Terrorism Fears? Or Terrorism Hopes?

When I was in high school, I wrote a screenplay satirizing The X-Files. My Fox Mulder character, steadfast in his belief that we have been visited by aliens and so desperate to find evidence of this extraterrestrial life, convinced himself that a pool of water developing under a couple's bed was in fact an alien organism. Pure logic and common sense couldn't convince him otherwise. The rational explanation was repeatedly ignored because it wasn't the answer he was looking for.

Fast forward to two days ago. Boston's homeland security apparatus, desperate to justify its own existence, turned a youth-oriented guerilla marketing campaign into a full-blown terrorism scare. They confused an oversized Lite-Brite display of a cartoon character, fueled by four "D" cell batteries, with an improvised explosive device. The fearmongers in our government, not to mention the media goons who feed on public hysteria, seemed incredibly happy that they had discovered unmistakeable proof that Boston was indeed the North American equivalent of Baghdad.

To their complete disappointment, the massive traffic shutdowns, paramilitary operations, and political posturing turned out to be much ado about nothing. Two stoner kids are being charged with planting a hoax device -- a charge that won't even stand up in court, given the required element that the perpetrator must intend to create a public panic. It's a far cry from the second coming of 9/11 that Fortress America types pray for every day. And I still don't get why the cop who took the display down from the highway support didn't just look at the back of it and, realizing that the key ingredient for an explosive device (namely the explosive) was absent, call the whole scare off. On second thought, perhaps I do, considering that these are the same people who look at a plastic bottle with a clear liquid and automatically conclude it's a solvent to be used to denotate a commercial airliner, rather than harmless, inert water. Any precaution is worthwhile if it reminds us how we're constantly under attack, right?

By the way, I love how the same media that was so thrilled to whip the population of Greater Boston into a terrified frenzy demonstrated how "responsible" they were by blurring the single vertical line of LED's that was supposed to represent the cartoon character's middle finger, lest any highly impressionable children be watching.