Safe and Sorry

By Erica Sagrans
Published on November 14, 2007

Anthony Gancarski, writing in CounterPunch, connects highway searches that cause traffic jams, the Bush administration’s justification for bombing Iraq, and how the D.C. sniper is being used as propaganda to support the war against terrorism.

Gancarski has little sympathy for the hyped-up news stories of ‘Sniper on the Loose.’ Instead, he wonders if these newscasters “had never spent time in Southeast D.C., or had never seen two winos beating the hell out of each other…as neither of them looked to have anything left worth protecting.”
The media and the government have instilled a palpable fear in us, Gancarski writes, and he questions what good the news is doing in making people so scared they won’t go to the gas station for fear of getting shot on the way to the pump. Though the sniper incident could be interpreted as a flaw in our nation’s security, it’s instead spun as a justification for why so much protection is needed, just as other recent high-profile crimes have been used to explain why ever-increasing public surveillance is necessary.
–Erica Sagrans
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