ChatGPT says: Dennis Prager’s shtick is moral clarity delivered with a foghorn. John Mueller’s 2006 book Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them gives you the quickest way to cut through it: force probabilities, base rates, and costs onto the table—then watch the hysteria collapse.
Base-rate reality check
International terrorism generally kills only a few hundred people worldwide per year—about the order of annual bathtub drownings in the U.S. If a 9/11-scale attack happened every three months for five years, the individual fatality risk would still be ~0.02%.
Possibility vs probability (the classic hype move)
The fear script says “terrorists can strike any place, any time, with virtually any weapon.” Mueller calls that “fatuous and misleading” because it turns remote possibilities into omnipresent certainties and justifies spending everywhere. Prager’s doom talk uses the same move. Demand probabilities, not slogans.
“How dangerous is flying, really?” (translate fear into numbers)
To make flying as dangerous as driving, you’d need one set of 9/11 crashes every month. The per-flight fatality risk is about 1 in 13 million; to match that by car, you’d only need to drive 11.2 miles on rural interstates. Use that to puncture “we’re living on a knife’s edge” sermons.
Dirty bombs aren’t “apocalypse weapons”
Radiological devices are better described as weapons of mass disruption than destruction. Lethal dose dispersal is extraordinarily difficult; the main effect is panic and cleanup costs, not mass death. If a pundit sells apocalypse, ask for the dose–response math.
Overreaction kills judgment (and wastes billions)
Fear-fueled politics sprays money everywhere—from “highway security” pork to a post-9/11 “Doom Boom” for Beltway contractors—while doing little for safety. The pattern is fear → folly → waste. Don’t let moral theater hide that ledger.
Security theater as self-parody
Color-coded alerts, duct tape and plastic sheeting, and even FBI warnings about people “bearing almanacs.” When a moralizer leans on these visuals, call them what Mueller does: hysteria that teaches the public to fear, not to think.
The record of “near-misses” is thin
Behind enormous surveillance and manpower, the FBI chalked up “zeros and near-zeros” in the years Mueller audits: task forces for “suggested” plots, mass interviews, and detentions that produced no terror convictions. The “we barely survived” narrative doesn’t match the data.
What responsible teaching actually looks like
Mueller’s rule: put risks in context, reduce fear where risks are small (terrorism, shark attacks, flying), and save fear for risks we underweight (smoking, obesity, alcohol, driving). That’s adult moral instruction—probabilities, tradeoffs, and perspective—not alarmism.
Rapid-fire counters for a Prager monologue
• “What’s the base rate?” Then cite the bathtub/0.02% math.
• “Are you selling possibilities or probabilities?” Quote the “any place, any time” critique.
• “Show the crossover point.” One 9/11 per month to make flying as risky as driving.
• “Is this mass destruction or mass disruption?” Dirty bombs ≠ apocalypse.
• “What’s the cost of your prescription?” Point to pork, doom-boom waste, and theater.
Bottom line
If your career is built on keeping people scared, Overblown will eat you alive. It replaces moral grandstanding with math, context, and cost–benefit sanity—and that’s the ethic worth teaching.
