Please Keep Your Liquids in the Overhead Compartment, and Hey, Let's Throw a National State Fair in DC

Look, I’m not a conspiracy theorist. Not close. But even I have to raise an eyebrow at this latest chapter of The Great Book of Governmental Gaslighting.

For decades — or, perhaps the entire 21st century — we’ve been marinated in a broth of existential governmental warnings with a side of CNN / Fox News (take your pick) dread. The dreaded Communists domino-ing in the 1970s has morphed into the Mexican cartels cartelling, the devious Russians hacking, the sneaky Chinese always about to invade Taiwan, and most importantly, the ‘dangerous’ Muslims about to bomb everything everywhere.

In the 2000s, we endured that every time you tried to board a plane, a grumpy TSA agent with the personality of a parking meter would confiscate your bottled water like it was a vial of weaponized anthrax. “Sir, this could be a terrorist threat,” they would say as we cowered, feeling guilty we threatened national safety by bringing the only thing that could keep us hydrated on a 3-hour flight to Atlanta on a budget carrier.

We agreed to step through million-dollar sci-fi scanners designed to show a stranger the exact silhouette of our genitals, all because one lone lunatic twenty years ago tried to ignite his footwear and failed.

We’d shuffle through the security check-ins like guilty sheep, half-expecting someone to scream “Jihadist shampoo detected!” while the overhead news channels ran scrolling headlines: “CREDIBLE THREATS,” “IMMINENT ATTACKS,” and “EXPERTS SAY IT’S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME.”

The government and the media, those two old pals who love nothing more than a joint panic project, were relentless. Terrorists were everywhere. We’d nod along, remove our belts and shoes, and wonder if this was the day we’d all perish because a fanatic had smuggled a Gatorade through security.

Did any of it ever actually happen? Nothing on the apocalyptic scale they kept promising. The plots were foiled, the threats downgraded, the terrifying water bottles were revealed to be… water. 

What were we left with? The fear. Fear kept budgets approved. Fear sold clicks. Fear won elections. Fear made you accept government oversight as necessary. 

You were told the sky is falling every single day for twenty years, and the more you heard it, the more you believed it.

Fast forward to now

Suddenly, we’re in the thick of it. 

We’re bombing the “global leader of terror”. Missiles are flying, proxies are proxying, the Middle East is doing that thing it does where it makes the rest of the world look like a particularly dull PTA meeting.

And what does our government’s messaging become?

“Everything’s fine. Keep calm and keep flying. Iran couldn’t organize a credible threat in a potato chip factory. Oh, and by the way, we’re throwing a huge State Fair in DC because America is 250 and thriving, baby!”

The same government that once warned us that public places were soft targets is now actively begging us to pack into the National Mall shoulder-to-shoulder, casually reassuring us that everything is perfectly fine. 

The terrorists apparently look at a state fair and think, “No, the line for the Ferris wheel is too long, let’s call it a day.”

It turns out that thirty milliliters of contact lens solution is a threat to the republic, but thousands of people eating turkey legs directly in front of the seat of government while the Air Force conducts low-altitude flyovers is just wholesome summer fun. 

For years, we were stripping down at the boarding gate, having been told were one bottle of Dasani away from civilizational collapse. Now we’re lobbing munitions at the supposed puppet-master of global jihad, handing out advanced weapons to Kyiv to lob into the capital of our global rival, and the official line is “relax, buddy, the soccer game is on in half an hour.”

One minute, we’re meant to believe that a few flip-flop wearing fanatics in a cave could topple Western civilization with a few AK-47s. The next, nation-states with actual missiles, allies across multiple continents, and Liam Neeson-sized grudges are apparently no more threatening than mildly aggressive seagulls staring at our picnic lunch at the beach.

Fear is a renewable human resource, perfectly calibrated to justify whatever the powers in charge need at the time. When they want more security funding and compliance: “a water could kill you”. When they want to bomb someone, forget ceasefires, and keep the markets open: “Iran? It's fine. They’ll come around if we bomb enough. Pass the popcorn.”