Well, quite frankly, I see fear mongering, but I also see many heads in the sand. Flip sides of the same coin, really, since the latter seems a response to the former, and elicits even more of the same which then perpetuates the cycle.

On the part of fear mongering, I see the manipulation of fear being used in partisan ways, with charges that one's opponant is "soft" on terrorism as the ultimate appeal to soldier support for many other agendas besides just the war against terrorism.

On the paret of denial, I see plenty examples of people engaging in apologia for that which they really haven't studied, and who defend one thing under the misapprehension they are defending aginst something else. They engage in dismissal and misdirection rather than inquiry, and simply do not care to understand the ideologies involved.

As far as I'm concerned, what we need as a country is less partisanship with the knee jerk polemics that follow suit and more time spent upon understanding the nature of the threat. We may disagree on TACTICS we see fit to combat the threat, but perhaps if we could at least agree that we are all in this together and that the threat is real, we wouldn't spend so much time tearing at each other and turn our attention to the actual threat, instead.