What we’re told is and isn’t terrorism

IN ONE short week, the nation was left reeling from the effects of two earthshaking explosions.

While the dust was still clearing in Boston, there was the explosion at a fertilizer plant in Texas. The bombing in Boston left three dead and at least 175 injured; the explosion in Texas killed as many as 15 and injured upwards of 160.

Once again, we begin to feel like a nation at war. While Americans are still mourning the victims and puzzling together what happened, the media is already telling us how to respond.

Immediately after the bombing, false reports were issued, stating that a "dark-skinned man" was arrested. News agencies from Fox to CBS speculated on a possible link with al-Qaeda in some instances, and called for a genocide of all Arabs in other instances.

But even before we knew who was responsible for the attack, the media was preparing us for how it will be used. This attack will be used as evidence of a sustained, organized and systematic assault on American citizens. It will be used as support for American imperialism abroad, and for an increased surveillance state at home.

Mere minutes after receiving reports of the explosions, Fox correspondent Erik Rush began tweeting, "Muslims are evil. Kill them all," in the same breath as asking us to do the "National security ankle grab."

Even if his exhortation was "sarcasm" as he claims, these types of words have real effects. Already, there are reports of hate crimes being perpetrated against Muslims and people perceived to be Muslim in response to the bombing. But this sort of Islamophobic rhetoric also serves to frame the bombing as part of a narrative that validates U.S. imperialism in the Middle East and increased surveillance in the U.S.

But what about the explosion in Texas? Will this be seen as part of a systematic attack on American lives? Since the September 11 attacks, the number of Americans killed by terrorists, understood broadly, in the U.S. hovers somewhere around 30 people.

Nearly half of those fatalities come from the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, which could perhaps be more accurately categorized as a work-related homicide with political and religious themes than an act of terrorism. Most of the other terrorist attacks have equally weak ties to some sort of organized terrorist body that the United States could reasonably go to war with.

BY CONTRAST, about 30 people die every two days from dangerous working conditions in the United States. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, 4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011. That includes 458 outright workplace homicides, and 242 workplace suicides.

In other words, work is so grindingly boring and soul-crushingly stressful that we kill ourselves and our co-workers at a far greater rate than al-Qaeda could ever dream.

But even this doesn't hold a candle to the damage reeked on Americans by neglect. Nearly 4,000 workers die every year due to the cold calculation that it is cheaper to bury a worker than it is to make her workplace safe.

And what about the more than 26,000 working-age adults who die prematurely in the United States each year because they lack health insurance?

Insurance companies are far more dangerous to me and my family than al-Qaeda. They are better organized and they have more successfully infiltrated the government. Unlike al-Qaeda, we don't need to threaten anyone's civil liberties to find out where the insurance companies live. They advertise in the phone book.

At least one of these explosions does seem to be the result of a systematic attack on American lives. The explosion in Texas was due to systematic neglect that can be seen as nothing less than murder.

The plant had been previously fined in 2006 for failing to meet risk management standards. Instead of meeting standards, the plant continued to lie on their Environmental Protection Agency report, claiming that there was "no risk of fire or explosion."

In the five years leading up to the explosion, the plant would not be inspected even once. This is at a site right across the street from a middle school. When the blast finally occurred, it registered on a seismograph over 400 miles away.

In the days and weeks following these tragedies, we can expect to be instructed again and again that one of these explosions was an attack--and we must respond to it appropriately. In fact, both of these explosions were attacks: One was part of a narrative of terrorism that we often hear but almost never see, the other was part of a narrative of terror that we don't often hear, but live every day.
Sojun Godfrey, Burlington, Vt.