Yep, that's exactly it. When this link popped up on HN, I read the article and though "wow, that's horrible. Something should be done here!". But tomorrow my mind will be full of other concerns, and a Yemenite I don't know who has been detained without charge or trial for 10 years on a military base far away by a government that is not mine is simply not on my radar.

Sad, and shameful, but true.

Yep. Most Americans have the attention span of a gnat. Plenty of us care, we just get distracted by other things. And that's the point really. The government wants us distracted. It's called Negative Liberty.

Most who read that article wil be outraged. They'll share it on FB. And forget it by Friday when the net big movie, sport event, or parade comes along.

That might have something to do with the fact that we have problems to deal here. The prisoners at Guantanamo might seem like a bigger deal if we did not have millions of prisoners who were never tried by a jury in the USA. We might actually care about this particular Obama campaign promise if there were not so many other broken promises.