Based on this poll from 2012, question 25, 63% of Americans think that “The United States faces greater threats to its security today than it did during the Cold War.”
During the Cold War, the USSR targeted intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) at American cities. FEMA provided a map of American targets and fallout areas. The U.S. had no defense against these weapons. It had its own missiles as a deterrent. Accident, miscalculation, ineptitude, crazy people, imperfect controls or rational calculation all could have triggered a nuclear catastrophe. The risks cannot be calculated, but the high extent of the possible damage suggests that the losses would have been astronomical. Another measure of the risk is that the USSR had an estimated peak of 45,000 nuclear warheads and the U.S. had some 31,000.
I wonder what threats Americans think now exceed those in the Cold War. Terrorism doesn’t even register as a remote threat as compared with any number of risks that occur day in and day out from weather, accident, health, suicide and crime. If the people polled were thinking of terrorists who had suitcase nuclear weapons, that might explain the result on this question; but I think that explanation is implausible. I think that Americans have heard so much about terrorism, concocted plots, airport scares, and encounter the TSA so much in their travels, and were so stunned by 9/11 that these have influenced the polling result. (The Boston Marathon bombing occurred after the poll.) In other words, what really is virtually a non-issue or a minor issue is being kept alive by continual advertising.
In my opinion, the worst threat to Americans is its own government; but I’m certain Americans do not agree. Actually, let me elaborate. Behind this government and linked to it are Americans and their opinions, many of them based on a great deal of ignorance. Americans and their government are a two-way interactive street. The irrational possibilities do not always cancel one another out; instead one or more often wins out. I view the outcomes as going off in irrational directions, without enough of an anchor or mooring in some kind of restraining codes. Therefore, I consider my neighbors and fellow Americans in combination with the government more a threat to Americans (themselves) than anything else.
2:09 pm on December 11, 2014
