Fear

...from Signs in the Blood. Phillip is looking at the goldfish pool.

"Whoa! That looked like a copperhead!"
"No, that's a northern water snake. They do look a lot like copperheads -- that is, till you see the real thing. The water snakes don't have that triangular viper head, but they get killed for copperheads just the same."

In the news this morning -- The American military admitted Sunday night that a platoon of soldiers raked a car of innocent Iraqi civilians with hundreds of rounds of gunfire and that the military then issued a news release larded with misstatements, asserting that the victims were criminals who had fired on the troops.

The attack on June 25 killed three people, a man and two women, as they drove to work at a bank at Baghdad’s airport.

Fear combined with ignorance is a terrible thing.