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4/10/04: Safe again?

I've been staying for the past week in a sub-suburban town in a space of stripmalled nothing somewhere in the 45-minute drive between Detroit and Ann Arbor. I've been watching CNN and short minutes of Fox News before flinching and having to look at something else. When I first arrived, the quiet was deafening. It's so flat, you can see the curve of the earth. After the noise and poverty and the keep-a-hand-on-the-wallet vibe of Sao Paulo, this place seems to move in slow motion. The cars glide slowly, efficient patterns, everything in such perfect, clean order that the mind just shuts off and that explains a lot. Then the news creates such a jarring contrast that that becomes all one actually sees. And then I think "Don't Americans realize how incredibly safe they are?"

I've met people that have to think about being kidnapped, or avoid parking their cars outside. At the Banco do Brasil, where I've spent many hours in line, there is a security guard in corner encased in this sort of bullet-proof podium, his head sticking out over the top to watch the floor, then with a narrow slit in the middle where the gun barrel will go if he should ever need to open fire. And I'm not trying to perpetuate the stereotypes of "third world" Brazil, or to give the impression that Sao Paulo should be avoided because of this. Quite the opposite. It's a chaotic city, but an amazing city, and if you dig cities the way I dig cities, please visit this city at some time in your life.

But the dangers are real, and I can probably assume that these are the realities for most people in the world, that the insular safety that I'm currently surrounded by is actually quite a rare thing. And while I don't intend to sound alarmist about the crime and poverty in the world, I'd hate to sound callous about it too - aside from a couple of very petty muggings in Chicago, I've never been the victim of crime. But the one thing I want to scream out in response to all of these alarmist "Is _______ safe!?" headlines is - Most of the world lives with real danger, and it's no worse than your imagination

Again, maybe I have to admit being naive to say such a thing. Even in Safetyville, USA, people have lived with crimes and suffering worse than I can imagine and worse than I've seen even now after having traveled a little. But when I get back to the headlines I'm still left dumbfounded as to what this information is supposedly protecting us from. Here the danger is cops without enough to do, not the crime they're supposedly charged to prevent. The US's prisons are continuing to fill; immigrants who've unintentionally thrown up the wrong red flag are continuing to disappear. And then the only threat comes out of the television, a cropped image from far away, while actual physical space remains empty, safe and silent.

posted by jeremy @ 2:51 AM