Things I worry about more than the NSA:

[hedgehog]

Will my kids get jobs?

Will they and I be able to pay off their student loans?

Will the weather turn really, really ugly the next few years?

What is the sequester doing to people?

What is the sequester doing to the economy?

[NightWatcher]

1. Exactly. You've got pick your problems and reserve outrage

This is so far down the list of things that affect (hell, or even have an effect on) me.

Sure it's not a good thing, but like you said, I've bigger worries.

[truebluegreen]

2. If the answers to those questions are

"no" to the first two, "yes" to the third and "terrible things" to the last two, do you think civil unrest will follow?

And if it does, do you think what the NSA is doing will be of no account?

edited for clarity

[Buzz Clik]

4. A lot of people here are cheering for civil unrest regardless.

[Whisp]

9. There are a few in particular that salivate at the idea

of destruction and suffering.

wtf, what the hell... sick

[leftstreet]

13. Who are you afraid will 'suffer?'

The peon classes are already suffering

Oh...you must be worried civil unrest will make the wealthy elite suffer

[Whisp]

16. You ain't seen suffering yet if it all comes down

around your ears.

the wealthy elite will not, but comfy armchair strategists and 'historians' will get a cruel surprise and a wake up call to what suffering really is.

This isn't a child's Mecano set where if you don't like it you just punch it down and start over

[leftstreet]

17. Things have already 'come down around the ears' for millions

It's the comfy armchair strategists who aren't suffering

[Jessy169]

3. Your "worry list" is missing a few significant worry items

But I won't name them -- they're obvious -- and every one of them is significantly more potentially damaging to the economy -- to the world -- to LIFE as we know it, than the NSA collecting metadata on my cellphone calls and emails.

[Buzz Clik]

6. +1

[Auggie]

5. Those are sub-worries. The main worry:

will we be to halt the take-over of government by the 1%? Solve that one and the others go away.

[HappyMe]

7. I agree.

I'm worried about the effects of the sequester. People still go to bed hungry every night. The weather is fucked, I'm afraid.

[Catherina]

8. If those are your pressing questions, then you should worry about the NSA

all of those are related.

[randome]

10. If we lose the planet, nothing else will matter.

NSA crap doesn't even come close to the importance of dealing with climate change.

[hr]
[font color="blue"][center]I'm always right. When I'm wrong I admit it.
So then I'm right about being wrong.[/center][/font]
[hr]

[RC]

11. Au contraire

The same people that are bringing us NSA, are also bringing us climate change, and/or spear-heading denial of climate change.
Just different appendages of the same entity.

[noamnety]

12. I don't see them as separate issues.

Being able to bug and/or blackmail political opponents or corporate competitors or protesters affects the political and corporate landscape in ways that have major impact on each of those areas.

[woo me with science]

14. It is deeply disingenuous to try to isolate these issues.

or argue that people focusing on one are ignoring the other.

They are deeply, intimately connected.

Why do plutocrats put a sweeping, Constitution-assaulting, spying infrastructure into place? To increase their own power and control, to facilitate their corporate predatory agenda, and to prevent investigation of their abuses by a free press and dissent by the citizens they are systematically exploiting, stripping of their rights, and impoverishing.

Caring about poverty, the environment, and the job market REQUIRES that we take a powerful stand against this government spying. This sort of government abuse enables every corporate outrage that is the CAUSE of the problems you are talking about.

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. so what if the constitution and bill of rights are shredded