500,000,000,000 on gun control and had not spent it on invading Iraq.

But doing math is not a strong point in American education, particularly when it concerns body counts, but that’s a rant for another time.