I've been looking at this as a couch potato. Safe in his safe European home. Now that there is another view, I can go back to my media studies, and re-read Folk Devils and Moral Panics.

Lest I forget, this is the age of media. Where words, videos, are spread at hyperspeed. As a person who consumes this stuff, who waits for the next outrage, I've yet to understand my motives. Is it soap opera, or the reality outside my front door? If 'we' as a society could answer that, honestly, then perhaps, just maybe, we could focus on the important shit in our lives—the reality outside our door. This is not to say we turn our attention away from the horrors, but we could give them less import, less TV coverage. And this will cool the terrorists ardour for publicity. They simply would not be getting airplay. Their voices wouldn't be heard, not in that way.

But this is why 9/11 happened. Wake up! They shouted. They weren't being heard any other way. Could there be another way for us to listen? Or are we too interested in soap and our navels?

There has to be another way. Lest our politicians react to our fears by more invasions of more countries as knee jerks to our misplaced, lavish fears.