Both Nicolai Brown and Aaron Brown are correct — terrorism is a threat that has been over-emphasized and sensationalized by politicians for personal gain.

Unfortunately, it is evident that Aaron did not read Nicolai’s column, but instead used his preconceived notions of Nicolai’s personal beliefs as an attack on the issues presented in the article. Nicolai himself stated in his column, quite simply, that “the threat of terrorism has been blown way out of proportion.”

Nicolai is not suggesting that we completely ignore terrorist threats. He is merely posing the question, “Why are we inordinately concerned with terrorism when there are greater threats to Americans?”

The answer to that question is depressingly simple. You cannot put a scary face on starvation, poverty and influenza. You can, on the other hand, associate terrorism with numerous scary faces (e.g. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein), and politicians learned long ago that if you can scare people, you can control them.

Yes, Aaron Brown, “most Americans are not dying of starvation …” but significantly fewer are dying from terrorism.

Derek Dolezal

Member

Solidarity