What is Next?
Just when I thought that last week had passed with relative ease-no County meetings and all the fuss and muss passed to this week I awoke to the news regarding the mass Orlando shootings. Many of us are busy planning vacations for ourselves or our families and some have just returned from a Memorial week jaunt to rest, relax and prepare for the dog days of summer. Traveling today just isn’t what it used to be. Yes, I know that things can and do happen at home. But, let’s face it. The more you travel the more risk that, one day, the crazies and zealots will find you.
Back when I was growing up in Jefferson County, I knew the exact gas station in Strawberry Plains that I had to reach to place a local call to Knoxville. The bright lights and big city seemed a lifetime away instead of just a few miles down the road. Granted, the world was smaller than it was for my grandparents or even my parents but it was nothing like it is today. Now, we text and call whoever, whenever. We face time, we Skype and Facebook. If we want to go old school, we email. Travel is fast and convenient. I can be nearly anywhere in world in a day and anywhere in the United States in a few hours.
What a shame that the state of society, driven by the few with agendas, has tarnished our freedom. And it has, make no mistake. I know that fear cannot control and that most agree that we must live our lives like the crazies and zealots do not exist or they win. But the simple truth is that we can’t and we don’t. I never go into a movie theater without actually looking at the exits and there is always that moment of apprehension when I go to a concert or big event. Tell me that those in Paris never feel a twinge of anxiety when dining outside or that any disturbance in a plane or mass transit doesn’t make hearts patter.
In the past when I traveled I knew if I had wandered into a dangerous situation. It was clear. Maybe it was a bad part of town or there was a little more action than I was looking for. The signs were there. Heed them or not, they were there. Now there are no signs. The safest places are the best targets, which translates to no safe places. It is sad that, in the name of political correctness, we have let what amounts to a few degrade life for the many. Somehow this has to stop.
Mid morning count on Sunday was that 50 were murdered and a little more than 50 were injured, some critically, in the Orlando nightclub shooting. Our politically correctness is this generation’s atomic bomb. We hand out excuses for behavior that is beyond any reasonable person’s definition of acceptable like a elementary school teacher hands out bathroom passes. This is not a left or right issue, this is a human issue. If radical Christians or radical Jews or radical druids were executing random mass killings it would not be tolerated. Why do we expect less of radical Muslims? Perhaps I am not politically correct, but I am tired of being politically correct in the face of murderous behavior. I have no problem with those of different beliefs but my peaceful acceptance of our differences does not guarantee their peaceful acceptance of our differences. My fundamental problem is with those that have a fundamental problem with me and mine.
Cafe’, movies, medical clinics, airplanes, concerts, sporting events, trains, subways, marathons, the list of where I am and you are no longer safe goes on and on. I am sick and tired of my freedom and rights being oppressed by those that have no respect for my Country, my family or my life. Historically, we, as Americans, have met face to face those who would rob us of our freedoms, we have defined the enemy and we have protected what we hold dear. It is time to call it like it is. The world, for us, has already changed and we may never return to the place we were, the place of security inside our own Country, the place where danger is recognizable. The zealots inspire the crazies and there is no reason or rhyme to their attacks. This is where we are now. But if we give up more ground to the crazies and zealots, what kind of world will our children and grandchildren live in? I shudder to think. We are not people who cower in the corner. Those that stood at the Old North Bridge, those that stormed the beach in Normandy, those that have fought for freedom in places far and wide must be shaking their heads at our turn the cheek response to this war on our Nation, on the World. We have turned the other cheek to the point that our neck is breaking. 50 murdered, 52 injured in ORLANDO. What are we waiting for?
