An Official Silentio Correction

Tom Ridge, the U.S. secretary of homeland security, puts me in my place:

Today, Mr. Ridge said any decisions about the alert level would be based on the pattern of intelligence received by the country's security agencies.

"I believe that on a day-to-day basis, it's incumbent upon this country and the intelligence community to assess all sources of information," Mr. Ridge said in an interview on ABC's "This Week."

"And as we continue to prosecute the war more successfully, we have access to more and more information," he added. "And I need to remind America on a day-to-day basis that that's exactly how we review the intelligence. Multiple sources, both foreign and domestic, all kinds of ways we aggregate information. And literally hour by hour they review it."

See, that's funny, because I've been insinuating for the past week that the alert mostly just scared the hell out of people near and far, in hopes that they would, for a while anyway, stop asking difficult questions like "Iraq and Al Qaeda relate how exactly?" or "Who's Hans Blix?" or "How much did Bush's budget say this war was going to cost?" or "How can we afford to help out Iraq afterward if we're spending so much helping out Afghanistan?" etc.; and that the only security such an alert provides is financial security for the hardware stores to which it inevitably sends people so that their houses might made be as inpenetrable as Dick Cheney's, not to mention the doctors who gleefully prescribe anti-depressants for really odd people who just can't handle the stress of living an unmedicated life in the midst of being told repeatedly "It's inevitable that you're gonna be attacked"; and that the silly little alert is more of a cover for a government that has the bejesus scared out of it that people might get wind of the fact that the tax cuts that only really benefit the people they wish they could be, and will work really hard ot be like -- i.e., rich -- are the same cuts that diminish the same homeland security from which those little alerts arise; and that, in general, the color-coded alert keeps people no more safe, nor alert(!), than they were prior to 9/11 -- just fucking scared and irrational and, thus, too, probably more of a menace to themselves and their neighbors than they were prior to 9/11.

Ah, but now, thank you sweet Jesus, Tom Ridge has righted my wrong. I apologize and retract all the aforementioned doubt and cynicism,.replacing it all with unabashed, blindingly orange-tinted trust. (Ask them no question, and I'll they'll tell you no lie.)