[jlgreco]

> Thought experiment: imagine if half of these foiled plots had occurred. In other words, imagine if every 6 months or so we had a terrorist attack that killed a dozen people (and sometimes more). > Do you think the American public would take the HN line that it's still a very small number of total deaths, similar to the number of people dying from hot tap water? Or would they elect politicians with a very aggressive anti-privacy regime that would be "necessary" to eliminate these routine acts of terror?

The conditions of your thought experiment are not realized but the American public still reacts as you hypothesise they would if terrorist attacks were a semi-annual occurrence.

People are fucking awful at reasoning about rare but dramatic events. This should come as a surprise to nobody.