| (you can surround statements with asterisks like so to get italics :) ) You're basically correct in your interpretation of my views on the security theater and the like. The sad, sorry state of the matter is that when your country is as wealthy as ours, and--more importantly--as large as ours, you kind of have to stop thinking about things any other way than statistically. It's a hell of a thing to say, but honestly, what's a few thousand deaths in a fluke attack? What's a few hundred million dollars worth of property damage? The likelihood of that happening to any one of us is so small as to be absurd--even less if everyone is armed, but that is a brand of crazy I don't expect to sell to everyone. The damage these attacks has actually done to us has been to invoke this media meme of the evil terrorists coming to kill us in our moment of distraction. The initial loss my country suffered has been compounded beyond all reason by the fear-mongering and reactionary policy-making. Worse still, while we fret about a loss of men and material over a decade ago, our government (with, apparently, our own consent and approval!) has gone on to attack our fundamental liberties and notions of decency so systematically that many still refuse to believe they're up to anything. All because people are dumb, and get afraid, and are susceptible to the same emotional pandering as they've always been. Oddly enough, I'm actually in agreement with javert about the fact that people should reason more--I just know that you can't write policy that depends on it. |