Fear Reaction

I believe all issues that are broadcasted and receive a lot of attention generates reactions from the people that feel impacted by those issues.  There are several incidents that have occurred in our recent history that are good examples of strong human reactions.  For example, the hijacking and crashing of planes into the World Trade Center, HIV/AIDS, Bath Salts, and Iran and North Korea Nuclear threats.  All of these issues and tragedies have resulted in strong public reactions and in some cases has lead to racism, stereotyping, harassment, fear, and even death.  I decided to focus on the 9/11 attack and the reactions by both US Citizens and Middle-Eastern Citizens.

There is a very small population of religious fanatics from the middle-east that do not like Americans.  I don’t exactly know the size of the group or how they get money for their weapons but based on the news, they are small group and do not represent the beliefs of the general populations in Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan.  Even though they represent a small portion of the population, they were able to mastermind the largest terrorist attack on the United States in history.  The conflict between the United States and the terrorist organization called Al Qaeda has been long standing.  Even though most US Citizens were aware of the conflict, it wasn’t until the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center that the people began to get paranoid and have a strong reaction.  After the attack, the US went to war.  The result of the war was that US Citizens became paranoid that everyone from the Middle-East was a terrorist.  There were problems at airports because security began to suspect everyone that looked like they were from the Middle-East were terrorists, which angered people that came to this country when they were honest citizens but felt like they were being stereotyped and harassed.   I think that people were so afraid of another attack that in many ways they behaved irrationally like they did in the Salem witch hunt.  It seems like fear makes people react in ways that later look crazy and surprising.  I am sure everyone has looked at someone in the airport, mall, store etc. that seemed sketchy and automatically became nervous or frightened because we put them into a category in which they may or may not be in.  This example is just to point out how fear causes people to react in a way that is harmful, disrespectful, irrational, and in extreme cases can result in death.