Fear Itself

This chapter describes prosperity on a global scale with focus on the political narrative in the United States. It illustrates significant narratives of domestic doom that relate to exaggerated external and internal threats, which led to miscalibrated and self-destructive responses. One case of external threat is the 9/11 attacks. What resulted after the attacks were a pair of foreign wars whose cost exceeded a trillion dollars, the reversal of five decades of government prohibition against torture, and unprecedented intrusions into the civil liberties of US citizens.

This chapter describes prosperity on a global scale with focus on the political narrative in the United States. It illustrates significant narratives of domestic doom that relate to exaggerated external and internal threats, which led to miscalibrated and self-destructive responses. One case of external threat is the 9/11 attacks. What resulted after the attacks were a pair of foreign wars whose cost exceeded a trillion dollars, the reversal of five decades of government prohibition against torture, and unprecedented intrusions into the civil liberties of US citizens.