You can be afraid of only so much

The challenge of being an American lately is deciding what’s worth being afraid of.

FBI director James Comey was on the air over the weekend talking about the threat of terrorist attacks.

“They are experienced terrorists, experienced bomb-makers, experienced killers, experienced planners,” Comey said.

Sure enough the polling shows that 75 percent of Americans are concerned about a terrorist attack.

Then there’s the threat of cyber attacks.

“People have connected their entire lives to the Internet. That’s where those who want to steal money or hurt kids or defraud, go,” Comey said. “It’s an epidemic.”

Sure enough, the polls say 70 percent of us consider cyber-attacks a major threat.

But now, there’s competition from another epidemic – Ebola.

“I consider this a top national security priority,” President Obama said.

Especially when the only precaution to stop an exposed person from hopping on a U.S.-bound plane is a questionnaire at the airport in Liberia asking, “Were you exposed?” There might be a teensy weensy incentive to lie?

But not to worry.

“We’re also going to be working on protocols to do additional passenger screening at the source and in the United States,” Obama said.

And so far, the reassurance seems to have worked.
Americans haven’t gone into an Ebola panic despite the Internet’s best efforts to create one.

But the point is, there’s a lot of competition for our emotional attention, which might be why the Supreme Court decided Monday that what the heck, let’s just make gay marriage the law of the land. That such a thing was once seen as a threat, by a lot of people, suddenly seems pretty silly.