5 ms·

Yeah, here too in the UK but worse. As I have said before even the satirists don't seem to give a toss. The level of apathy is stunning. Frankly, I think the te

by alan_cx 13y ago

Yeah, here too in the UK but worse. As I have said before even the satirists don't seem to give a toss. The level of apathy is stunning. Frankly, I think the terror scare stories have worked a treat, as I suppose is predictable. Which is amazing since we in the UK lived through a real(1) terrorist campaign with the IRA. All I hear is, "well, I don't care if the silly spooks see my boring facebook, email, shopping data. Ha, ha to them if they are that interested.". And that is it. Heh, even heard, "well, I've got nothing to hide". I have to say, I don't really care any more. I have had enough. Yeah, I don't like what the US is doing, but my lot are in it up their necks, and are literally proud of it. My people don't care, my media don't care, no one cares. So I am the odd one out. Fine, we live in a so called democracy, so the people can have what they damn well deserve. My only hope is that I see this get really out of hand, and "normal" people start to get hurt by this. Then I can just stand there and laugh my sweet behind off at them, asking, "who did you vote for?". As for me, I'll be a lot more careful, increasingly use security and simply act in a more aware way. Its all I can do. :( (1)I say "real" because the "troubles" lasted over 30 years with sustained attacks of many kinds were successfully launched through that entire period, including the bombing of our entire government. Way worse than anything evil Muslims have done to the UK. I was indirectly involved, I know real terror. A one off attack is NOT terror. 30 odd years sustained, damn well is. Oh, a lot of it funded by Americans who saw the IRA as freedom fighters.

Silhouette 13y ago
All I hear is, "well, I don't care if the silly spooks see my boring facebook, email, shopping data. Ha, ha to them if they are that interested.". The problem with a lot of civil liberties situations is that while the consequences of being the victim of a deliberate abuse or simply a mistake can be severe for the individual, the probability of being such a victim remains low, particularly if you're a good little citizen and keep your head down. This allows the kind of "it would never happen to me" mentality that Pastor Niemoeller tried to warn us about. Realistically, the expected damage to an individual citizen from (for example) a busted economy or poor healthcare or low quality education really is much higher than the expected damage from a government failing to respect the civil liberties of its citizens, so the "meh, got bigger things to worry about" crowd do have a point here. It's just unfortunate that there is a lot of danger in the world and most people don't have the time to expend on every possible danger to them or their loved ones, so they naturally favour concentrating on the dangers they perceive to be the biggest threats. We're supposed to have representative governments as a way to balance this problem, so that the people who are there as professional public servants have more time to consider the issues that aren't numbers 1-N on the list. Alas, numbers 1-N on the list then become the deciding factors in the elections that determine those representatives instead, and anything from N+1 on down can be handled or mishandled as the representatives and whatever special interest groups have their ear see fit. I'd like to say I have a solution to this, but it seems to be an inherent problem built into typical modern political systems. However, it's deeply ironic that many governments' own actions in these cases seem to be doing exactly the opposite, letting the fear of a high-impact, low-probability event like a major terrorist attack dominate their agenda rather than dealing with vastly more important issues like the ones I mentioned before. I still don't quite understand what's really in it for them to constantly perpetuate the fear of crime and terrorism, nor for the media to collaborate in doing so. Surely spending all that time and money and public attention on high-profile, high-value projects that would actually make a difference to a lot of people's lives would give them more political capital come election time, but at the moment it seems as if the political classes have lost all perspective.
- jedbrown 13y ago
  One can say the same thing about the likelihood of terrorism impacting any given person, yet that has captured the imagination of the public.
  - ajuc 13y ago
    Because there's no better story than burning skyscrapper.

by alan_cx 13y ago

Silhouette 13y ago

All I hear is, "well, I don't care if the silly spooks see my boring facebook, email, shopping data. Ha, ha to them if they are that interested.". The problem with a lot of civil liberties situations is that while the consequences of being the victim of a deliberate abuse or simply a mistake can be severe for the individual, the probability of being such a victim remains low, particularly if you're a good little citizen and keep your head down. This allows the kind of "it would never happen to me" mentality that Pastor Niemoeller tried to warn us about. Realistically, the expected damage to an individual citizen from (for example) a busted economy or poor healthcare or low quality education really is much higher than the expected damage from a government failing to respect the civil liberties of its citizens, so the "meh, got bigger things to worry about" crowd do have a point here. It's just unfortunate that there is a lot of danger in the world and most people don't have the time to expend on every possible danger to them or their loved ones, so they naturally favour concentrating on the dangers they perceive to be the biggest threats. We're supposed to have representative governments as a way to balance this problem, so that the people who are there as professional public servants have more time to consider the issues that aren't numbers 1-N on the list. Alas, numbers 1-N on the list then become the deciding factors in the elections that determine those representatives instead, and anything from N+1 on down can be handled or mishandled as the representatives and whatever special interest groups have their ear see fit. I'd like to say I have a solution to this, but it seems to be an inherent problem built into typical modern political systems. However, it's deeply ironic that many governments' own actions in these cases seem to be doing exactly the opposite, letting the fear of a high-impact, low-probability event like a major terrorist attack dominate their agenda rather than dealing with vastly more important issues like the ones I mentioned before. I still don't quite understand what's really in it for them to constantly perpetuate the fear of crime and terrorism, nor for the media to collaborate in doing so. Surely spending all that time and money and public attention on high-profile, high-value projects that would actually make a difference to a lot of people's lives would give them more political capital come election time, but at the moment it seems as if the political classes have lost all perspective.

jedbrown 13y ago
One can say the same thing about the likelihood of terrorism impacting any given person, yet that has captured the imagination of the public.
- ajuc 13y ago
  Because there's no better story than burning skyscrapper.