The age of innocence

Here is this week’s top reader comment, as chosen by New York Times’ readers and journalists:

As someone who was in Tower 2 in the 9/11 attacks, I know all too well what it feels like to live in a city under siege, always fearing the next attack.

I am saddened that we are in a world that creates people who see no alternative for their lives than to die violently, taking as many innocent people with them as their crude homemade devices will allow.

What we all are losing in this battle is our ability to live our lives devoid of fear. There is a lot to be said for being able to go to a park or a concert or the subway and not worry about the potential for violence and bloodshed.

I miss the innocence of a pre-9/11 world where that was the norm. My heart of course goes out to the victims of this latest attack. I hope we find our way through this violence someday, but I see no immediate answers or a clear path back to those innocent days.

lgt525 in Ann Arbor, Mich., reacting to the terrorist bombings in Brussels on Tuesday.

If you live in Ann Arbor — as opposed to say, the general vicinity of Baghdad — fear of terrorism is almost completely irrational, although I suppose one should make allowances for someone who was at the WTC on 9/11.

It’s well known that driving from Ann Arbor to Chicago is 10,000 (or whatever) times more dangerous than the dangers posed to Americans or Europeans by ISIS. This statistical truth seems to have little effect on peoples’ psychology. As for “innocence,” 9/11 took place a few months after the end of a century that featured mass slaughter of both combatants and civilians on an unprecedented scale, so it’s not as if lgt525 has to think back to the 30 Years War to find historical examples of a less innocent time than the present.

Fear of terrorism is created by terrorists, of course, but their efforts would be fruitless if not for the continual cooperation of the mass media, most especially including elite media such as the Times, whose editors ought to know better than to amplify social panics that they themselves help create.

But fear sells, and that’s the only thing that counts (any more, or is that just more ahistorical nostalgia for an age of a more responsible press?).