Helpless and Frustrated

There is panic and fear, and there is also emotional disengagement. Is there another choice available?

This might get you there better, if I'm thinking of the same article.

Or here

'another possible attack, in Europe, the Arabian Peninsula or the United States'

For decades, conservatives have derided the welfare state, saying that by making it utterly dependent on the government for even the most basic human needs, infantilizes the public, trapping them in perpetual conflictedness with need on the one hand and resentment in the other. The National Security State does the same, though. We can consider this latest spate of news as a cynical ploy on the part of the Bush administration to distract the people from issue X, or a heartbreakingly sincere effort to warn the American public. Either way, we have no choice but to rely on the government for information and security, even as it continually denies it can even provide these things in any meaningful sense.

And there's nothing you can do, either. I can go about your business in blissful ignorance, which is impossible not only given the omnipresence of the media but also my temperment. Or I can go about my life with something vaguely approaching normal, which avoiding the trains during rush hour and staying away from Grand Central and Penn Station and washing your hands after reading the mail* which all might just be a bit silly if some nut flies an airplane into Three Mile Island and renders the Eastern Seabord unihabitable for a long long time. Or I could head for the hills, which is utterly impractical, and anyway, I can't imagine living anything other than a city life.

*Haven't done this since November, mind you.

It's not like the days during the threat of all-out nuclear war, where, even though the stakes were considerably higher, you could march, you could elect lefty leaders and shame the pro-war ones. But there is no shaming a terrorist, especially one you can't see.

Mike, there are an infinite number of hypothetical terror scenarios and the only thing worrying about all of them will do is make you insane.

Ever since 9/11, I have thought that Terry Gilliam's Brazil has in many ways come to life. I can't watch it any more for that reason, but there is a perverse humor to found in considering where and who the terrorists are and what the warnings are all about. Kris is on the money -- the possibilities are endless in terms of considering what could happen, but yet life goes on.

I'm not sure if this is an official warning, so even if there was an attack, you might not have enough information to fully conclude that there was going to be an attack, if there was one... so don't worry, trust the government because it knows, and there's a few months left till the elections.

I assume you're talking about this (the NYTimes link won't work for me)...jolly convenient, eh?

A-apartment bombs? b-bin laden under the b-bedsheets?