Duck and cover and hope

We were sitting in the bleachers, more than a thousand of us. It was the Sunday evening before Thanksgiving, and the Internet fear factory was in full throat, threatening airline travelers with death from radiation and embarrassment. The second half of the game began, and from somewhere in my lizard brain, up washed a trickle of anxiety: Wouldn't this place make an ideal - and horrible - target for a terrorist?

At the other end of the week, hustling home from the mountains in the dark, the little one was unable to while away the miles in Harry Potter. Instead, she wanted to know why tourists want to kill us. Which led first to an explanation that despite my mumblemouthed pronunciation, there was indeed a difference between the word "tourist" and "terrorist," and then to an explanation of the religious rationale, and the civil and societal results, of Islamic extremism. And finally to the Soviet Union.

Talking to a 7-year-old about the safety concern of our time reminded me how different things were 40 years ago, growing up in the Cold War around D.C. We worried then about a nuclear attack from Moscow. We practiced our ducking and covering, traced the route to the fallout shelter in the basement.

It all seems so quaint now, faintly black and white and grainy, both the exercise and the second-grade fear. Only decades later did I realize a nuclear attack on D.C. would've vaporized me, whether I ducked and covered or not.

This was all deadly serious then, as adults tend to make issues of child safety. But I can't help but wonder what real purpose the preparations served, other than to make us afraid of the sky and what it might bring.

It's not much different now. We worry about the strangely dressed guy in the window seat. Or the folks two rows back whispering in a different language. That they're on our airplanes makes us still afraid of the sky.

And so the government gives us color-coded worries. It erects new impediments to air travel. Scared people - including some in Congress - insist that only singling out people for their ethnicity, and body cavity searches, will find the real threats.

If we're being honest, though, we know that the government can't keep us safe from a determined and dedicated terrorist. Neither can a full-body scan, or a grope of our genitals.

Electronic eavesdropping is effective only against incompetents and only if there are enough good guys to listen and read all the conversations. Which there aren't. We can spy and infiltrate and assassinate. We can attack. All of which work, at least for a while, and all of which cost.

Ultimately, though, no matter what the government does in the daylight, it won't be enough to protect all of us all the time. We live in a world filled with human beings, at least some of whom are going to be bent and twisted and horrible. At least a few of whom are murderous maniacs. True believers. They're also smart enough to foil our safeguards, as they have done before.

If somebody really wants to kill us, we will be dead. Perhaps not in an airplane, but maybe in the bleachers at a Sunday night game.

All the visible stuff America does to protect itself - all the checkpoints, all the pat-downs - is mere Theater of Reassurance that helps us get through our days without being paralyzed by the memories of 9/11. It allows government leaders to sleep at night, knowing they'll be able to say they've done what they could.

Of course, just because it's theater doesn't mean we stop scanning and frisking. Just like us, it inconveniences the terrorists. It may even make us safer for a moment and more secure as we travel from place to place. But it's a temporary and illusory safety. Like covering your head before the nukes rain down.

Donald Luzzatto is The Virginian-Pilot's editorial page editor. E-mail: donald.luzzatto@pilotonline.com