TK, what do you mean?

Sure, I feel a bit vulnerable if my car breaks down and I risk being hit by a passing motorist or victimized by an opportunistic predator. But I know it’s not even remotely like the danger your buddy faces. *I KNOW this.* And I am profoundly grateful that my risk is remote. I’m also grateful that in November, when I vote, I’ll be 99% sure that no one will be shooting at me.

I honestly wish that everyone in the world could be faced with the same threat level I face. I know this.

What I don’t know is what the hell you mean by your post and your question. Please tell me.

Funny, I don’t find myself thinking anything like that when I go for a drive in my car, do you?

Well, I’m not. Would you like me to stop experiencing freedom until I have actually been there? If that’s not what you meant, what *do* you mean?

HEADLINE: Iraq Comments Provoke Conservative Outrage
Sept. 10, 2004

Conservatives across America today expressed outrage today at comments made by [Mike Moore/John Kerry/Hillary Clinton/some other prominent liberal] as the 1000th US fatality looms in Iraq.

“Statistically speaking, one is more likely to die in a car accident than in Iraq”, the [liberal scumbag] is reported to told a rally of supporters, “In fact, 1000 war deaths are a blessing.”

[The White House/the rest of the usual suspects]described these remarks as “grossly insensitive and an outrageous insult not only to the decent American men and women serving in Iraq, but also to the science of statistics.”

[Mike Moore/whoever] claims his quote about 1000 deaths being “a blessing” have been taken out of context. “I was saying *historically speaking*, a 1000 deaths are blessing, though this qualification seems to have been left out of some news reports”. [Guess which ones?]

Even so, a number of conservative commentators have mocked his claim that driving on the road in the US is more dangerous than Iraq. [Take your pick] was quick to point out if you add up all the highway deaths in the US, and divide that by the population…etc etc

mcnett – there was a long discussion of this on Rivka’s blog, Respectful of Otters a while back, the problem of actual vs perceived risks. It comes up because for one thing, you have people living in dread and then acting in dread, and for another thing, you have people making money decisions. So you have the govt handing out money to people to study and prepare against possible unknown biotoxin weapons – when how many people died from the anthrax attacks? and how many people die from flu, and are likely to, particularly when it mutates or another disease does (eg SARS) let alone malaria and typhoid and mad cow and all. If they were serious about health (rather than using fear as a pretext to shovel money to croneys) they’d focus on the latter sorts of problems.

Or another one, this is one where I’ve used the automobile stats to no avail, because people believe what they want and they’d rather be afraid of unrealistic disasters than think about the realistic ones, like army ants and volcanoes when you’re a kid, rather than your parents getting divorced. This one is rather personal – the use of the fear of rapists and serial killers to keep women docile and immobile.

After one too many rounds of office clucking over foolish me, willing to travel and go places alone, even at night (!) I dug up the statistics on it all, and pointed out that a) they were more at risk than me, because they all had SOs, and a woman is far and away more likely to be injured/killed by her boyfriend/husband than a stranger; b) simply getting in the car and driving on the freeway was many times more dangerous than being *at* the movie theatre, by myself or not.

Were they relieved? Happy at newfound freedom in the daylight outside the Cave?

Nuh uh. Hands over ears, humming; a couple of them admitted that they didn’t want to think about those statistics because they couldn’t do anything about them, but they had the illusion of control over not being murdered or raped, since they *could* stay at home or only go out in gaggles with other women or a male protector…

Oh, OK. Do we say: Hey, they would have died anyway?

I assume that we do not say this. I assume we should not be so horrendously callous even when a person in fact dies in a car accident. Not to mention when they have died fighting in a war they did not choose and would, nearly without exception, be alive today had this war not been declared?

Wu

Here’s a question: If you are a young poor male living in, say, New Orleans, is it safer to sign up for military duty in Iraq or stay home?

Sadly, No!’s got exhibit A. Ruy Teixeira’s got exhibit B. This is where I’d normally go off on a rant about how those right wing so-and-so’s like to bitch about how we’re teaching multi-cultural moral relativism in our schools instead…

Okay, but statistics show you’re more likely to die in a Detroit homicide than in Iraq.

It’s the combined destructive capacity of the SUVs, the fact that they push them like crazy, on the grounds that they’re safer to be in, when they know damn well that they’re not in multiple ways, and have snowed the safety inspectors for years. Add that to the fact that they’re more dangerous for other people on the road, and that they’ve also jiggered their way around fuel economy by invoking the ‘farm trucks’ loophole for them, and I say we reclassify SUVs as WMDs and take out the evil regime in Michigan. We can go for the corrupt House of Vos while we’re at it, and liberate the people of Michigan from all their gluttoneous, tyrannical overlords.

Yup, I heard that one back in high school. It’s definitely a golden oldie.

And then as now, the morons who say it never have any problem about automobile use, yet somehow never volunteer to go fight overseas.

Sarah is in the Hall of Infamy at http://warcheerleaders.tripod.com

That’s pretty rich, when the post we critics are commenting on is a dismissal of the significance of deaths in Iraq,based on statistics !

American soldier in Iraq – Match 2 of any 5
American motorist in US – Match 4 of any 5