| April 7, 2006 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Written
in heavy marker below stop sign: “Being afraid”
At the switch of the century, when clocks around the world blinked from
1999 to 2000, millions of people were prepared for panic.Television, newspapers and websites were filled with warnings. We recall the whole episode with the muted embarrassment of someone who, when they first arrived to Anchorage, stayed away from the Chester Creek bike trail for fear of a grizzly attack. It’s unnecessary to mention the silly acronym. Don’t we all remember that ridiculous scare? So what of our latest “fear?” It’s easy to picture a cluster of television producers gathered in a high-rise office eagerly offering pitches to accelerate the news story: “It does have the romance and suspense of an old Hitchcock movie,” the older man says, leaning over the glass table. “We can sell this as a pandemic, like the Spanish flu,” says another man with a military buzz cut, tapping his mechanical pencil against a coffee cup. “Hee, hee, hee ... everyone who looks up in the sky is going to wonder!” A third man, hunched over, elbows on the glass, paddles his thumbs in folded hands. Years ago, while substitute teaching in a third-grade classroom on a military base, I helped children connect the fable of the “Emperor’s New Clothes” to the war on terror. “Who does that naked guy remind you of? Who is one of the most powerful people in America?” The kids caught on rather quickly. “But who weaves those invisible clothes?” That question was a little harder. The current fear is getting a lot of traction. Like other scares, people are becoming more familiar with the shape of the threat, while unaware of its hollow interior. Like other scares, there are senseless slaughters, economic damage masquerading as human harm, and authorities who overreact. But, when an expert tells you he’s more worried about the drive home, or when you realize the argument has a fatal flaw (as in the case of the current scare, which requires the rare chance of gene mutation before it can become contagious), you begin to be less a victim of media tomfoolery and more conversant in knowledge of the grand “pattern.” To its credit, Time Magazine glamorized a more reliable scare, global burning, with its April 3 headline, “Be worried. Be very worried.” On the cover a polar bear stood at the edge of an ice flow. It’s not that global burning isn’t one of the gravest problems facing the populace (it is) rather, it is Time’s pretended solution that evinces the pattern. Following the main story, an article promised “capitalist tools for cutting CO2” and another, “The greening of Wal-mart,” told how the giant retailer is a model in environmental stewardship. The pattern of fear includes, always, capitalist salvation: pharmaceutical giants spitting out pills to save us from the flu, Homeland Security contractors with fancy plastic gadgets to save us from terrorists, pollution “credits” traded like Wall Street stock to save the Earth. “Without fear and illness, I could never have accomplished all I have,” morose Norwegian painter Edvard Munch said. Bird flu? Cover you cheeks in horror and scream. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in rural Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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March 31, 2006 March 24, 2006 March 17, 2006 March 3, 2006 February 24, 2006 February 17, 2006 February 10, 2006 February 3, 2006 January 27, 2006 January 20, 2006 January 13, 2006 January 6, 2006 December 30, 2005 December 23, 2005 December 16, 2005 December 10, 2005 December 2, 2005 November 25, 2005 November 18, 2005 November 11, 2005 November 4, 2005 October 28, 2005 October 21, 2005 October 14, 2005 October 7, 2005 September 30, 2005 September 23, 2005 September 16, 2005 September 9, 2005 September 2, 2005 August 26, 2005 August 19, 2005 August 12, 2005 August 5, 2005 July 29, 2005 July 22, 2005 July 15, 2005 July 8, 2005 July 1, 2005 June 24, 2005 June 17, 2005 June 10, 2005 June 3, 2005 May 27, 2005 May 20, 2005 May 13, 2005 May 6, 2005 April 29, 2005 April 21, 2005 |
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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