because every night when I close my eyes, a terrorist attack is just about last on my list.
It's not because I'm blind or stupid or unpatriotic, but because I can add, multiply, divide and subtract.
We have 160,000 troops in Iraq because 2978 people were killed over six years ago by people from a different country than the one we are fighting in. And if you were paying attention, 2978 people were killed in automobile accidents in roughly three weeks after September 11, 2001.
And another three weeks later we did it again. And we've killed that many every three weeks since - that's 40,000 people per year for six and a half years and we have people who won't wear a seatbelt even if we make it law.
My reason for bringing this up now is below the fold.
I love drag racing; not because I like to see who gets to the line first, but the physics involved in an NHRA top fuel dragster or funny car is so mind bogglingly incomprehensible, I just like the sensory overload. I like to be in a place where, when the throttle blades go to horizontal and that supercharger starts to suck a house-full of air into an engine with only 500 cubic inches in it every second and trade it for flames seven feet tall that you can see in daylight, you know you're alive. You can take a deep breath and scream for everything you can muster and you can't hear yourself even in your own head. God's own Dustbuster isn't that loud.
And this year I was ready when the first race of the year came around. There were tragedies last year; Eric Medlen was killed in a testing accident, and John Force has had to endure three months of therapy to mend broken bones in his legs and find the courage to get back inside the monster that did it to him after the parachutes literally pulled his car in two at about 290 miles per hour. Now he's back in jaws of the same monster 16 times in a weekend while you and I are out drinking beer and watching him do it.
Here's an example of a bad day for an NHRA funny car. Watch the red car on the right, and yes, he walked away with only second degree burns on his hands. John Force is in the other lane, and ran the car into the sand trap after being distracted by the explosion when he forgot to pull the parachutes.
Doug Herbert also races Top Fuel dragster and makes his living at 335 miles an hour; 1320 feet in less than four and a half seconds. That's a football field in less than a second from a standing start. 0-60 in a little over half a second. In only 1/8 of a mile, they have exceeded the takeoff speed of a commercial airliner. They would beat an F-14 Tomcat launched from the deck of a carrier, and even the Space Shuttle doesn't reach their G-forces until it's been in the air over a minute. Just to slow the car down after they cross the finish line, the parachutes throw them against the seatbelts with 5 g's - I weight 220, and that's 1100 pounds.
Doug Herbert lost both his sons, age 14 and age 17, not in a race but while they were on their way to McDonalds near Charlotte, North Carolina after the older brother tried to pass on a two-lane highway and hit a vehicle head-on. A guy who risks his life every 90 minutes when he is at the track doing something so rediculously lethal is still alive, and his two kids are dead after doing something that every one of us does at least once a day without a second thought. I admire Doug Herbert, because in the grief and incomprehensible loss that he must feel, he has used the tragedy to actually make people aware how their own personal decisions and attention are more important than so many realize.
We invest much in irrational fear of terrorist attacks, and we ignore the lethal reality of our most mundane daily activities.
And I have a neighbor across the street who is a guy I admire. You've read about him in many of my diaries and comments, and you can look them up to learn more. But he lives the American dream; he runs a family business with his brother and father, he works easily 80 hours a week chasing wrinkled dollar bills with a vending machine buisness. And he is a stalwart believer in everything conservative, and everything terror.
I spent two hours with him yesterday; and he is still convinced that if the troops leave Iraq that an armada of Al Queda ships will somehow cross the seven seas to arrive on our shores; air forces of Al Queda planes will strafe our cities, and tanks made by Osama Bin laden will roll through the streets of Anytown, USA escorting troop carriers filled with jihadists carrying shoulder fired rockets. Of course he doesn't believe that, but he somehow still repeats the lie that if we don't fight them there (Iraq) we'll have to fight them here.
He believes that Afghanistan was a victory, and all is well there.
He believes that Mission Accomplished was a true statement.
He believes that there are still WMD's somewhere. (buried in the sand, don't you know). Everyone - all other countries knew there were WMD - so Bush and Cheney and Wolfowitz and Feith did not lie.
He doesn't know who Joe and Valerie Wilson are, but he knows Scooter Libby deserved a pardon.
He believes that Bill Clinton is responsible for abortions, not just because as a Democrat Clinton supports choice, but because Clinton inspired the sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility of the younger generations by his example. (Reagan and Bush's taught kids to wait until they were married, and that is working). This conviction he will not be persuaded from.
My neighbor believes that there are more trees on earth now than ever before, because he says that during his travels in his box truck over the roads of Pennsylvania, he sees more trees than there were years ago. (don't ask me to explain this one, I argued for an hour and it only got worse)
My neighbor believes that global warming is a hoax, engineered by liberal scientists taught by liberal professors at liberal universities so that liberal tax-and-spend idealists can break the economy by forcing companies to go bankrupt trying to comply with pointless government regulations that will make liberals rich through higher taxes. (?)
And this just goes on.
My neighbor believes that Al Gore single handedly destroyed the idea of a free and fair election anywhere in the world because he contested Florida in 2000. If Gore had the integrity to respect the system we have in place in this country, then the rest of the country (and by extension the countries we have transplanted democracy to) would also believe all elections are fair. But no, only because Gore challenged the system, all the world has lost confidence in legitimate elections.
Try to tell him that the reason the name of the case in the Supreme Court is called "Bush v. Gore" because the plaintiff - the one who sues - is always named first, and he shrugs. It's still all Al Gore's fault.
He's afraid he'll die at the hands of an Al Queda terrorist, but won't wear a seat belt when he drives the truck. Statistically, his odds of dying in the truck are about one in 300 every day he goes on a route, about 1 in 420,000,000,000 from a terrorist attack. In order to even these out, he thinks the only problem with Gitmo is that it's not big enough and filled with more people, and that Jose Padilla represents nothing that need concern him. My neighbor has nothing to hide, so he cares not at all what the government knows about him without his consent or regard for the fourth amendment.
My heart aches for Doug Herbert, a man living on the edge who never thought the two most precious things in his life would be taken away for want of a Big Mac; something that happens roughly 280 times every day in this country but hardly raises an eyebrow. And my brain aches for men like my neighbor who still thinks the war on terror is saving countless lives, and will volunteer our troops to chase a phantom in the desert forever, but won't even buckle the one free safety device that would decrease the chance of his fatality by a factor of 5.
The United States of America may indeed be a great country, but it's filled with many people who are great examples of irrational fear and galactic stupidity.
I'm going to Washington on Wednesday, March 19, to prove to myself I'm not one of them.
Watch me get killed on the highway on the trip down or back...