3,000 dead? Big Whoop

You'd think some people would stop to have thought #2 before they pull the trigger and publish thought #1. You'd think. People who ought to know better are saying things like this:

They kill 3,000 people every five years? For that we should cower in a corner? Jesus, in five years’ time we lose 200,000 people in traffic accidents.

And like this:

I will say that if there’s any silver lining in this latest threat it’s that we would have been talking about the loss of very few people in the grand scheme of things. It doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be horrible, but The Cold War presented us with an impending worldwide holocaust.

Everything from here on in this post is ironic:

• Why, thousands of women die in childbirth or from post-partum complications. Why should we be concerned if a few more die from botched back-alley abortions after Roe v. Wade is overthrown?
  
  
• Why, the number of gays who die in horrific and brutal gay-bashing attacks is very few compared to the number who die of HIV infection. In the grand scheme of things, why get worked up about it?
  
  
• Why, so what if we kill a few tens of thousands of Iraqis, or brutalize others in prison camps? Heck, if it hadn't been for our forebearance in the Cold War, there'd be no Iraqis, or anybody anywhere in the world except a few submarine crews shivering to death in Tasmania.
  
  
• Why, the number of blacks killed in Klan lynchings in the 1920s was lower than the number killed by industrial accidents and knife-fights. What's the big deal?
  

/ irony