Greeting Threat Inflation with a Yawn

It is natural for people to block out the endless drone of fearmongering emanating from the Beltway.

Walter Russell Mead is sad that people aren’t panicking about the latest round of threat inflation:

Even more appalling than the report is the general indifference with which it has been received. Aside from a few honorable exceptions…the commission’s report sank like a stone. There has been no uproar in the press, no speechifying by presidential candidates, no storm on social media, no sign that the American political class takes the slightest interest in the increasing fragility of the peace on which everything we cherish depends.

If few people are paying any attention to the report, one reason for that might be that there is so much hawkish harping about foreign threats that it all tends to blur together into one constant whine of noise. It is natural for people to block out the endless drone of fearmongering emanating from the Beltway. Another possible reason why it hasn’t received more attention is that the report is marred by its irresponsible exaggeration of current dangers.