Did the Boston authorities overreact?

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Devil's Advocate @ Feb 2 2007, 01:22 PM) [snapback]384497[/snapback]</div>

You're right, a lot of people do put too much faith in government. They also put a lot of their own money in to the operation of government and expect government to do more. The problem is that they don't know when to start taking the responsibility for their own lives and their own actions. If I put a device up in a public place that is artistic in nature and intent and someone lets their imagination or fear run wild and assume that it's a bomb and gets law enforcement and government all worked up and spends a lot of money to "deal" with the perceived terrorist act then it wouldn't be my fault that that other person jumped to conclusions and confused their opinion with fact. Ergo, it's that other person's fault, in large part, for starting the whole thing. If you were the government you might get all in a lather and blame me but my intent wasn't terrorism and terrorism wasn't on my mind. Terrorism, though, WAS on the mind of the person who started the incident by calling the authorities and it was on the minds of the authorities who didn't stop to think before reacting.

As far as the notion is that if the guys who put up the devices had gotten some permit then nothing would have happened in the first place is not that cut and dried. People often don't read signs and they don't bother to check to see if a permit was issued. Why do you think they put "Don't drink this, it's poison and will kill you" type warnings on turpentine and household cleaners? It's because at least one moron drank it and either he or his heirs sued the manufacturer. It's the manufacturer's fault that the moron drank something that they made for any purpose other than human consumption? No, of course not. Even if the manufacturer puts the warning on the can, some other moron will drink it because people don't read flipping warnings. Do morons like that bother to say 'boy was I stupid, it's no one's fault but mine'? No, a lot of us automatically look outside of ourselves for someone to blame; automatically assume that 'oh no, it wasn't me'.

Say what you like about Michael Moore, I believe that his Columbine movie's central premise was dead on: that the number one reason, if not the only reason, that the United States has so many homicides, not to mention a lot of other problems, is that we're so afraid of everything and everybody. That fear is our predominant emotion. That is why it's so easy to get us to stampede and act like "dumb, dangerous, panicky animals" (from Men in Black) by simply saying 'Terrorist!' or 'BOMB!'. It's the number one reason why it's so easy for government and big business to lead us around by the ring through our noses because we've given up the right to think for ourselves and given in to reacting in fear every time a leaf blows across the street and scares us to death. It's why we pull out our guns and start shooting. If all that we do is react in fear and reserve thinking for later, we're little better than the animals that we eat.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(PriusRos @ Feb 3 2007, 10:02 AM) [snapback]384825[/snapback]</div>

Who decides what is legitimate or not? Try to define that in a way that would stand up in court when you haul off some kids to jail for putting up a marketing campaign. Advertising is a legitimate need and that's what they were doing. So what you're saying is that if you deem it to be not legitimate that the authorities can do whatever they want to do and stick someone else with the blame? No, the issue is that just like a lot of other people do, when the authorities realized that they'd made a serious blunder they tried to cover it up by saying 'this is what we meant to do, yep, they're guilty of perpetrating a hoax...uh, they're terrorists uh it's not that we did anything wrong, those two kids are guilty of terrorism. Nope, we didn't overreact this was appropriate response to uh, a hoax, uh, a terrorist act of putting up electric signs of cartoon characters that we weren't cool enough to know about so that's terrorism.' Another example of the "authorities" overreacting, behaving badly and blaming someone too small to fight back.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Feb 3 2007, 01:36 PM) [snapback]384907[/snapback]</div>

And that's really the only thing that they could really be penalized for eventually, not filing for a permit. But my initial intent with that is that would a permit really have made a difference with the authorities? Would they have bothered to check before flipping out? Do we know for a fact that they didn't have a permit?