Fear is the emotion that the Bush administration employs most extensively on the American population to try to gain its will.

		Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor (dsimpson@post-gazette.com).

The most recent example of that phenomenon is the bugging issue. Even though a perfectly workable and efficient legal procedure exists through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to tap the phones and read the e-mails of anyone who could conceivably be a threat to American security, President Bush decided nonetheless in 2002 to begin breaking that law and establishing surveillance of anyone he liked -- or didn't like -- in disregard of the law and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court.

On that basis, hundreds and perhaps thousands of Americans have had their communications intercepted and monitored by the National Security Agency. Even assuming that the information NSA picked up was important and useful -- most of which the FBI says was not -- there is no reason in the world why the warrants couldn't have been obtained, even after the fact, that would have made the action legal, keeping Mr. Bush in observance of the law.

Now the White House is telling us that we should be glad that the president is taking that illegal action, in the name of keeping us safe, in the process playing to Americans' fear of another terrorist attack. The truly frightening part is that polls show an important percentage of the American population ready to sell off their privacy and this important segment of their constitutionally guaranteed rights in response to the false White House claim that they will be safer for doing so.

Perhaps it's worth a look at what Americans really are afraid of, as opposed to whatever chimera the Bush administration might seek to conjure up to scare them with in pursuit of public acceptance of or acquiescence in some dubious piece of policy.

The word which Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration representatives have the habit of waving like a silver cross or a piece of garlic in the face of a vampire is "terrorism." And the story runs that we are fighting terrorism in Iraq so we won't have to fight it in the streets of the United States. My goodness, terrorism even got ABC-TV's new evening news anchor, Bob Woodruff, in Iraq over the weekend.

But how does that translate out at home? Are Americans really afraid of terrorism at home? Is it realistic for them to be so? What is really likely is that one day terrorists will set off a bomb in some American shopping center. But is this something that Americans really worry about? At the breakfast table, "Honey, I don't think I'll go to Robinson Town Centre Mall today because terrorists might set off a bomb there." Or, "I am afraid to drive along Route 28 because every time I see a car parked along it I think it might be a car bomb and go off." This isn't meant to be funny, but it is just a fact that Americans don't worry about things like that. Nor should they. Nor should any politician -- Republican or Democrat -- try to get them to.

What are people really afraid of? This one sharply divides older and younger people. I won't venture out into the treacherous waters of what age constitutes the dividing line, but here is the cold-sweat fear in question for the older cohort: One reaches an age when infirmities either from age or illness make it impossible to continue bringing money in. (The latest figures say that one in four persons in the 65-74 range is still working.)

If one worked long enough for a particular employer that had a pension plan, that employer has gone belly up, causing one's pension to disappear like a one-touchdown lead. So have any post-retirement medical benefits one might have had. Medicare and Medicaid have been battered hard and the tsunami-like flood of baby-boomers into the two safety-net programs has been so extreme that both of them look like New Orleans post-Katrina and mid-FEMA. Inflation, the economy's only recourse in the face of billions in budget deficits since 2001, has wiped out any modest savings one might have had.

So one is old, maybe sick, and basically helpless economically -- that is really scary. Young people don't seem to worry too much about any of that. They change jobs a lot. They frequently consider themselves to be bulletproof health-wise. They tell me that they don't think they'll ever see Social Security anyway.

But Mr. Bush last year saw Social Security as another way of scaring the American people. He said he was going to fix it, but what many people saw instead was a greedy, business and bank-oriented group of people in Washington reaching for a pot of what they thought was their money. Mr. Bush's Social Security "initiative" put into question the future of a modest but sure safety net that many older people saw as their ace in the hole, the monthly check that would pay the rent and feed them if all else failed.

Scare them, then cause them to turn to you as a surer guarantor of their safety -- this time, economic security -- than the other party.

It is necessary to get past this. If you want to worry about something, don't worry about terrorism or a helpless old age. Worry about running into a deer on I-376 or what might happen to you if you try one too many "Pittsburgh left turns" across traffic. The chances of you and another terrorist attack in America being in the same place at the same time are about the same as a penny against the $8.2 trillion national debt. Let Mr. Bush scare himself; he might even be born again, again, if he looks America's current economic and military situation straight in the eye.