These little incidents seem to accumulate faster than we think. Seattle photographer Michael Hanscom was harassed for taking pictures of fully clothed children at the beach on Monday and asked to delete the pictures from his digital camera. Illustrating the culture of fear we now live in, the childrens’ parents reported him to local security officials instead of, in his words, “approaching me and either asking what I was doing or, if I’d taken any shots of their kid, to delete them.”

Because that’s not the way the media wants to take it and spin it, and turn it into fear, because then you’re watching television, you’re watching the news, you’re being pumped full of fear, there’s floods, there’s AIDS, there’s murder, cut to commercial, buy the Acura, buy the Colgate, if you have bad breath they’re not going to talk to you, if you have pimples, the girl’s not going to fuck you, and it’s just this campaign of fear, and consumption, and that’s what I think it’s all based on, the whole idea of ‘keep everyone afraid, and they’ll consume.’ — Marilyn Manson, Bowling for Columbine

We’ve come to the point where we view strangers as threats, when the vast majority of them are no such thing. In The Culture of Fear, Barry Glassner shows that Americans are afraid of the wrong things and make the wrong decisions out of misplaced fear. And in Beyond Fear, Bruce Schneier shows the real security threats and what you can do about them so that you don’t have to live in fear, especially misplaced fear. I highly recommend both books.