Obama: "I'm ready to negotiate with you, Iran." Iran: "Fuck you."

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

You seriously want Americans to die since a few Americans are not focusing on the issues YOU want them to focus on? No offense, but that's fucked up. Very fucked up.

Not what I said. Certainly not what I was trying to convey.

Populations in general will never focus on the most important issues at hand for multiple reasons. One, there will always be disagreements about what the most important issues are. There are multiple issues that can legitimately argued to be the "most important" (income disparity is one of them BTW), but we will never know which one is really the "most important" without hindsight and ability to travel multiple parallel universes.

No need to "travel multiple parallel universes." The big problems are pretty obvious.

Two, people are emotional and biased creatures. Populations will always focus on issues that appeal to their biased nature instead of issues that will actually help them most. This is seen throughout history. It is not just Americans, but EVERYONE. Also, our emotions gives us a biased perspective of the world around us, making some issues, ones that appeal to us, seem more (or less) important than they really are by concentrating on certain factors which may or may not be what you think they are.

I guess if you want to get all esoteric about it.... is this psychology class? {joking already!}

Remember, a lot of these OWSers are people that are jobless. The most pertinent and emotional issue to them right now is the economy and employment and they are using Wall Street as the lone scapegoat.

No doubt, but they have their weapon pointed in the wrong direction.

Also, a terrorist attack won't do shit to shift American's attention to "important" issues. All a terrorist attack will do is cause a panic and make us spend MORE money on precautions that will make us feel more safe, but actually not do much. Our government should have a better idea of how to protect our country and will do what is necessary whether it has public support or not.

The point is that we have already lost sight of 9/11, since that was the last time we were actually unified about anything. It was a tongue-in-cheek comment, relax.