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The only impact terrorism has had on our society has been to open the door for a security versus rights discussion. The power grabbing government is destabilizi

by imglorp 11y ago

The only impact terrorism has had on our society has been to open the door for a security versus rights discussion. The power grabbing government is destabilizing society, not the terrorists.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
The families of the 3000 dead on 9/11 might disagree with you. Look, I agree with you in general. We over-reacted, and it has hurt us. But to say that terrorism has had no impact is overstating your case.
- imglorp 11y ago
  It sucks, of course, but such things are extreme outliers compared to other harmful things going on. Just looking at terrorism related deaths in the US in the last 15 years, let's round up to 4000. Now compare to the actually preventable deaths as I indicate in another comment: around 7.5 million. Terrorism is down in the noise and it's certainly not worth giving up our liberties or our democracy over.
- tedks 11y ago
  I grew up right outside DC (a few blocks from NIH) and while I didn't lose anyone on 9/11, I came pretty close and know plenty of people who did. The freedom we lost on 9/11 make the lives we lost pale in comparison. People grieve but get over the loss of their loved ones. Death is a normal part of life, however horrific, and people can cope with it. The things I've seen since 9/11, some of them I find harder to cope with. Police carrying submachine guns on street corners; every government building sprouting snipers and anti-tank barricades and razor wire; oblique-angled antennae-sprouting APCs and god knows what else carrying legions of power-armored riot police at every protest. America looks scarier now. It's hard to feel safe in an environment like this, where you feel besieged by an invisible enemy. Of course, this is exactly the intention of the people carrying out these policies, and ironically, also the intention of the terrorists. Politics make strange bedfellows indeed -- it's not hard to see how the Pentagon has seized on terrorism as a way to increase its own power, and conversely, as the Pentagon acts against "global terror," "global terror" is able to ratchet up the propaganda and recruit even more jihadists to the cause. Terrorism has had an impact because people in the United States wanted it to.
  - logfromblammo 11y ago
    Invisible enemy? I probably wouldn't be able to spot a genuine terrorist if it leaped out from behind a bush and shouted "boo!" But I have noticed how cops and bureaucrats and securibots have become more paranoid and fearful over the last 15 years. It has even created some kind of bizarre psychological feedback loop, wherein some cops use widespread belief in a mythical "war on cops" to cover up anything from honest mistakes to outright corruption, and the stories they make up reinforce the myth. Then formerly normal and expected behavior, such as protesters hurling verbal abuse or criminal suspects committing violence to evade capture, is recruited into the myth, becoming part of a coordinated conspiracy instead of just normal behavior. At some point, when the cops have thoroughly convinced themselves that someone is out to get them, and armed and trained themselves for war, another hand rises up to meet the one that was clapping, and the mythical war begins recruiting soldiers into the de facto opposing army. Treat people like your enemy for long enough, and they may oblige you by becoming one in fact. This is exactly the same phenomenon I have seen in foil-hatted crackpots. Once you get it in your head that lizard people are ruling the Earth, confirmation bias takes over, and you start seeing evidence of lizard people everywhere. If you stand up in the local city council meeting and accuse one of the members of being a lizard in disguise, you get thrown out of the meeting for being a disruptive lunatic, but in your mind it is because they don't want you blowing their cover. If you get a speeding ticket, it's because the lizard people have targeted you for retributive harassment. If your milk spoils before the sell-by date, it's because they're sneaking into your house and tampering with your food when you're away. You just cannot combat that kind of contagious insanity with facts and logic. The tiresome, paranoiac behavior of government officials just makes us all less tolerant of their ordinary, everyday bullshit. And that makes the marginal individuals, like the Ammon Bundy "Y'allQaeda" sit-in group at Malheur NWR, act out. And that winds the government officials up tighter. And that encourages the next group to blow their lids. And that winds the government officials up tighter.... Someone will eventually have to realize that government is manufacturing its own dissent, by acting like a bunch of dangerous lunatics. If it would just take a deep breath and do a little bit of introspection, it will become obvious just who needs to be fired in order to halt the spreading madness, and who needs to be promoted in their stead to reverse it.
- PhasmaFelis 11y ago
  Imglorp didn't say that terrorism had no impact at all, only that it's not directly destabilizing American society. 3000 deaths is an awful thing, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the population of the US--4200 people died in American car accidents in 2015 alone, but no one thinks that poor car safety is destabilizing society.
  - nxzero 11y ago
    Possible I'm missing what you're saying, but annually in America 30,000+ people are killed in auto related events. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths...
    - eric_h 11y ago
      I think he just accidentally dropped a 0.
- anti-terror 11y ago
  What if we'd just carried on with our lives after we'd mourned and buried our dead? How much impact would terrorism then had had on our lives? Not to trivialize 9/11, but the death toll was only about 0.1% of all deaths that year. Sad, but ultimately only a blip in statistics. The impact 9/11 has had is all due to what we did to ourselves, not what the terrorists did.
- the_af 11y ago
  I think the point is that, comparatively, terrorism has very little impact in the US. Of course the families of the 9/11 victims would disagree. If my family had been victims to a freak meteorite rain accident, I'd probably disagree with someone who claimed meteorite strikes are very low probability events and therefore should be low in the list of priorities.
- Zigurd 11y ago
  About a month of road deaths. What was the "terrorist" (hey, they were Muslim, so...) shooting spree used for? Laws to make us safer from actual terrorists? Nope. Laws to enable more spying and intrusion. The government is fearful that dissent will overtake it, and that's what the security state was built to stop.

by imglorp 11y ago

The only impact terrorism has had on our society has been to open the door for a security versus rights discussion. The power grabbing government is destabilizing society, not the terrorists.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

The families of the 3000 dead on 9/11 might disagree with you. Look, I agree with you in general. We over-reacted, and it has hurt us. But to say that terrorism has had no impact is overstating your case.

imglorp 11y ago
It sucks, of course, but such things are extreme outliers compared to other harmful things going on. Just looking at terrorism related deaths in the US in the last 15 years, let's round up to 4000. Now compare to the actually preventable deaths as I indicate in another comment: around 7.5 million. Terrorism is down in the noise and it's certainly not worth giving up our liberties or our democracy over.
tedks 11y ago
I grew up right outside DC (a few blocks from NIH) and while I didn't lose anyone on 9/11, I came pretty close and know plenty of people who did. The freedom we lost on 9/11 make the lives we lost pale in comparison. People grieve but get over the loss of their loved ones. Death is a normal part of life, however horrific, and people can cope with it. The things I've seen since 9/11, some of them I find harder to cope with. Police carrying submachine guns on street corners; every government building sprouting snipers and anti-tank barricades and razor wire; oblique-angled antennae-sprouting APCs and god knows what else carrying legions of power-armored riot police at every protest. America looks scarier now. It's hard to feel safe in an environment like this, where you feel besieged by an invisible enemy. Of course, this is exactly the intention of the people carrying out these policies, and ironically, also the intention of the terrorists. Politics make strange bedfellows indeed -- it's not hard to see how the Pentagon has seized on terrorism as a way to increase its own power, and conversely, as the Pentagon acts against "global terror," "global terror" is able to ratchet up the propaganda and recruit even more jihadists to the cause. Terrorism has had an impact because people in the United States wanted it to.
- logfromblammo 11y ago
  Invisible enemy? I probably wouldn't be able to spot a genuine terrorist if it leaped out from behind a bush and shouted "boo!" But I have noticed how cops and bureaucrats and securibots have become more paranoid and fearful over the last 15 years. It has even created some kind of bizarre psychological feedback loop, wherein some cops use widespread belief in a mythical "war on cops" to cover up anything from honest mistakes to outright corruption, and the stories they make up reinforce the myth. Then formerly normal and expected behavior, such as protesters hurling verbal abuse or criminal suspects committing violence to evade capture, is recruited into the myth, becoming part of a coordinated conspiracy instead of just normal behavior. At some point, when the cops have thoroughly convinced themselves that someone is out to get them, and armed and trained themselves for war, another hand rises up to meet the one that was clapping, and the mythical war begins recruiting soldiers into the de facto opposing army. Treat people like your enemy for long enough, and they may oblige you by becoming one in fact. This is exactly the same phenomenon I have seen in foil-hatted crackpots. Once you get it in your head that lizard people are ruling the Earth, confirmation bias takes over, and you start seeing evidence of lizard people everywhere. If you stand up in the local city council meeting and accuse one of the members of being a lizard in disguise, you get thrown out of the meeting for being a disruptive lunatic, but in your mind it is because they don't want you blowing their cover. If you get a speeding ticket, it's because the lizard people have targeted you for retributive harassment. If your milk spoils before the sell-by date, it's because they're sneaking into your house and tampering with your food when you're away. You just cannot combat that kind of contagious insanity with facts and logic. The tiresome, paranoiac behavior of government officials just makes us all less tolerant of their ordinary, everyday bullshit. And that makes the marginal individuals, like the Ammon Bundy "Y'allQaeda" sit-in group at Malheur NWR, act out. And that winds the government officials up tighter. And that encourages the next group to blow their lids. And that winds the government officials up tighter.... Someone will eventually have to realize that government is manufacturing its own dissent, by acting like a bunch of dangerous lunatics. If it would just take a deep breath and do a little bit of introspection, it will become obvious just who needs to be fired in order to halt the spreading madness, and who needs to be promoted in their stead to reverse it.
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
Imglorp didn't say that terrorism had no impact at all, only that it's not directly destabilizing American society. 3000 deaths is an awful thing, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to the population of the US--4200 people died in American car accidents in 2015 alone, but no one thinks that poor car safety is destabilizing society.
- nxzero 11y ago
  Possible I'm missing what you're saying, but annually in America 30,000+ people are killed in auto related events. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths...
  - eric_h 11y ago
    I think he just accidentally dropped a 0.
anti-terror 11y ago
What if we'd just carried on with our lives after we'd mourned and buried our dead? How much impact would terrorism then had had on our lives? Not to trivialize 9/11, but the death toll was only about 0.1% of all deaths that year. Sad, but ultimately only a blip in statistics. The impact 9/11 has had is all due to what we did to ourselves, not what the terrorists did.
the_af 11y ago
I think the point is that, comparatively, terrorism has very little impact in the US. Of course the families of the 9/11 victims would disagree. If my family had been victims to a freak meteorite rain accident, I'd probably disagree with someone who claimed meteorite strikes are very low probability events and therefore should be low in the list of priorities.
Zigurd 11y ago
About a month of road deaths. What was the "terrorist" (hey, they were Muslim, so...) shooting spree used for? Laws to make us safer from actual terrorists? Nope. Laws to enable more spying and intrusion. The government is fearful that dissent will overtake it, and that's what the security state was built to stop.