People aren't afraid of choking on peanut butter or car accidents because they feel they have some control over those situations. Terrorism creates fear by removing that sense of control.
Terrified people make stupid mistakes, sign away their rights with reckless abandon in the hope that it will allay their fears. No electorate is so easy to manipulate as one that is afraid.
Osama bin Laden would have killed more Americans by investing in Ford and GM+. And after the bailout, he would have made a profit too!
+ I'm not picking on Ford or GM here, they make fine cars. But automobiles kill far more people every year than terrorism has in the last decade.
Seems you rather missed the point of the whole thread; terrorism isn't about killing.
If humans were rational, terrorism wouldn't work. Driving your car to work is more dangerous than taking the subway to the world trade center, even if the WTC was demolished every year. But we are afraid of what we fear, not what will actually kill us. There are a lot of people who are eager to exploit that cognitive defect.
Doing "something", something which the security state crowd had ready in '96, is what got us the PATRIOT act and the TSA.
The strong anti-gun crowd is trying to wage a slow war against gun ownership that would result in an Australia-like confiscation of weapons and the repeal of the 2nd amendment. Don't let the "do somethings" win again.
/rare political post on HN
I think actual fear would have to come from injuries to someone you know and can feel empathy towards. Dunbars number suggests theres only very little of that based on the number of deaths due to terrorism.
Have you met the republican party? Their entire base lives off fear.
> I think actual fear would have to come from injuries to someone you know and can feel empathy towards.
It's not fear of death or injury, but fear of "other", of change, of being marginalized.
First off not all in the republican party can be characterized this way. You are painting with very broad strokes. Many turn the republican party because they are the closest they can get to their economic beliefs.
> It's not fear of death or injury, but fear of "other", of change, of being marginalized.
Do you honestly believe this? Do you get your views of republicans from reddit and articles you read about people talking about fox news?
Duh. Do I really need to preface every statement I make with "this is a generalization that doesn't apply to every single person" or can I just assume that you have some intelligence and don't assume everyone speaks in absolute terms and that when I said base, that quite obviously doesn't mean everyone.
> You are painting with very broad strokes.
That's rather the point of generalizing; it's useful.
> Many turn the republican party because they are the closest they can get to their economic beliefs.
Hopefully they're sobering up and realizing how ridiculous that choice was.
> Do you honestly believe this?
I observe this, it's not a matter of belief, I live in a red state and see it constantly.
> Do you get your views of republicans from reddit and articles you read about people talking about fox news?
I see, it couldn't possibly be because I know a lot of republicans, it must be Fox news. I live in Arizona, practically the center of republican crazy these days; I don't have to make shit up.
So did you choose the word "Beliefs" intentionally to evoke an evidence-light position?
Because Republican Party economic reality is further from those stated beliefs than Democratic Party economic reality.
Supposedly based on an actual study - I'll let you vet the sources ;)
A lot of "true" conservatives have left the party.
FTR, I don't classify myself as either liberal or conservative; I've been a member of the Democratic party and the Republican party, and left them both. I can't stand either of them. And I really can't stand hypocrisy.
Good lord. How old are you that you haven't realize this "fear of other" stuff is just academia bullshit?
That's not to say Fox has a high quality broadcast. It doesn't. But it's no worse than CNN or CBS, and it's certainly better than MSNBC.
Yes, the half that want to be lied to because reality is too distressing for them; so distressing in fact that they call reality liberal media bias.
Nobody has yet 'officially' explained what Saddam did with the WMD we know for a fact he had. Shipping the weapons to Syria is the only logical explanation for their sudden disappearance.
Conservatives distrust the media because they don't like hearing things that don't jive with the belief system and reality is full of those things; it's as simple as that. Colbert nailed it when he said reality has a liberal bias, as did Stewart when he dubbed Fox bullshit mountain.
If it's false equivalence then the difference lands in my favor. Fox has never used obviously fake documents to try to throw an election like that. And there's reason to believe "Fox lies more than any other station", no matter how many times liberals tell each other that's the case. The lying from CNN and (of course) MSNBC has been epic over the last few weeks.
Oh, and by the way, Rathergate was CBS, not CNN. At least try to get your facts straight.
>Conservatives distrust the media because they don't like hearing things that don't jive with the belief system and reality is full of those things; it's as simple as that.
This is just projection. Leftists in the US are angry at Fox because they no longer control 100% of the narrative. The idea this has anything to do with objective reporting is just conceit on your part.
>Colbert nailed it when he said reality has a liberal bias, as did Stewart when he dubbed Fox bullshit mountain.
The reason people on the left find Colbert and Stewart funny is they tell you what you want to hear. What Colbert "nailed" was his audience, and if you had any capacity for self reflection you would realize this.
It might surprise you to know that, far from being a Fox news "junkie", I haven't watched broadcast television at all for years. But why would you be right about this when you're wrong about literally everything else? People like you are why the founding fathers thought a restricted franchise is a good idea, and I think they were right.
We haven't yet seen evidence of the head of CNN or CBS sending memos governing the angle under which the day's stories should be viewed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_News_Channel_controversies#...).
However terrible CNN and CBS may be (take for example their outright cheerleading for the second iraq war), they remain organisations devoted to covering the news. Fox is devoted to controlling the news, which isn't the same thing.
Why didn't CBS fire Dan Rather immediately when Rathergate came to light? It's hard for me to imagine Fox easing out someone slowly after they'd left its reputation in taters.
>However terrible CNN and CBS may be (take for example their outright cheerleading for the second iraq war), they remain organisations devoted to covering the news.
I haven't seen much evidence of that, especially lately when they've used every possible angle after the Connecticut shooting in their full-throated advocacy of gun control.
Many people would argue exactly the opposite
Since 2001, there has been no terrorist activity against the US. You are told about threats the war on terror has dealt with, but no actual action or actors can be pointed to yet the government is keeps the fear of terror alive. They have done far more to that end than any terrorist organization has. This causes the population in general to accept any course of action that they are told will deal with that looming threat, but it never seems to do so.
Once side of the government generates and keeps the fear alive, the other side uses the fear to do what they wish. Neither side wants the fear to go away.
The US Government is the largest group terrorizing the US population today. They use the war on terror to do it.
I've not heard many people seriously argue that the TSA's mandate is to alleviate fear, much less argue that the TSA carries out said mandate successfully.
1. Look at Breivik for example. Or the latest nutter shooting up a school.
Remember how the DOJ refused to prosecute? Wierd.
(Follow the links for a bunch of other relevant articles)
From an outsider perspective, this is very relevant of what US has became. I'm always surprised that a country which places freedom as the highest value tends to give away all its civil rights so easily.
Sounds to me like people behind 9/11 attacks have succeeded : US is not fighting fear, it's diving into it, more and more every year, hence the loss of freedom for its people.
Then it is the greatest irony of all time that people have become more fearful of surveillance and persecution by their own governments than some terrorists who live overseas.
Not to say it's without merit, but this really doesn't preoccupy people's thoughts in other countries. I've tried to explaining to Japanese and British people that we have guns to prevent potential government oppression and to be able to take our personal protection into our own hands. They look at you ask if you're crazy/paranoid.
The whole slippery slope stuff doesn't resonate at all.
The whole thing basically boils down to: "If I were to potentially at some point in the indefinite future plot anti government activities through my email I want to be sure that big brother doesn't read it"
This just seems ludicrous to most people.
That's a good one.