Off to IMHO.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
I wish it would hurry up and happen already. While having nothing happen would be ideal, we’d all just keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. So I’d like something small and embarrassingly unsuccessful to happen, with a lot of easy trails back to the perpetrators. Something that shows that the terrorists are actually pretty stupid, and that what they accomplished on 9/11 was utter luck and a real fluke.
Not worried in the slightest.
We Americans are a fickle bunch with the attention span of a gnat. I hate to say it, but I believe that Americans are going to loose interest in this whole enterprise in about six months.
I work for a US government agency in the DC area, and we get our mail (or used to, anyway) from the facility where the two postal workers worked, who died of anthrax.
The mailrooms and the mail workers here have been tested. The workers have all tested negative for anthrax, and we ought to know, in a day or two, whether spores turned up in the mailrooms. I expect other US government agencies are going through the same drill.
Despite being a lot closer to a potential source of anthrax risk, I feel pretty much the same as techie: I’m much more likely to get killed in a traffic accident. I’ll remain attentive to what’s going on locally, but other than that, there really isn’t anything else to be done.
Worrying isn’t going to change anything, and I’ve never been prone to worrying about things I can’t affect in any way. So while the anthrax threat puts a little cloud over things, it doesn’t affect me or what I do in any tangible ways. In a week and a half, I’ll be in Hawaii, as planned months ago, and I plan to completely forget about the news while I’m there.
Well, I work about a block from the Pentagon. We have been evacuated about every three days or so. It is actually starting to seem normal. There have been so many false alarms and high alerts, then nothing. For the first month no jokes went around. We were serious (as should be), but now those of us who rely on our sense of humor to get us through times of stress are bouncing back with all sorts of parodies and tasteless jokes. I myself spent the last week working on my Halloween costume. Tonight I am going to my favorite karaoke place for the yearly costume contest. I am Lady Liberty. (It’s really hard to make that crown out construction paper and cardboard) I cut out a picture of Bin Laden and put it in the flames of my torch. I will proceed to sing many silly songs dedicated to Osama. My opener will be “Short Dick Man” (Don’t want no short dick man, eenie weenie shriveled little short dick man). I am out to amuse myself and hopefully a few others. Scared? No. My humor may be tasteless, but I need a good laugh. Life goes on, we are united. It’ll take a lot more then what I’ve already seen. I tend to think we’ve seen the best (worst) of what Bin Laden can do and yes it hurt, it was horrible, but we’re shaking it off and coming for our vengeance. I am worried that the people will lose interest in this and forget why we are doing what we are. That’s my fear, that we will leave things unfinished and give that rat bastard time to regroup and come at us again. I watched the plane fly into the Pentagon, I want the guy who orchestrated that to pay for it. I am mad, mad enough that every time I hear heightened alert, I want to stand in the middle of the road and yell “Bring it on M.F.” That which does not kill us makes us stronger, we found our strength, and we are gearing up to come for you. Osama should be the scared party here.
I saw this on the BBC (late at night on PBS here in the US) as well – U.S. TERRIFIED! – and thought “We are?”
I’m not worried. Part of it is geographical distance – like a surprising number of other posters in this thread, I’m in Seattle, and Anthrax in particular is mercifully far away. (Though certainly I realize we might hypothetically be a target of terrorism; we have been in the past.)
Part of it is fatalism/perversity – the “Come and get us, you son of a bitch” mentality mentioned above.
But mostly I think it’s a lack of information indicating I should be scared. The threats have been nebulous and nonspecific: “Someone, somewhere might be a target of a terrorist attack in the near future.” Well, no shit. What are we supposed to do with such a “warning”? It’s useless. So since there’s no sense in worrying over it, I don’t.
Nope, I’m not taking any precautions outside the common-sense ones. Here’s the kicker, though:
I live one block from the Pentagon. I work in Dupont Circle, which is not really near anything worth bombing. However, my wife works one block from the White House. We both take Metro every day to work. I’ll be a Foreign Service Officer as of April, in the Main State facility before my first overseas posting. Before then, we’re planning to take about five trips by plane.
Despite all this, I’m not particularly worried. My wife is a little edgy, but that’s understandable given the circumstances. I’m just not worried. Probably because I’ve been saying for seven years that the US is long overdue for a terrorist attack. The last time I brought that up in conversation, unfortunately, was the evening of September 10.That’ll larn me to make predictions.
I’m in Chicago, and I have to admit during and right after the attacks was the most scary… not now however. Precautions are being taken and even if something does happen, it could happen anywhere at anytime. There is no real way to protect yourself. Just go about living your life normally and if I do happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time… I just wanna go quickly.
The reason I heard from the top dog at the Office of Homeland Security of why they told of this possible threat is that they wanted police and security people to be more alert. This does not mean for me to be scared. I cannot live my life waiting for the other shoe to drop.
One thing I have notice, we Americans have a weird sense of humor. This gets us through alot of rough patches. Plus we are mad, a burning anger that says–“come get us, you WILL regret it. We are not going to let you get to us, we are not going to let you control us, you are not going to frighten us.”
Anthrax isn’t contagious at all, since it is caused by a bacterium. Only diseases caused by viruses are contagious.
Jodi and Techchick68, you gals should not be too complacent, living far away from the Anthrax action, as it has been shown that the viruses can permeate through an envelope. That being the case, no one is safe, with the spores scattered throughout mailrooms throughout the USA, and onto envelopes delivered throughout the USA. A scary thought. So follow advice and be careful with the mail.
Northern California here, and no I’m not obsessing nor have I altered my lifestyle in any way. As someone posted earlier, the earthquake threat is always a possibility but how could I possibly live my life if I worried about it constantly? There’s a good article in salon.com today that discusses the meaningless of Ashcroft’s warning about a new attack between the time of his speech and Friday night.
Quote:
“Here in California, we’re used to living on the precipice of disaster that strikes without warning. We know earthquakes can happen at any time. Most of us have a pretty good idea what to do when they do. Our public officials could send out a warning every few weeks saying, “Californians! Be on the alert soon for a deadly earthquake!” – but it would be stupid, since we don’t know exactly when or where to expect the cataclysm. At first, such random warnings would only increase the prevailing level of confusion and dread; eventually, people would stop taking them seriously, stop trusting their government’s alerts and stop worrying about the threat – which, unfortunately, is not going away.”
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/10/30/alert/index.html
We Americans are a hearty and sometimes clueless bunch, and there are far more of us who feel and react as I have than are out buying ineffective gas masks. If I were one of the posters who lives by or works in the Pentagon, I’d feel less safe, but as with those of us in the earthquake zones, those people have always been on alert.
Right now my biggest concern is who gets kicked off “Survivor” tomorrow night.
barbitu8:
Surely you don’t think that people do not catch bacterial infections from other infected people?
I don’t think I’m being complacent; I think I’m being realistic. In the absence of a credible threat, there is no reason to imagine that I or my work place am (is) personally the target of terrorism. In other words, when I have reason to break a sweat, I will. Since I don’t, I don’t. That is not complacency, which implies inaction despite a credible threat. There being no credible threat, at least not yet, simply going about my business is IMO the appropriate response.
That link is not helpful. Yes I think that people do not catch bacterial infections from others. Please name one that is so transmissible, or in the alternative, give me a link that supports your contention.
I would be lying if I said I wasn’t slightly nervous, sometimes. In particular, I’ve noticed that I get overly anxious on the subway whenever there is a minor delay. This is probably because I was stuck in a subway car for most of the WTC attack, but it annoys me to no end that my sang is obviously not froid enough. That said, I’m still taking the subway back and forth to work each day, so I’m not nervous enough to actually change my routine.
Over all though, I think that most people are being stoic, partly because Americans are brave (it’s the home of brave, dontcha know) and partly because there isn’t much else we can do in the meantime. A person could go crazy trying to predict whether a plane is more likely to drop on their office or their home. An office would be a more likely target, but what if the terrorists aren’t very good at flying, and they miss the office and hit your home instead? You can play that game all day, or you can go about your business.
AHunter3, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head pretty well, although I would further distance myself writing in a public place about the tactical creativity of the attack. I in fact think that Mohammed Atta was the real mastermind (supported by OBL) and that we are fortunate he is gone.
It is one thing to be poor, cold and hungary, or rich, powerless and disaffected (as OBL’s case is), and another to kill people on the other side of the globe over it. They have picked a war where there only advantage is that the cause (which is apparently to start WWIII between the world’s major religions) also happens to be their hobby. All told there are 15,000 of them hard core and many untrained, undisciplined and disruptive malcontents to recruit, but it looks to me that they cannot possibly win unless their goal is only to die for their cause.
Are you saying that anthrax is both a bacteria and a virus? Or is this a typo of sorts? 
A couple of diseases caused by bacteria that are considered contagious:
Strep thoat
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/groupastreptococcal_g.htm
Meningitis
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/meningococcal_g.htm
E. Coli
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dbmd/diseaseinfo/escherichiacoli_g.htm
Bubonic plague is caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, and I do believe that it is contagious.
Another vote for “whatcha gonna do?” (AAVE for sang-froid). I don’t get scared when confronted with reminders and threats. I get angry.
There are scared people around here (NY). But to most of us who are just going around like normal, the mask wearing, non-subway riding, wanna move to Podunk types seem a little. . .irrational.
Sorry to hijack, but you’ve reminded me of a joke.
Three Frenchmen are discussing the concept of sang-froid. The first says that a man who walks into his bedroom to find his wife having sex with another man that doesn’t get angry has sang-froid.
The second says that sang-froid is not just a lack of emotion, but the ability to continue normally in abnormal coditions. He expands on the example, saying that if the husband were to say, “Sorry to interrupt, please continue.” he would be showing sang-froid.
The third one says that sang-froid is even more than being polite in an awkward situation. It is the ability to ignore the awkwardness entirely. If the husband walked in on his wife in bed with another man and said, “Sorry to interrupt, please continue.” and the man in the bed did continue, he would have sang-froid.