The Bengals and North Korea

It looks like Karl Rove's plan to disrupt the NFL season with nuclear dirty bombs has gone awry. Homeland security caught the kid who was paid to promulgate the rumor on the Internet. Alas, there will be no widespread panic to disrupt our weekend and send voters to the election booths in a few weeks willing to do the deed once more on behalf of security-conscious Republican candidates. But the good news is he didn't crack and reveal the names of Rove, Mehlman, et al.

* Cough, cough *

Joking aside, the essence of our age is an inability to ascertain risk.

In the aftermath of the school shootings in Amish country I caught some of the breathless news coverage. All of the newsbunnies were asking each other if there was "some sign" that this horrible crazy person was going to commit this vile act. The answer, unfortunately, was not really. If we arrest, as a precaution, every slightly depressed adult with some lingering resentment over previous injustices in personal relationships then society will consist of one massive prison with a few pathologically clueless grownups roaming around outside with the children.

Compare all of this arm-waving about "signs we should have seen in advance" with the current international mess over North Korea. If Seattle is nuked into glass at some point in the next few years - or Tokyo, or Taipei, or a few million acres of elk and tundra in Alaska - then won't we all agree this was something we saw coming?

For years and years we've watched this hopping, batshit-crazy dictator bleeding his economy dry to build a war machine, while breaking every promise at every opportunity to construct missiles and nuclear bombs. Then he tests these weapons and promises war. If North Korea were the neighborhood creepy guy he'd be walking around in his yard with hand grenades and machine guns with pictures of schoolchildren taped to the fence. He'd be dead before lunch. And yet we are unable to act beyond encouraging the United Nations to draw up impotent "sanctions" which will not be enforced by NK's two biggest trade partners - China and the South.

It never ceases to amaze me how grownups can be so hyper-reactive when it comes to small threats, but we are frozen and fearful when it comes to the larger threats - and we are capable of summoning up astonishing amounts of denial until it's too late.

Tags: Terrorism, North Korea, School Shootings