I really want to keep this journal well away from the political arena, because frankly, I loathe politics. My overall intent here is to comment on the foibles of popular culture.

I couldn’t stay away from this one, though, because it’s driving me nuts. This country is working itself into a bedwetting frenzy over terrorism. What was, last year, a gut reaction to a hideous event has become parody.

American culture has always loved a good fad. What other nation could become so completely obsessed with pet rocks as ours? The fad of the early 2000s, unfortunately, seems to be paranoia. Thanks, I’ll take Hula Hoops. Hell, I’ll even take hunkerin’, which had to be the stupidest fad ever spawned by wasted college students.

I know people who keep a suitcase next to the door filled with a couple of changes of clothes, bottled water and various emergency medicines. They fully expect to have to vacate at a moment’s notice. Now, let’s consider: Two of these people are in Baltimore and two are in Washington. I’m talking downtown, too, not fringes. On any normal day, it takes a good twenty minutes to head for the hills from either city, just to get outside city limits — and forty minutes to an hour during afternoon rush. Add to this equation the fact that, if someone does drop even one plain li’l ol’ conventional bomb at the corner of 14th and F in DC, you’re going to have streets clogged with a zillion frantic people. It would take you three months to get to the city line. Forget the suitcase, folks; just have a shaker of Martinis ready — you’re gonna need ’em.

I also maintain a fatalistic attitude about this whole thing: I, personally, can’t do a thing about it if someone or some country takes a notion to bomb my city. What am I going to do, go out there with a tennis racket and lob the warhead back where it came from? If it happens, it happens and it’s going to happen whether I’ve got a shelter full of inedible hardtack or not.

The terrorist attacks of 2001 were doubtlessly the most frightening attack in American history, primarily because they were the only attacks since the War of 1812 that involved a foreign entity and American civilians. (For reference, our current allies, the British, wreaked havoc on the towns of the Chesapeake in that war.) And certainly they were perpetrated as a function of an unpleasant fact — there are a lot of people out there who don’t necessarily like the United States, no matter how much we pat ourselves on our politically-correct backs. But what is the reality of actual danger? Is there really an Islamic extremist lurking behind every corner? I rather doubt it. The vast majority of people in the Islamic world are just like the vast majority of people here; they’re just trying to make it one day at a time. I doubt they go home every evening and plot against people in Cedar Rapids.

The anti-Islamic paranoia of today is the updated version of Soviet paranoia, circa 1962. Forty years ago, we were all supposed to be quaking in our boots because “the Russians were coming.” In retrospect, that was a somewhat more realistic fear; the Soviet Union was a (more or less) cohesive political entity and it was a (more or less) major power. Our other allies at that point were nations that had been so recently shattered by two horrible wars in succession that they couldn’t say boo to a goose. Hindsight is of course better than foresight; we know now that Russia was struggling to produce enough toilet paper to wipe its collective ass. I don’t think we had too much to fear, after all.

It’s time for us to find a new fad. Paranoia is getting old and it’s making everyone crazy. What this country needs is (I love to hate people who say that) a resurgence in dance marathons. They’re fun, people would learn how to dance again, and we’d all work off the effects of the last ten years of Biggie Size.