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Goddamn

Dammit.

British HFers, check in!

--Patrick

IED device, from the sounds of it. Nails as shrapnel. Intended to injure upon detonation.

19 dead, 59 injured so far.
And of course, two weeks to elections. It's funny - not haha funny, for sure - how terrorist and Russian attempts at destabilization so often serve the exact same goal, pushing the electorate to extremes on the right and keeping people scared.

And they fall for it every time. More people have probably died choking on food or falling down stairs. Or gotten killed by their partner. Terrorism only works because we let it.

Dave said:

And they fall for it every time. More people have probably died choking on food or falling down stairs. Or gotten killed by their partner. Terrorism only works because we let it.

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I don't think we can compare accidents to mass murder. We can compare Sandy Hook to Manchester, but still there are different motivations.

It's really sad how desensitized we have become to these things.

But you can control mass murders about as well as accidents, which is exactly my point. Fear and paranoia for really no good reason.

Not to mention perfectly avoidable deaths greatly dwarf most of this type of deaths.

Of course, it all depends on who and what you're willing to sacrifice. Completely banning all smoking, quintupling all tobacco products' prices, would save thousands of lives. Ending world hunger is a reatively cheap thing to do and would save tens of thousands of lives. The AHCA will probably affect thousands of lives negatively and defintely cause early deaths for thousands.

Depending on your definition of causes and how to apply them, the American health care system may well have caused more deaths than all terror attacks ever on the globe together.

It's all a matter of perspective. Drunk driving? More dead people than terrorists.
The Afghanistan war? More dead people than terrorists.
The Iraq war? More dead people than terrorists.
And so on, and so on. People constantly cause death. Terrorism - especially terrorism in the West - is comparatively minor.

Yup. I say again, terrorism only works because we allow it to.

I guess I am failing to see your point. I am not wanting to debate. I just don't know what you are suggesting/implying.

drawn_inward said:

I guess I am failing to see your point. I am not wanting to debate. I just don't know what you are suggesting/implying.

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I think what @Dave is saying is that terrorism only works because we have a strong reaction to it. If we didn't have such a strong (and often mindless/reflexive) reaction to it, terrorists would be less likely to terrorize because they'd know we weren't going to make such a big deal about stuff.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

I think what @Dave is saying is that terrorism only works because we have a strong reaction to it. If we didn't have such a strong (and often mindless/reflexive) reaction to it, terrorists would be less likely to terrorize because they'd know we weren't going to make such a big deal about stuff.

--Patrick

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Bullets only work because our bodies have a strong reaction to them. Terror and asymmetric warfare are tried and true, fantastic attack angles when your targets are human groups.

We freak out when shit like this happens, giving hour after hour of news to the events, whether it's school shootings or a suicide bombing. Then politicians get a hold of it and start passing draconian laws curtailing freedoms, which makes the news report it even more, which makes it a perfectly viable way to get your face on TV for whatever reason. This is a terrible thing to say and I realize the callousness, but all over a mere 22 people. 22 people dying is nothing. Happens all the time. People get sick, people get in accidents. Hell, 34,000 people in the US commit suicide every year - that's a little more than 93 a day. Yes, I realize that these things don't happen all at once like a major terrorist event like this, but the way we react to such a minute loss of life (statistically) only ensures that the terror attacks and mass shootings will continue.

If in the news they mentioned it, didn't name the assailant, and moved on it would stop. Terrorism only works because we let it.[DOUBLEPOST=1495637871,1495637801][/DOUBLEPOST]

Denbrought said:

Bullets only work because our bodies have a strong reaction to them.

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I'm not talking physical reactions. I'm talking psychological, media, and policy reactions.

Outliers be outlyin, yo.

We sensationalize terrorist attacks specifically because they are so uncommon. It's part of our classification system, which has done a fantastic job of keeping us alive, as a species, for so long.

When we see something new or uncommon we spend a great deal of time paying attention to it, figuring it out, understanding how it impacts us (individually/selfishly) and once we've classified a thing, we cease to pay much attention to it or new instances of it - only enough to see if it matches well enough with a previously seen thing that we can apply the proper response and move on.

It's not even a form of fatigue as some seek to describe it, it is, as @drawn-inward correctly points out, a form of desensitization. We are no longer sensitive to things we've previously classified. As we raise our children, they first look at us to see what our reaction is to a new thing. Go ahead and go to the park with toddlers and newborns and watch them - see how often they glance around, then glance at their parents to learn the proper response to a new stimulus. They don't always accept that, but they seek clues and hints and learn, in this way, lessons we've already learned but don't think to specifically pass on, teach, or train. It's below our personal radar. As we age we look to other "authorities", some the news, some certain pundits, some look to mentors.

And the terrorists have to keep changing their attacks up, because the same old bombings are not bringing the attention they seek (as well as it simply being harder to conduct a similar operation once the authorities figure out the means and method used for the first one).

@Dave, it appears, is suggesting that we actively desensitize ourselves, as a society, so that terrorist attacks don't become shocking major new items every time, and we become only as interested as necessary to close off one more loophole/means/method. I don't think it's possible, but I don't see a problem with the suggestion. It simply goes against human nature and our instinctive drive to understand new stimulus well enough that we can classify it and "program" our response.

Dave said:

I'm not talking physical reactions. I'm talking psychological, media, and policy reactions.

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It was an analogy--a human society as a human organism, where a physical wound also causes a host of reactions (pain, adrenaline, hemostasis, ...).

I don't think there's a magical fix, or we'd probably have it by now. Last century's wars included plenty of experimentation on how to shape the home front.