AMERICA - The Right Way!! (Day 633) [Remember the Trade Center!!]

Various News Sources and FReepers | October 15, 2002 | All of Us

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

We will not live in fear! [President Bush]

Good morning!! Do not let the victims of the attacks on New York and Washington, nor the brave members of our Nation's military who have given their lives to protect our freedom, die in vain!!

In a departure from the normal characteristics of the shootings in the Washington area, a woman was gunned down by a single bullet at a Home Depot store located at Seven Corners in Falls Church, VA. If this is the sniper, it would be the first attack inside the Beltway.

Police found a white van in Baltimore with a high-power rifle, .223 ammunition, a sniper manual, and a sign on the front dashboard "Jihad in America."

In Florida, polling data shows Gov. Bush with the support of 48%, and McBride at 45%, with three weeks left till the election.

For AMERICA - The Right Way, I remain yours in the Cause, the Chairman.

[nicollo]

Back in younger days, a few weeks after I moved to ground zero in Baltimore, a block from Kwesi Mfume's HQ, and across from a methadone clinic, I went to a party in New York that was a fundraiser for saving the whales (really). I didn't care about the whales, but it seemed like a good party. It was in a beautiful townhouse a friend had just bought, and she was showing it off, and using the whales for a tax-free party. She served coke on trays like hors d'oeuvres. I'd seen the damage, and I wanted no more part in it. The whales could fend for themselves, and I'd quit punching poor Baltimore. I swore off cocaine.

Until then, I never felt responsible for the world. I'd only ever asked of the world that, like that moron in front of me on the highway, it not get in my way. Suddenly, acts had consequence beyond my hangover, beyond my reach. Suddenly, I shared a spot with mankind.

It's been a fight for me ever since. My greatest choice, coming a year later, was to fight the world off my daughter's mother's womb and carry that child into life. She came of carelessness and sin, if you will, this little blessing, so perfect, so wonderful, so part of me. Her life was affirmed with the birth of her brother soon after. It was like a heaven-sent applause, and he is every bit the glory that is his sister and in his every and own way. Then I broke down, and spent five years lost again, pissing it away, following the same phlegm that got me in my troubles in the first place. God again intervened, and there was no product of my second marriage, just chaos and screams and, finally, liberation.

My life has been an act of avoiding consequence. I never realized it until recently. I always thought it'd all work out just fine. It seems to have, now, but at costs I can't know. I look back, and I see that I understood it at times, like when I moved to Baltimore and saw what drugs do to a city. And I still ignore it every time I drive insane, or pour another drink, or live too far away from my children. But I have learned that there is right and wrong.

At a party in New York recently, a friend told me he was jealous of my life. He said that my freedom and experiences were enviable. He's married, has a great job, a big house in Connecticut, and he goes to church. He worried that he was missing something. I told him that I have it easy, that I have the common life now. He's got the hard job – the hardest possible, that of making the normal exciting and fulfilling. I know, because I can't do it.

That's why I reject with my heart and spleen society's embrace of deviance.

I'm listening to WHFS, the local alternative rock station, as I write. They're playing an ad for a strip club. This shouldn't be normal. It may as well be legal, for the demand for it won't ever go away, but as soon as it becomes normal, so normal that it sells beers on national television, so normal that radio stations promote it, it becomes senseless, and it no longer fulfills. Once a visit to the strip joint becomes like walking into the grocery store, it makes prostitution like walking into a strip joint. (For an example of this, see the Coors ads playing during the playoffs -- perhaps since I don't watch TV except for sports I don't see it everywhere else; these ads show partyers in nightclubs getting together for sex). It's like the gay culture I wrote about earlier from my trip to San Francisco. As soon as these people become normal they lose meaning. What's next -- pedophilia, bestiality...? These are but escapes from normalcy. Deviancy must remain deviant, for though it is no longer deviant its consequences never go away, and they will only be more commonly shared.

I cannot understand these shootings but that it's a buzz, and the fool who's chasing it couldn't get it off anymore on the movies or the target range. If it's terrorism, I am wrong, but it doesn't feel like terrorism.

Society draws the line at murder, and society will fight back. That's what makes it society. But this society will not correct itself. It rejects self-control, and it denies consequence, so we will see this again. I've lacked consequence in my life, starting with schools that rewarded half-assed effort with good grades. It took serious error for me to find consequence. Society is feeling consequence right now, whether it knows it or not. Sadly, they'll just blame the guns, call for a V-chip put on every bullet, and walk away.

Too bad, though, for it'd be such a better world if killing babies only happened in alleyways, if poaching rabbits defined excitement with guns, and anal sex still scared the horses. We've liberated the deviants, and all it's done is made us them.

---

Then again, the shooter might be a terrorist. If so, I'll just have to rethink my life... lol!

Mr. Chairman, thanks for the space on your threads.

[nicollo]

Oops. I'd better get back to work, or there'll be hell to pay!

Fortunately, FR is one of my few remaining vices.

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

I am wrong, but it doesn't feel like terrorism.

It does here. It feels very calculated, very well planned, and, in the event anyone missed it, news reports of the episode in Spotsylvania county talked about "two men" making a getaway.

But even assuming one man - this guy has an ability to both evade police and the heavy traffic that is epidemic in Washington. Avoiding either one by itself is pretty difficult - both is simply astounding.

I am dead on convinced this guy has helpers - in what capacity I do not know.

But that is only my opinion.

[lodwick]

Thanks for sharing that brother.

Be strong.

[Dog]

OMG!

This woman talking head on FOX...some former FBI profiler just called the shooter a loser.....she shouldn't have done that ....this guy will react.

Damn media.

[lysie]

But that is only my opinion.

Mine, too. I pray I'm wrong.

[Dog]

Mine too...

[nicollo]

I didn't mean all that to be a confession, I was looking for an illustration of what happens when consequence is denied. Got me thinking too much, I suppose.

[Guenevere]

Mine too.....
...and my Dad's.

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

was looking for an illustration of what happens when consequence is denied.

I think everything you said on that subject has merit.

A former New York Senator, D. Patrick Monyhan (sp?), once wrote on this subject, suggesting society can only tollerate so much deviancy, and anything in excess of that requires defining it down - so we do. I agree that if defining deviancy down goes too far, we have a serious problem.

[lysie]

Hi Guennie...how's Jen? How are your Dad and Mom doing?

[Dog]

Got to run.....

See you all tomorrow..

[nicollo]

I hesitate to draw conclusions on this thing. You are right, for example that this/these guy/guys know the area. I've worked as a deliveryman in the area, and I know each of these spots. The idea that proximity to highway egress was a choice for location struck me from day one as naive about DC area traffic and layout. I've seen the timing of the first shootings, and I know it could be done by one person. Easily, but only with extensive experience driving around. This might lead one to look for a cab driver... which brings one to heads with towels, which brings one to... oh, never mind.

Either way, if it's a "terrorist" or homegrown insane, it changes nothing of the effect. It's certainly given terrorists a good idea, or a good demonstration of effective terrorism.

If it continues, we'll all just acclimate ourselves to inevitibility, and pray we each don't win that lotto. If it is terrorism, it will have done nothing more powerful for our war against it. Even the soccer moms will be begging the President to push that little red button. The hypocrisy will be tremendous as Washingtonians arm themselves. It's gonna be quite a ride.

[lysie]

Sheesh!! Now reporting that it may have been an olive skinned person behind the wheel.

[Molly Pitcher]

Bye Dog

nicollo, thanks for those powerful testimony...you have realized that ideas and actions have consequences...some of us understand this at some time or another.

You are right..too many today never grasp this fundamental principle.

If it were just the individual, that would be one thing, but often these days, it's the young children paying the price for wildness and recklessness.

They are too young to have made the choice! It breaks my heart to see them suffering!

And that reminds me, Guenvere and lysie - This week's episode of "Doc" had a powerful pro-life message, and it was reinforced at the end by an announcement from Billy Ray Cyrus concerning some pro-life organization.

The repeat is tomorrow - Wed. night - if you're interested.

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

Now reporting that it may have been an olive skinned person behind the wheel.

<tin foil>

People of middle-eastern descent tend to have olive skin.

</tin foil>

[Molly Pitcher]

"Expert" on Fox now bringing up the terrorist thing again...

I assume when we all talk about this we do mean foreign terrorist...

Oh! Now they're talking about how it's like the anthrax attacks...

That's what I though over a week ago....

[Chairman_December_19th_Society]

In an article I read today - it was actually written yesterday - the notion was posited that the sniper showing up at about the same time we are getting ready to go to war with Iraq is not mere coincidence.

Hmmm.....

[Utah Girl]

Afternoon, all. I just finished my expense report for last week's trip, that took me all morning. Now I just have to occupy myself for another couple of hours and I can go home. :)

[Molly Pitcher]

Exactly...also with the latest messages from "Bin Laden"....the other attacks....those cells being broken up...and there are more I just cannot remember right now!!