"One thing about these storms, we know how disruptive things can be when we depend on the system to keep working. What would happen if the terrorists do it? Knock down the power, destroy bridges, cut the water supply?"
About this Quote
Rivera is doing what cable news has always rewarded: taking a real, visceral disruption and immediately converting it into a larger, scarier story that keeps the viewer locked in. The line starts with the intimacy of shared experience - “these storms” - a moment when the system’s fragility stops being abstract and becomes personal: no lights, no water, no way home. Then he pivots hard into a rhetorical hijack: if nature can do this by accident, imagine what humans could do on purpose.
The intent is less policy analysis than escalation. By framing basic infrastructure as a single “system,” Rivera compresses a sprawling web of public utilities into something that sounds like one switch terrorists might flip. That simplification is the point; it makes vulnerability feel total, immediate, and narratively clean. The questions aren’t genuine invitations to think. They’re a guided tour through worst-case scenarios, each clause a new cinematic cut: power, bridges, water. You can hear the producer’s clock ticking.
The subtext is also a quiet indictment: we’ve built a society that runs on confidence. The more seamless daily life feels, the more terrifying its interruption becomes. In a post-9/11 media climate, storms double as rehearsal footage for catastrophe, and “terrorists” becomes the all-purpose lens through which any crisis can be interpreted.
Context matters: this is the era when vulnerability itself became a beat. Rivera’s quote captures how quickly disaster coverage can turn into fear coverage - not by lying, but by choosing the most electrifying “what if” and letting it stand in for reality.
The intent is less policy analysis than escalation. By framing basic infrastructure as a single “system,” Rivera compresses a sprawling web of public utilities into something that sounds like one switch terrorists might flip. That simplification is the point; it makes vulnerability feel total, immediate, and narratively clean. The questions aren’t genuine invitations to think. They’re a guided tour through worst-case scenarios, each clause a new cinematic cut: power, bridges, water. You can hear the producer’s clock ticking.
The subtext is also a quiet indictment: we’ve built a society that runs on confidence. The more seamless daily life feels, the more terrifying its interruption becomes. In a post-9/11 media climate, storms double as rehearsal footage for catastrophe, and “terrorists” becomes the all-purpose lens through which any crisis can be interpreted.
Context matters: this is the era when vulnerability itself became a beat. Rivera’s quote captures how quickly disaster coverage can turn into fear coverage - not by lying, but by choosing the most electrifying “what if” and letting it stand in for reality.
Quote Details
| Topic | War |
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