Trump's slightly shifted his message at the RNC. It sounds great in principle; who doesn't want to be safe? But what does this really mean? And what about the "again"? Are we not as safe as we used to be?
What does it mean to be safe? This is a rather nebulous question, but one reasonable approximation is the odds of "something bad" happening to you outside your control. I don't think most people consider falling off a cliff while playing Pokémon Go an example of an unsafe world; I think they're more likely to just throw a Darwin Award after the person.
"Something bad", in the way people talk about it, mostly refers to ending up dead. This, too, can be broken down into many buckets. Someone could get and die of cancer. We tend not to chalk these cases up to "being safe" unless there's ample evidence of some man-made hazard (like Fukushima). Generally, death from illness is less and less likely and I doubt will regress from one president to the next, so there's no way to say a particular president had an influence. Deaths from accidents (like car crashes) falls in a similar bucket.
Mostly, Making America Safe Again means you're less likely to get violently killed by someone who's attacking you for their ideological purposes and you had particular ability to avoid them. First things first, what baselines or expectations or norms do we have? Using this compilation of Terrorist attacks and related incidents (which, at a glance, seems reasonably complete), we can establish the number of such deaths per year, and per president. In the interest of modern-day discourse, I'm filtering this to 1980 and after. No one's political memory goes back past Reagan anyways and the draft was still in effect for most of the time before; subjective many to deaths in faraway lands that they probably wanted nothing to do with. So, let's just say that before Reagan, self-started wars were the leading such violators of American safety. Since military involvement is now fully voluntary, I'm content to say that bucket has dried up and has no bearing on this discussion.
I've exported the linked table to Excel, filtered for only dates after Jan 1, 1980 and removed all cases marked as accident (ACC). There are 4267 qualifying deaths (and 12068 injuries) over approximately 36 years (average: 118 and 335 per year). All else equal, a president should expect to see about 474 deaths and 1341 injuries in a term. Since all but Bush Sr** served two terms, they get to double their expected numbers. How did they do?
The statistically very difficult thing here is that over 70% of the total comes from a single event (9/11), so everyone else is below the average. It can also be argued that the first WTC attempt *could* have been successful, and that was under Clinton's watch. But, let's just stick to what actually happened.
We can also sort and see when the largest events occurred. I'm going to semi-arbitrarily pick all the events with at least 10 casualties:
What does it mean to be safe? This is a rather nebulous question, but one reasonable approximation is the odds of "something bad" happening to you outside your control. I don't think most people consider falling off a cliff while playing Pokémon Go an example of an unsafe world; I think they're more likely to just throw a Darwin Award after the person.
"Something bad", in the way people talk about it, mostly refers to ending up dead. This, too, can be broken down into many buckets. Someone could get and die of cancer. We tend not to chalk these cases up to "being safe" unless there's ample evidence of some man-made hazard (like Fukushima). Generally, death from illness is less and less likely and I doubt will regress from one president to the next, so there's no way to say a particular president had an influence. Deaths from accidents (like car crashes) falls in a similar bucket.
Mostly, Making America Safe Again means you're less likely to get violently killed by someone who's attacking you for their ideological purposes and you had particular ability to avoid them. First things first, what baselines or expectations or norms do we have? Using this compilation of Terrorist attacks and related incidents (which, at a glance, seems reasonably complete), we can establish the number of such deaths per year, and per president. In the interest of modern-day discourse, I'm filtering this to 1980 and after. No one's political memory goes back past Reagan anyways and the draft was still in effect for most of the time before; subjective many to deaths in faraway lands that they probably wanted nothing to do with. So, let's just say that before Reagan, self-started wars were the leading such violators of American safety. Since military involvement is now fully voluntary, I'm content to say that bucket has dried up and has no bearing on this discussion.
I've exported the linked table to Excel, filtered for only dates after Jan 1, 1980 and removed all cases marked as accident (ACC). There are 4267 qualifying deaths (and 12068 injuries) over approximately 36 years (average: 118 and 335 per year). All else equal, a president should expect to see about 474 deaths and 1341 injuries in a term. Since all but Bush Sr** served two terms, they get to double their expected numbers. How did they do?
| President | Deaths | Injuries |
| Reagan | 51 | 327 |
| Bush Sr** | 182 | 54 |
| Clinton | 587 | 2101 |
| Bush Jr | 3072 | 9005 |
| Obama | 241 | 591 |
The statistically very difficult thing here is that over 70% of the total comes from a single event (9/11), so everyone else is below the average. It can also be argued that the first WTC attempt *could* have been successful, and that was under Clinton's watch. But, let's just stick to what actually happened.
We can also sort and see when the largest events occurred. I'm going to semi-arbitrarily pick all the events with at least 10 casualties:
| Bush Jr | New York City, New York | 2759 | 8700 | TER-islm | crashing of two hijacked planes into World Trade Center towers, causing fires and collapse |
| Clinton | Atlantic Ocean, Massachusetts | 217 | 0 | TER-islm | intentional crash of Egypt Air flight off Nantucket Island by copilot |
| Bush Jr | Alexandria, Virginia | 189 | 200 | TER-islm | crashing of hijacked plane into Pentagon |
| Clinton | Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | 169 | 675 | TER-right | truck bombing of federal building, causing partial collapse |
| Reagan | San Juan, Puerto Rico | 97 | 140 | CRI | three employees set fire in Dupont Plaza Hotel; most fatalities were in the hotel casino; the employees were in a labor dispute with the hotel's management |
| Bush Sr | New York City, New York | 87 | 0 | CRI | arson fire in social club |
| Clinton | Waco, Texas | 86 | 25 | CRI | Branch Davidian cult members kill 4 ATF agents, injure 16, when agents raided their compound in Waco, TX; 10 cult members killed; compound was sieged until 19 Apr when another raid was attempted and the compound burned down |
| Obama | Orlando, Florida | 50 | 53 | TER-islm | shooting attack at nightclub |
| Bush Sr | Atlantic Ocean, Puerto Rico | 47 | 0 | CRI? | explosion in gun turrent of battleship U.S.S. Iowa off Puerto Rico kills 47; Navy cites some evidence of sabotage |
| Bush Jr | Somerset County, Pennsylvania | 45 | 0 | TER-islm | crashing of hijacked plane into rural area of Pennsylvania, following attempt by passengers to regain control of aircraft |
| Clinton | Rancho Sante Fe, California | 39 | 0 | CRI | discovery of mass suicide by 39 members of Heaven's Gate cult, tied by cult members to Comet Hale-Bopp |
| Bush Jr | Blacksburg, Virginia | 33 | 17 | CRI | shooting attack at Virginia Polytechnic Institute |
| Obama | Newtown, Connecticut | 28 | 3 | CRI | shooting attack at elementary school kills 20 children and 6 adults; shooter killed himself and had killed his mother earlier that day |
| Bush Sr | Killeen, Texas | 24 | 20 | CRI | shooting attack at Luby's restaurant |
| Reagan | San Ysidro, California | 22 | 19 | CRI | shooting attack at McDonalds restaurant |
| Obama | San Bernardino, California | 16 | 23 | TER-islm | two attackers killed 14 and injured 21 at a county employee meeting and Christmas party; both attackers were killed hours later in a shootout with police in which 2 police officers were injured |
| Reagan | Edmond, Oklahoma | 15 | 6 | CRI | shooting attack by postal employee at post office |
| Clinton | Littleton, Colorado | 15 | 27 | CRI | mass shooting at Columbine High School by two students; 12 students and 1 teacher killed, 21 students and 2 teachers killed; both gunmen killed themselves |
| Obama | Binghamton, New York | 14 | 4 | CRI | shooting attack at immigrant center |
| Reagan | Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania | 13 | 0 | CRI | shooting attack |
| Obama | Foot Hood, Texas | 13 | 44 | TER-islm | shooting attack at Soldier Readiness Center at Foot Hood |
| Obama | Washington, DC | 13 | 3 | CRI | shooting attack at Washington Navy Yard |
| Obama | Aurora, Colorado | 12 | 58 | CRI | shooting attack at movie theater; suspect was arrested afterwards; suspect had booby-trapped his nearby apartment with explosives which were successfully disarmed by police |
| Reagan | Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | 11 | 0 | CRI | police assault on headquarters of radical black group Move starts fire |
| Obama | Alabama | 11 | 6 | CRI | multiple shootings at residences and businesses in Samson and Geneva, AL |
| Bush Sr | Jacksonville, Florida | 10 | 4 | CRI | shooting attack at GMAC office |
| Bush Jr | Red Lake, Minnesota | 10 | 7 | CRI | shooting at Red Lake Indian Reservation school |
The worst incidents happened under Bush Jr and Clinton. Bush Sr and Reagan are next, and Obama is last in this ordering. Obama is also second-to-last in per-term deaths and injuries.
I suppose if we want to Make America Safe Again, we should bring back zombie Reagan. If that's not feasible, let's give Obama a 3rd term. His track record demands it.
I suppose if we want to Make America Safe Again, we should bring back zombie Reagan. If that's not feasible, let's give Obama a 3rd term. His track record demands it.
2 comments:
Why do you persist in this fallacy that Trump (and, indeed, much of the Republican party) cares anything for facts? Facts have no part in the narrative woven by the modern GOP.
Trump probably isn't my target audience? And my goal here is not to convince them, but to think about the claims critically myself. If others glean wisdom from it or enter into thoughtful discussion, all the better!
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