Why are Americans afraid of everything? Well, it may sound like a cheap answer but it's got a lot to do with media. We have three major cable "news" channels going at it for 24 hours a day. I put news in quotes because half of the time, they're not even reporting on the news, unless you believed that Paris Hilton's jail episode really counted as hard-hitting and relevant. Everyday you hear about terrorists, war, terrorists, war, hidden terror cells within America, threats, general threats, rumors of threats, "gut-feelings" of threats. Local news isn't much better: Every night it's murder, assault, rape, drugs, murder, murderer on the loose! Even though the violent crime rate has been dropping since the 90s, the media coverage of crimes has been on the increase for quite some time. Every hour of every day, Americans hear of the threats to their lives from every angle, and it's no wonder why we're so afraid.

I've lived in areas where the crime rate is low, and where it is high, and those statistics don't really play into what is shown on the news at night.

Why do they do it? Ratings. The nightly news is but a business owned by a corporation, whether it be General Electric, Time Warner, News Corp, etc. To keep making money, to keep their "businesses" lucrative, they need ratings. Fear sells, violence sells, sex sells, it's very simple really.