I have a fear of dogs. Not that I don’t love dogs, I do. I have three, and I fear not one of them, but my personal experience over almost 50 years of life on this planet has led me to a healthy distrust of the ones I do not own. For reasons I cannot fathom, dogs seem to hate me and they have been unabashed through the past ½ century in demonstrating that emotion where yours truly is concerned. You can color me “bewildered”.
Oh I know, anyone reading this will immediately rely on the old wive’s tale/axiom: “Well, they must sense your fear.” People always use this in defense of man’s best friend, and I used to fall for the premise, I really did.
That was before I really began to examine the occurrances that led me to this phobia. Save for one time in my life, virtually every other “attack” was completely unprovoked. It was then that I realized that dogs don’t “sense fear”, but rather, they smell adrenaline. Dogs have no mechanism to differentiate between fear and excitement, or fear or aggression. Nor any other emotion which will release exorbitant amounts of adrenaline…they smell it and the fight instinct takes over.
Regardless of my own personal phobia where stray dogs are concerned, I long ago deduced that the best therapy would be to actually engage a dog in combat, and while that scenario has yet to come to fruition, I still maintain that it is the best therapy. If the dogs only knew…
There is a destination to which this article leads, however: The spectre of radical islam pervading America. It is bound to happen, right? After all, Israel has been dealing with this scourge forever. How is it that we, with our porous borders and our uber-permissive society, have managed to evade the plague of suicide bombings in malls and metropolitan pizzerias? This is the perfect place to enact such wanton acts of barbarism. So why has it never happened? I go back to the dogs…
Fear Factor
Despite the best efforts of our media and more embarrassingly, our own Congress, to immasculate our citizenry, the forces who would wreak havoc with the level of success they have enjoyed in Israel are wary of what we boast amongst our own population: The people! The dogs!
Those whom we deride as the fringe element, the ones living in the desolate stretches of expanse that is our Midwest, may ultimately be our only salvation. It is they who the radical jihadists fear. It is they who, despite all of our allegedly sophisticated derision, may be the last (or the first, depending on your take) line of defense in this country. They will bark and awaken us.
We are an immense sleeping dog and, when poked in the eye long enough, will eventually awaken and have an appetite for vengeance. The terrorists know this, but they don’t care, not the so-called leaders, at least. The “soldiers” also know this and the fact that they have been imbedded in our society for so long bears out the absence of that which we see in Israeli suburbs on a regular basis.
This country is very large, much larger than any other that bears the burden of daily or weekly attacks on its citizenry. In the days following 9/11, I thought for sure that there would be brutal and random attacks on “innocent” people of Middle Eastern descent. I am pleased to say that that did not happen, but in the event that another, similar attack should occur, I would not be so optmistic. Nor would I anticipate the same level of restraint if attacks on civilians became the daily norm.
One great worry many of us may face, as I did on the morning of 9/11/2001, when my Guyanese friends and contractors were potential targets of a violence that never was, thankfully, is just that prospect. That true lovers of America may be innocent victims of a long pent up rage.
That is the only hope for jihadists. Our enduring compassion, as Americans. If they spend it frivolously, it is at their own peril and unfortunately, at the peril of too many true innocents. Either way, the dogs will attack if they smell adrenaline.
-Woody
