High Anxiety: How Washington's Exaggerated Sense of Danger Harms Us All
Journal: SSRN Electronic Journal
Year: 2019

The United States is arguably both the safest nation in the world and among the most fearful. An unremitting hysteria permeates the news media, public opinion, and especially, the policymaking process. National security discourse generally depicts trivial threats as existential ones and, through overapplication, has so neutered the meaning of “threat” that almost any phenomenon, foreign or domestic, can qualify. The resources Washington devotes to mitigate these “threats” are correspondingly dis