"The worst thing to post or upvote is something that's intensely but shallowly interesting. Gossip about famous people, funny or cute pictures or videos, partisan political articles, etc. If you let that sort of thing onto a news site, it will push aside the deeply interesting stuff, which tends to be quieter."
Seems like an appropriate reminder these days.
The fact is that as we march down the technology path, we must be very very aware of the affects on our government our advancement down that path has.
In most cases, we are seeing that not only is our government wholly ill-equipped to deal with a technologically advanced populous - they are also, potentially, criminally liable for malfeasance.
There have been a whole hell of a lot of posts about AS, but he is just the subject of something far more important: having a technologically savvy and capable government in a technologically advancing civilization.
None of the discussions I've read offer real political or social insight. What everyone's doing, instead, is the typically American thing of trying to work out how to respond to a crisis that has already happened.