The around the clock cable news coverage of an extremely rare event – a co-pilot's alleged mass murder of passengers aboard one of 40 million flights worldwide annually – is a case in point. But the cynical use of fear happens with more mundane things too – for example, in advertisements for mouthwash and filtered water. To stay alive all of these millennia, the human race became susceptible to fear baiting, even when that fear is quite irrational.

As happened after the fiasco that was the Vietnam War – when the "Vietnam Syndrome" led to Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter being wisely chary of U.S. foreign interventions – the American public and even potential Republican presidential candidates became less interventionist after the long quagmires in Afghanistan in Iraq. Unfortunately, this second round of preference for overseas restraint didn't last very long. After the radical Islamic State group lopped off a few American heads on video, the public has increased its support for U.S. military intervention, the Obama administration went back into Iraq to help battle what is more of a threat to the Middle East region than to the United States, and Republican presidential candidates – even Rand Paul – have become more hawkish.