National Threat Advisory
One of the most recognizable parts of the Department of Homeland Security is the National Threat Advisory that you find on their website. I got to thinking about that the other day and wondered if there has ever been a time that the threat has been below yellow. Well, I looked it up and, as you might expect, the answer is no. The DHS has a history of changes to the threat level. Its interesting reading but the one thing that struck me about it is it has never been below yellow.
The obvious question that I think has an equally obvious answer is, “Is it even possible for it to be below yellow?” The answer is of course not! No executive department is going to say that they are no longer important. They might as well just cut the whole left side of that thing off. It is a daily reminder that we need to be afraid.
I also wonder how many people really know what that thing means or even use it to make day to day decisions. I wonder how many national security-related agencies consult the national threat advisory for guidance in their day to day operations. Does anybody use that thing?!?! Or is it…well…propaganda? Quite frankly, its the slickest propaganda ever. We don’t even know it. It penetrates the guards of our intellect and leads us to view people we don’t understand with microscopic suspicion. I say we get rid of that horrid thing. I don’t want to go to war with Iran.
I think it’s going to be one of those things we look back on in thirty years and say, “Last week (child’s name here) was coloring and upon seeing the red crayon in (child’s gender-specific pronoun here) hand I ran out onto my front yard screaming, terrorist, terrorist! When did we become afraid of colors?”
This was the most ill-conceived chart I’ve ever seen. I realized upon its release we would need to live in a utopia in order to even hit blue. Green would require a post-nuclear fallout society. Mutants basically. I thought it was something the news networks had birthed upon the public. Imagine my surprise!
The whole national threat advisory level is very Orwellian in nature. It is all about social engineering and population control. I think they should up it to Red, just to see what happens.
I don’t really think it is very slick at all. It is obviously fake and I would hope that it hasn’t deeply affected very many people.
FWIW, John Quiggin made the same observation about this in 2006.
The threat level scale and advisory system is similar to the threat assessment the Armed Forces use, but color coded for easier understanding. It is a way to better communicate necessary action among first responders, the private sector, local governments, the federal government, military and citizens. Currently, it’s yellow, but airline travel is at orange, likely do to the recent hijacking in Sudan. People that choose to inform themselves know what it means. Changes are based on credible threats and intelligence gathering. You can think its propaganda, because someone else is working to insure your safety. Ignorance is bliss, isn’t it?
Karen, I believe the point was that the warning level will never be below yellow. Not that we don’t think the government should warn us of potential terrorist attacks, but that this system is completely arbitrary.
It is inconsistent to say that you want the gov’t to inform you of potential threats, but you don’t believe in the system to do so. If the “point” was that the risk level will never be below yellow, he didn’t provide any valid argument for the claim. He suggested it was a propaganda ploy, which I gave evidence that is not. It is at yellow because there are significant risks. I think if you feel the gov’t is trying to keep you afraid by never lowering it to yellow, you don’t realize how dangerous the world actually is. It’s not a tool to breed intolerance, it’s designed to keep people safe.
I meant “lowering it below yellow” not “lowering it to yellow”
This is fascinating. I have never actually witnessed someone defending the color-coding scheme as worthwhile. I am just enjoying watching this develop…
I believe that there are potential significant risks, but I also believe that there are always potential significant risks. It will always be yellow or above because we can never say, “There are no more terrorists in the world! We’ve won the war on terror!!”
I think we’ve exhausted this topic, but to clarify…green means general risk, blue means low risk of terrorist attacks. It never states there will no longer be risk. The system has come under a lot of criticism and I’m sure there’s room for improvement, but it’s better than what existed before, which was nothing. This is only one of many resources designed to keep people informed. From a personal perspective, I was in downtown DC only blocks from the White House and State Department on the morning of 9/11. There was a lot of misinformation being reported at the time (car bombs, threats to mass transit, etc.), and it was frankly very frightening. A system like this might have helped alleviate a lot of confusion and fear that day, or it might help in the future. My husband currently rides the Metro (subway) everyday and works about 2 blocks from the White House, so I take the threat assessments more seriously than some might.
I know this thread is from months and months ago, but I just want to point out that Karen L. believes that if she’d known what colour the Terrorist Colour System was at, then 9/11 would have been safe.
I bet she also believes that Saddam Hussein did 9/11.