Multiple Polls: Americans Are More Afraid of the GOVERNMENT than TERRORISTS

maybe people are starting to fear terrorism less, with 9/11 so far in the mirror and boston being the only islamic terror event against civilians on us soil.

which would be good - the way everyone has been frightened for so long has not been healthy for the country.

Kind of a silly poll. You also might ask an American if they are more afraid of being attacked by a lion, or a tiger.

genuine random a hole wrote:

Kind of a silly poll. You also might ask an American if they are more afraid of being attacked by a lion, or a tiger.

Well, let's see.

Before 9/11 there was a very miniscule chance of someone being killed in a terrorist attack.

We have since given up/had taken away many of our freedoms in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists. In return for this, we now have only a minuscule chance of being killed in a terrorist attack.

Seems pretty right on to me.

help me out here - what freedoms have been taken away? Serious question. And I don't count the TSA routine at airports as a lost freedom.

I suppose you could count the electro surveilance that reads our e-mails. but even at the margins of us society - what freedoms are you thinking of that have taken away?

agip wrote:

help me out here - what freedoms have been taken away? Serious question. And I don't count the TSA routine at airports as a lost freedom.

If you don't count lost freedom as lost freedom, you're too irrational for anyone to deal with.

agip wrote:

help me out here - what freedoms have been taken away? Serious question. And I don't count the TSA routine at airports as a lost freedom.

I suppose you could count the electro surveilance that reads our e-mails. but even at the margins of us society - what freedoms are you thinking of that have taken away?

I would say largely the surveillance that reads our emails, listens in on phone calls, gives personal info from any source (doctors, accountants etc...), all without warrants or "probable cause" and instead just the general idea that it is "national security related". The government with the courts' backing resisting ever-harder the release of even the most innocuous of documents under the FOIA. Basically everything that goes with the entrenchment of the national surveillance state we now seem to live in with our leaders making more and more decisions for "us and our own good" behind closed doors.

And all this, mind you, with no significant increase in our "security at home"

So they don't fear terrorists as much the government because they trust the government will keep us safe from terrorists.

yeah, I hear you. I think there is much observation out there.

but...

I suppose it depends how you define freedom. that a vast surveillance system is observing us all the time somehow didn't catch two islamic terrorists in a large city as they moved back and forth between the us and the muslim caucausus, telling people how devout a muslim he was, posting it on the internet, then finally assembles an arsenal of weapons, pipe bombs and pressure cooker type ieds and manages to deploy said arsenal successfully...

I am not sure any real freedoms have been taken away.

sorry for the tortured syntax there, but you get my point. And in the end the gov't didn't even catch the guy - private photos did, and a guy who had a boat in his backyard.

So either this surveillance state is incompetent or it is being held in check somehow.

probably a better argument you could make is stop and frisk in NYC - until recently cops would search black kids without cause. But that is not as interesting as the NSA so it is ignored.

the muslim-socialist conspiracy, i suppose?

The freedoms that we have lost, or never had in our lifetimes, include (but are by no means limited to) the following:

-the freedom to store our wealth in a currency that is safe from inflation.

-the freedom to keep our income.

-the freedom to run our businesses as we please.

-the freedom to establish our own terms of employment with our employers.

-the freedom to act on our own judgment in medical affairs; to choose our own providers (other than those who are government-approved), the freedom to enter any form of a healthcare profession (except through government-controlled channels), to purchase the treatments we want (other than those that are government-approved), and the freedom to own and control the disposition of our own medical records.

-the freedom to remain free from many forms of BLATANTLY, UTTERLY ILLEGAL government surveillance, searches and seizures.

-the freedom to live in a country where we can reasonably expect the government to respect ANY of our Constitutional rights. We are clearly on a trajectory toward not merely "big," but omnipotent and autonomous government, and every day the defenders of all-powerful government (like agip) come up with worse and more despicable rationalizations for the government takeover of America.

well there you go. virtually none of this makes any sense.

1)free from inflation? No one has ever been free by this definition.

2)freedom from taxes? really? what citizen of a civilized country pays no taxes/ Again, no one has ever been free by this definition.

3) more of the same. you want zero regulation of businesses? Do you like meat inspection and buildings that don't collapse, killing 400 people like in bangladesh? I do.

none of our constitutional rights? come on. no right is absolute and no right has ever been absolute. Free speech, bearing arms - these are not absolute and you know it.

I am worried about surveillance, but I'm not sure it is very effective.

Anyone else with actual facts want to take a shot at showing what freedoms have been taken away from us?

You now can be arrested as a terrorist and be held indefinitely without a trial. That's totally unprecedented in US history and a major breach of the Constitution. You can be executed by the government without a trial or conviction as long as the president deems you a national security threat. Wiretaps are much easier to do. And I do count all the TSA crap as a lost freedom.

agip wrote:

well there you go. virtually none of this makes any sense.

1)free from inflation? No one has ever been free by this definition.

2)freedom from taxes? really? what citizen of a civilized country pays no taxes/ Again, no one has ever been free by this definition.

3) more of the same. you want zero regulation of businesses? Do you like meat inspection and buildings that don't collapse, killing 400 people like in bangladesh? I do.

none of our constitutional rights? come on. no right is absolute and no right has ever been absolute. Free speech, bearing arms - these are not absolute and you know it.

I am worried about surveillance, but I'm not sure it is very effective.

Anyone else with actual facts want to take a shot at showing what freedoms have been taken away from us?

I'm not going to bother reading your deranged posts anymore. I stopped reading this one at "nobody has ever been free by this definition." You view everything in purely relative terms, whereby in your sorry excuse for a mind, any outrage or abominable act of government is validated by a comparison to another government engaged in the same despicable act. "Freedom" has no firm definition to you, so the bar as to what constitutes a "free" country gets lower and lower as the world sinks to a lower rung of hell every day. It won't be another 50 years before people like you think a "free" country is one in which its citizens spend less time in government work camps than they do in other countries on average. F*ck off.

HRE wrote:

You now can be arrested as a terrorist and be held indefinitely without a trial. That's totally unprecedented in US history and a major breach of the Constitution. You can be executed by the government without a trial or conviction as long as the president deems you a national security threat. Wiretaps are much easier to do. And I do count all the TSA crap as a lost freedom.

can US citizens he held indefinitely w/o a trial? If true, that is unacceptable. Examples?

by execution you are probably referring to drone strikes on a US citizen in yemen or something like that. That is probably illegal but a lost freedom? bit of a stretch, that. Does any citizen of any country have the freedom to go to another country and plot violence against it? Not really a freedom, is it?

wiretaps are an issue, I'll grant you that. But some of the excesses have been pulled back in, I believe. still a problem, although now you have to have a warrant from a judge, which is the same as always, so I'm not sure how much of a change that is.

TSA: well, ok. and every office bldg in manhattan has security guards, and at the met museum they poke through your purse. annoying, yes. Loss of freedom...I don't think it rises to that level.

and in any case, the new freedoms brought on by the internet and wealth have added freedoms that previous generations could not dream of.

So maybe there has been a tradeoff of bags being checked, but in return you get all the knowledge of the world, for free.

honestly, do you think someone of the 1880s was more free than today? he lived to 50, had terrible health, perhaps illiterate, no health care, no retirement...I'm not sure that is a sort of freedom I would want.

__

ok - bye.

Americans are 8x more likely to be killed by a policeman than killed by a terrorist.

Without CIA, there would be NO war in the middle east, by lack of an enemy to shoot at. CIA funds and trains "rebels". This is not a secret. Just little advertised.

All relevant govt agencies look really bad with regards to Boston. The inconsistencies are piling up. Fake blood dispensers littering the scene, amputees who fail to bleed to death, and being wheeled rather than carried off.

Even though is was long openly spread, now the drill part of the bombings is denied. The first bomb was fake. Some runners fell, some barely looked over. Pools of blood, and a confused uninjured person sitting in it. And everywhere people in hoodies, really dark sunglasses and weirrd hairdo's. Blood was even administered to bodies after the blasts, as if they were not prepared well.

One guy, get this, was filmed throwing bags of flour or dust over victims, so they'd look really bad.

Multiple men in shredded clothes (no girls unfortunately), running all over the place, jumping over other victim, but not a drop of blood on them. Yeah, Shrapnel whecked my jeans and shirt, but I am fine otherwise.

Why is the drill being denied? That's very suspicious.

Oh, and the 19y/o unarmed kid they emptied dozens of magazines on (to take him alive for questioning). Was photographed by a runner. He shows on his phone. Kid had a backpack. But on the FBI released "original", it was photoshopped out. So, he was guilty. They found a (perfectly complete) exploded backpack, after all? Bomb take multiple limbs, but lies there neatly in a smaller place than it would have occupied when intact.

You folks in the US better be very afraid. And guns are not going to save you from SWAT teams going door to door as they did in Watertown. Ran over the suspects, and pumped him full of lead. He is guilty, as he can't speak anymore. The 19y/o brother somehow survived. His CIA/FBI training was stellar. Muslims terrorists (if they even exist) don't run and hide, they take as many as possible to their grave. None of the sort. Why did they not die with the supposed backpack huh? Patsies, nothing more.

Good luck with your guns and ammo. Shoot a few troopers doing their jobs searching your house for anything suspect (eating non-GMO food is now an act of terrorism). Thye'll come back with a tank and not ask too many complicated questions.

The press is your biggest problem, they are OWNED. Go to their headquarters and demand proper facts, not parroting off latest official narrative that is totally unbelievable.

When and where did asking for truth become being an anti-govt conspiracy theorist? In the US, and it started peaking after 911. If you still believe in the official narrative on 911, after 12 years, you deserve to get the Darwin principle treatment.

Bradley Manning was held without trial or without being charged with anything for well over a year, maybe over two years though he finally was charged and is currently being tried. It is now possible though, for the government to do that to anyone. The fact that it has been done only once or even if it hasn't been done at all does not change the fact that a protection afforded to ALL US citizens regardless of circumstances has now been removed. And it was removed arbitrarily. All that needs to happen is for the government to declare you a threat to national security. Obama has vowed that he'll never actually use this power but he also vowed never to cut Social Security benefits and he's trying to do that. No reason to think he won't change his mind on this one as well and even if he doesn't eventually we'll have a president who'll use it.

It may well be that no citizen has the right to go to another country and plot violence against the country s/he left. But an American always had the right to a trial before being punished for plotting or executing that violence. The guy we're talking about was never proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt yet the government decided to execute him anyway.

Your last paragraphs are sort of confusing. Actually, I think you're confusing living standards with freedom. If you lock someone into a "country club" prison with Internet access, cable TV, a library, a prison doctor, heat and air conditioning, an intramural basketball league, tolerable food,etc., that person has a much better living standard than a free person living in 1880. But he isn't free.

g8r wrote:

Before 9/11 there was a very miniscule chance of someone being killed in a terrorist attack.

We have since given up/had taken away many of our freedoms in the name of keeping us safe from terrorists. In return for this, we now have only a minuscule chance of being killed in a terrorist attack.

There was a very miniscule chance of being killed in a terrorist attack before 9/11.

There was a very miniscule chance of being killed in a terrorist attack during 9/11.

And there is still a very miniscule chance of being killed in a terrorist attack after 9/11.

None of this miniscule chance owes anything to the government's fascist methods, and it is depressing when people believe it does.

Consider the day 9/11 itself. On that day 3000 Americans died in New York. The chance of an American dying in a terrorist attack on that day was 3000/300,000,000 or 0.001 percent.

Such grandiose terrorist attacks being difficult to carry out, naturally they don't happen every day. But it's worth noting that 10,000 Americans die every day anyway, terrorists or not. Every single day.

Now imagine the uproar if there were five 9/11's a year. That would be some damn resourceful terrorists to pull that off. But they still wouldn't manage to murder as many Americans as other Americans do in one year. And nobody "gives up freedoms" just because of Americans murdering Americans. Well that they don't, because 15,000 murders gives you a .005 percent chance of being murdered per year. Which is about as safe as life can get.

Here are some things more dangerous than murderers and terrorists:

) bad eating habits - hundreds of thousands of victims per year

) cars - tens of thousands of victims per year

) your own self - over 35,000 suicides in 2010.

) your hospital - more than 20,000 deaths from MRSA per year

MRSA is a great example because it illustrates how terrorists are about being scary, not dangerous. News media make billions of dollars by scaring you. Being scared is America's national pastime and is big business. Whenever you need to feel scared, you can watch a zombie movie, or ride a roller coaster, or one of the countless things available for fat, complacent, bored, weak, snivilized people to simulate being alive.

Snivilized people are much like domesticated rats. They wake up in one box and spend the day traveling between a series of other boxes in a motor-driven box, just like a rodent in a pet-store habitat. Every need is taken care of by the invisible hand of an unseen master. They are soft, pudgy and unfit for survival in the wild. They are tame and unthreatened. Nothing bad ever happens to them. But human physiology cannot tolerate such a dull lifestyle. It has to be periodically shocked with adventures and scary things, or they will grow diabetic and obese and die.

They're getting diabetic and obese and dying anyway, but that's another story.