>Thanks very much for the offer, but I am concerned that you should be so
>worried. Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking the piss ... panics are not
>something that you can abstract yourself from by act of will alone, but it
>is a panic nonetheless. Tales of nuclear suitcases are, well, just that,
>tales. And anthrax in the mail is a proper concern for posties, but lets
>face it, what are the chances for anyone else?
maybe it's not a sense of personal panic but a concern that a lot of the posties --who, last i checked are 40% black -- are vulnerable if if anyone got their act together with the anthrax mail.
i think your concerns about US panic are misplace, tuided by too much telly. as in berkeley, there's no panic around here, either. you can go into all the stores and find all the emergency equipment, gas masks, batteries, etc you need. there were, apparently, no runs on the survivalist supplies. plenty of guns at the sporting goods stores, too. when i took my son in for a sports physical, i asked them what traffic had been like. the receptionist, nurse and physician said that there'd not been a great deal of panic, one brief spike early on.
i'm one thousand miles away. it's evident to me that people who live in NYC and DC are a lot more rattled, as they should be. both panic and a cavalier attitude are defense mechanisms. every once in a while, if i let myself, i get a little concerned because i live 15 miles from Central Command for operations in the ME--a nice military target. But, as you say below, my biggest fears are what my kid will have to go through were that to happen.
but, i don't think about it to much, mostly because i'm inured. the work i do means that i read about how to bring down the US a couple of times a week. i'm not prone to panic as a defense, but to repress and become analytical. some people want to hide from knowledge; i want to know everything. in either case, it's an attempt to control the world.
>I'm not saying that I am not prone to panic about stuff (mostly my
>daughter's health, as it happens). I'm just saying that these things can
>be analysed objectively as well as experienced subjectively.
>--
>James Heartfield
from my observations, doug has been perfectly capable of doing both. cracking jokes--as he has done--is a an indicator, generally, that someone is able to view the situation objectively. it's still a defense mechanism, any way you look at it, however.
kelley