I have a dog, she is a good dog. I have no doubt that she would lay down her life for me. She provides “security” around the house mostly barking at squirrels and passing pedestrians. She claims we are under threat and should get another dog so together they can bark at more pedestrians and more squirrels. I think it is threat inflation and getting out of hand, she is questioning my patriotism.
Threat inflation typically relies on misrepresenting the facts, or presenting them in the most alarming way possible. If another state is behaving in a way that our government doesn’t like, sometimes the mere fact that it is displeasing is treated as proof of a dire threat. It doesn’t matter if the threat is a relatively minor, manageable one–it has to be cast as a threat to regional stability and “world order.” It doesn’t even matter if the U.S. and its allies are actually threatened by the behavior in question, since the assumption that the U.S. is a guarantor of “world order” dangerously makes any and every threat to anyone our problem.
