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John Hinderaker comforts himself with the thought that the attacks in Mumbai would be impossible to carry out in America:155 10,482 people per square kilometer [Sorry -- had used New York state, rather than New York City -- Ezra]. This idea that compared to the residents of Eastern Minnesota, Mumbai's inhabitants are soft and scared is weird on many different levels, and is the sort of affectation best answered by K'Naan's "What's Hardcore?"
I wondered earlier today how a mere ten terrorists could bring a city of 19 million to a standstill. Here in the U.S., I don't think it would happen. I think we have armed security guards who know how to use their weapons, supplemented by an unknown number of private citizens who are armed and capable of returning fire. The Indian experience shows it is vitally important that this continue to be the case. This is a matter of culture as much as, or more than, a matter of laws.Adam Serwer responds:
This is a really strange and immature coping mechanism that manifests on the right in times of high profile tragedy. Rather than contemplate being a victim of a terrorist attack, the subject imagines him or herself as the star of a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. I'd say it's simple racism, but it really is fear masquerading as bravado, a cultural chauvinism that directs itself at other Americans as readily as it does at foreigners. It is the "short skirt" theory of violence. If it happened, you must have been asking for it.I'd just add that a few years ago, a handful of terrorists managed to hijack multiple planes using nothing but the sort of small knives that people tend to open boxes with. Meanwhile, Mumbai is the fifth most populous city in the world, with 22,000 people living in every square kilometer. 60 percent are in vast, unimaginably poor slums. By contrast, New York's population density is
