I almost missed this story. I only found out about it from a New York magazine piece linked on
Longform.
There was a mass panic at New York’s JFK
airport last week which led to stampedes in Terminal 8. It appears to have been instigated by waiting
passengers cheering Usain Bolt’s Olympic gold medal win in the 100-meter
dash. Their applause echoed in the
terminal, which sounded like gunfire to people further down.
When a woman reportedly shouted that she saw
a gun, passengers began running for their lives. In their panic some dropped objects such as
their phones; the resulting clatters sounded like more gunfire. One group ran out a door and onto the tarmac
outside. Another hid in an unused jet
bridge. TSA workers at one inspection
line fled their posts. Misinformation
and panic were undoubtedly amplified by flurries of texts and tweets.
It took several hours for Port Authority
police to restore order and for normal operations in Terminal 8 to resume. Other terminals had been evacuated, adding to
the confusion. And yet, hours after the
incident happened, news outlets had moved on to other stories, which is why I
learned of it via Longform.
It’s a sign of the times. Elements of story were all too familiar. When a terrified woman in a hijab, separated
from her family by the unreasoning herd fleeing for safety, cried out in fear and
reached out her arms to her child it caused one gaggle of passengers to erupt
in a renewed paroxysm of panic. Because
everybody knows all Muslims are terrorists, all of them. I'm a bit surprised that the Second Amendment crowd didn't take to the airwaves afterwards claiming the stampede was still another reason we need an armed public (even though anyone with the merest shred of sanity would see it as still another reason why an armed public would be a terrible idea). Considering that the incident took place in NYC, I'm even more surprised that Donald Trump didn't tweet or soundbite about how we have to restrict Muslim immigration to the United States.
I can only imagine what would have happened if
the panic had occurred in Texas, let’s say, rather than cosmopolitan,
multicultural New York City. The mom in the
hijab might well have been set upon by the crowd, perhaps thinking themselves
the earthbound equivalent of the heroic passengers of Flight 93. Incidents like these make me want to
barricade myself in my house with a month’s supply of essentials not to venture
out unless absolutely necessary. Not
from fear of Middle Eastern terrorists, but from fear of my own people whenever
I venture out in public.
We are a greedy, superstitious, and paranoid
lot sorely lacking in self-awareness.
Once I was asked by a Canadian acquaintance to describe my compatriots
in a single word, completing the sentence “An American is ___________.” With scarcely a thought I replied, “Oblivious.” And in few areas are my people more oblivious
than in their understanding of the world.
Nearly fifteen years since 9/11 and the
declaration of a Global War on Terror, after two disastrous incursions into the
Muslim world with a third in progress, we live perpetually on edge. Despite this we still believe that despite
our hostility toward whole faiths and entire peoples we will someday succeed in making ourselves absolutely safe. This is a false
hope. Even if we prevail against
Islamist terrorism, we will still experience acts of terror by perpetrators with
different motives. Terrorism is a
political tactic, and it is as old as politics itself.
So why do we still cling to the delusion we
can one day be safe for good?
One reason is the emergence of security
theater since the September 11th attacks. Aside from the Boston Marathon bombings there
haven’t been any major incidents involving a non-firearm mass casualty device in the
U.S. since 2001. Notwithstanding this we’re constantly on
edge. It was understandably worse in the
first years following 9/11. Eight weeks
after the attacks on New York and Washington, an American Airlines flight departing
JFK crashed in Queens shortly after takeoff.
While the cause was later found to be rudder failure brought on by an
overreaction by the pilot to wake turbulence, media speculation immediately centered
on terrorism. (It didn’t help that a
Palestinian militant group claimed credit for the crash immediately afterward.)
The 2001 anthrax attacks took place around
the same time. Letters containing
anthrax spores were mailed to the offices of two U.S. Senators and several news
outlets killing five people and sickening 17 others. (It would be nearly a decade before it became
known that a researcher at Fort Detrick, Maryland, was responsible and that his
motives were personal.) Throughout the
fall of ’01 and into the following year the media ran stories of people trying
to obtain military gas masks and creating so-called “safe rooms” in their
homes. At one point I read an article on
this topic in which the quoted expert’s sole credential was that she had been a
producer of the 1995 film Outbreak,
which portrayed a fictional epidemic caused by a military bioweapon.
It was in this atmosphere that Congress and
the Bush administration created that bureaucratic Frankenstein’s monster known
as the Department of Homeland Security. A
mishmash of formerly independent executive branch agencies and agencies
formerly belonging to other cabinet departments, DHS is a model of bureaucratic
inertia. (One need only consider FEMA’s
response to Hurricane Katrina to recognize this.) It is also a font of questionable policies,
particularly in the arena of air travel.
Remember the color codes? You know, the ones depicting the terrorist
threat levels. It was called the
Homeland Security Advisory System. There
were five levels, running from Low Risk (green) all the way to Severe
(red). We were only at red once for a
few weeks in 2006, and it only applied to incoming flights from the UK. The level reached High (orange) several times
between 2002 and 2004 though never again on a general basis after that. (There were a few partial oranges after
that.) The default state, as the
advisory at the airport’s entrance would inform travelers most days prior to
the demise of the advisory system in 2011, was Elevated (yellow). Never during the system’s existence was the
country ever at Guarded (blue) or Low Risk status.
I don’t think anyone really knew exactly what
any of these states actually meant. In
fact, that’s why the system was eventually abandoned. It was just a meaningless way to reassure an
anxious public. Fox News Channel, which
practically held itself out as an arm of the government during the War on
Terror’s first years, was the color system’s most assertive proponent,
ostentatiously displaying the day’s threat level at the bottom of the screen
just above the crawl and near the FNC hologram superimposed over the American
flag in the lower right corner. (My
antipathy toward Fox hardened into its present state in those days.)
The climate of fear simmers in the background
of our lives, stoked by a cynical desire for ratings on the part of major news
outlets, only to boil over suddenly into mindless fright. That is what I find intriguing about the
American character. We love to beat our
chests, hold our index fingers aloft and proclaim, “We’re Number One,” and moronically
chant “USA! USA!” (This last was a fixture
on The Jerry Springer Show, often chanted
by the studio audience whenever the menagerie of cretins guesting on the
program that day would suddenly erupt into violence.) Yet
when danger approaches we scatter blindly and helplessly.
It doesn't help that Americans seem to suffer, individually and collectively, from the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's especially strong in conservatives. Registering Republican apparently makes one an automatic expert on national security even when the person is an insurance salesman or dentist who never served with the armed forces or been part of an intelligence agency. Believing we are in the loop, that we are active participants in this epic struggle against the terrorists and other boogeymen who lurk in the shadows reinforces our sense of control. Again, this is particularly the case with xenophobic conservatives who already have strong authoritarian tendencies.
In some respects the tenor of the War on
Terror’s beginnings remains. “Security
moms” are a quotidian feature of American life in 2016 in the way “cocooning”
at home with the family and driving them around in an SUV to ensure their
safety were in the early 2000s. We
idolize Navy SEALS the way we did first responders a decade ago. We still tear up and sing along with Lee
Greenwood. And still we are as skittish
as a kindergartner on her first day of school.
Just watch the news coverage of the JFK
incident if you don’t believe me.
© 2016 The Unassuming Scholar
