State of Fear

Normally I am not someone who is too susceptible to manipulation or succumbing to irrational fears, like when George Bush JR. repeatedly used fear to win a 2nd presidential term. By constantly throwing out the word terrorism in every single speech again and again, playing off the public's fears and in some cases stupidity. But irregardless of my personal resolve not to be a fearful person susceptible to manipulation, all of the media's prolonged threat of terrorism attack talk does seem have had an impact upon myself. Whether I wanted it to or not.

Case in point I was taking the bus awhile ago to school, and noticed a middle eastern gentleman almost lovingly carrying what looked like a cake box wrapped in some sort of cloth material. Which I thought was rather strange since you do not normally see anyone carrying around cake boxes covered in cloth material. Plus I couldn't help but focus on the strange way that he kept caressing the box, as if he was worried about the contents in the box itself. By this point my imagination started to run a little rampant and I actually got off the bus way before my stop and decided to wait for the next one just to be safe. Something I have never every done in my entire life, and when the bus went it's way and didn't blow up, I felt incredibly foolish for my actions. As there was no real reason for me to be so paranoid or fearful of a person, just because he was middle eastern. California had middle eastern people living here way before 911 and it still has them now and always will. Not everyone who is middle eastern is a terrorist or religious extremist, yet my view, or at least my subconscious views have been corrupted by the media to the point that that is exactly how I view them in my mind.


It is something I have always been aware of, and it is something I have always tried to keep under control. As I know it is just conditioning to a certain degree. Like how every time there is a German person in an American TV show or movie, there is always some sort of Hitler or Nazi reference. To such a degree that every time I heard anyone speak German, no matter what they said, I was always thinking of Hitler and/or Nazis in my head. This only went away after I moved to Austria and lived there and actually learned to speak German myself. So I know it is the same thing for me and others when it comes to middle eastern people. For every time they are also in an American TV show or movie, they are portrayed as religious extremists or terrorists. Which is obviously not true, as you can't blanketly label an entire people in such a derogatory fashion. Still the damage has been done, and if I am so acutely aware of the problem and make conscious strides to correct or at least control it, I can only imagine how much worse it is for other people from less enlightened states as it were. States with higher percentages of citizens lacking in intelligence, willpower, education, cultural sensitivity or mental reserve. Which I know sounds really pompous, but California does have it a lot better than most of the United States, and we do not have some of the less intelligent or less forward thinking people that some of the other states are saddled with ( Feel free to comment, complain or argue about that last comment and we can talk about specific states later on). Yet people still make mistakes and jump to conclusions, just like I did and it's shameful to say the least.