To be more specific, why is everyone wrapped around the axle over Daesh (ISIS)?
Recent polls show that not only are Republicans unhappy with Obama’s handling of Daesh (there’s a surprise!!), but so are Democrats. The extreme paranoia exhibited by American politicians, pundits, and terrorism “experts” is so overblown as to be ludicrous. Our obsession with terrorism would be justified if Americans were dying in droves at the hands of Daesh, Al-Qaeda, and other international terrorist organizations. But we’re not. Gimme a break, people! Americans are safer today from outside threats than we have been in a long time, maybe ever. The Daesh threat to Americans is miniscule, and the data prove it.
We can predict the most likely ways Americans are going to die in the future, based on the ways Americans have died in the past. There are actual facts and statistics out there that identify the most lethal threats to Americans’ health and well-being. And Daesh isn’t even on the radar.
The CDC publishes mortality data annually with lots of information that shows us exactly what we need to be afraid of. The tables shown at right are derived mostly from the CDC National Vital Statistics Report (NVSR) “Deaths: Final Data for 2013”. (I used 2013 because the data are typical, recent and reasonably complete.) The tables show selected data that illustrate the most common causes of death in the United States that year. In 2013, 2,596,993 Americans died from all causes. Heart disease, cancer, and strokes were the most common causes of death, as they have been for many years. Alzheimer’s and diabetes are not too far behind. And to at least some extent, those are preventable diseases, so there are actually many things that Americans could be doing to prevent those, like stop smoking, get some exercise, stop eating crappy food, lose some weight. Those are the things that are really killing most Americans - why aren’t we up in arms over that?
But, but, ISIS is in the news all the time, aren’t they killing lots of Americans? Shouldn’t we be really afraid? Well, actually, no. In 2013, all domestic and international terrorists killed exactly 16 Americans. Three died in the Boston Marathon bombing, the rest died in overseas attacks. Sixteen Americans. So if you live in the U.S.A., your odds of being killed by a terrorist were (and are still) one in 20 million (16 deaths out of 330 million Americans). And if you didn’t leave the country, your chances improved to one in 110 million. Not much different in the years before or since. Yes, every American death is tragic, and I am as outraged and horrified as anyone by senseless killing, but there are far more dangerous people living within a few miles of your home. And none of them are Daesh terrorists.
Naturally no liberal rant about terrorism would be complete without the de rigeur reference to other senseless gun deaths in America. So yes, let’s look at the table way down below for even more CDC statistics about death in America. In 2013, 16 Americans died from terrorist attacks. Meanwhile in the same year, 33,636 Americans died by non-terrorist-related firearms incidents. More than eleven thousand of those were victims of homicides and more than 21,000 were suicides. 505 shooting deaths were accidental. So why aren’t the Repugs up in arms about guns generally? Why aren’t they serious about protecting Americans from that clear and present danger? Dunno, you tell me. Sixteen deaths a year terrify them, but 33,636, not so much.
And what about the refusal to expand Medicaid? According to one report, Repugnant legislators and governors are directly responsible for the deaths of between 7,115 and 17,104 Americans each year (I’ve included the mean in the chart, the actual number may be higher). If the Repugs are outraged about 16 Americans being killed by ISIS, why aren’t they outraged by the 10,000 Americans being killed each year by Scott Walker, Rick Scott, Paul LePage, and Greg Abbott? Where is the outrage over that?
As usual, we should be appalled at the fear-mongering hypocrisy of the politicians, ideologues, and the talking heads in this country. As the tables show, more people died from TV and appliance tip-overs (based on 2011 data) than from terrorism. Twenty times more people died from appendicitis than from terrorist attacks. Four times as many Americans died from machinery-related carbon monoxide poisoning. And during the same 12-month period, for every single terrorist fatality, more than 200 people STARVED TO DEATH in America.
More than 10,000 Americans likely died at the hands of Republican politicians. And our leaders and our media know it. Yet all we hear about during the debates and on the evening news is ISIS, ISIS!!
JEEBUS!! Cut It OUT!!
I get it, really. I mean a whacko in a pickup waving a machine gun and yelling about killing Americans, that’s visceral and a whole lot scarier than a small tumor growing in an American brain or liver or lung. The whacko sells newspapers and TV time, the tumor, not, and Daesh leaders know that all too well. But the actual probability that a tumor will kill an American is 35,000 times greater than the whacko. Why shouldn’t our response to those threats be commensurate with their magnitude?
OK, so what do we say to people who are worried about foreign savages who want to kill Americans? My response would be: Let’s conduct ourselves in such a way that non-Americans will respect us, not hate us, welcome us, not shun us. Let’s continue to try to educate, feed, and clothe those in tragic circumstances. Let’s embrace our Muslim allies who are also fighting this existential threat, with much greater skin in this game than we Americans have. Let’s stop thinking about the “war on terror” as a war on another culture – it’s not, but that’s how it seems to many on both sides. Let’s always try to put ourselves in the shoes of the oppressed before we try to wipe them out. There will always be haters, let’s not give them ammunition to spread their hate. An approach that makes Americans look like arrogant bullies will just create more terrorists.
We have to show the world that the hatred and vitriol spread by Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, Rush Limbaugh, and Donald Wildmon do not represent American values.
And mostly we have to keep the threats in perspective.
Wednesday, Jan 6, 2016 · 5:12:43 PM +00:00
·
liberaldad2
About the graphic: Many commenters have focused on the graphic at the top of this diary — let me explain. I shamelessly pulled the image from the DKos Public Image Library to illustrate the fear that Americans, especially Republican Americans, have about ISIS. It is not my graphic, and I can no longer find the diary that originally posted it. It is several months old, and some of the information is obsolete. My apologies for not properly referencing the map, especially if you mistakenly believed that I generated it to support this diary.