Pardon me if it is too graphic, or too soon ... but I had to relate it and get it down on "paper".
May God be with the families of those victims.
FReegards amigo.
The generation coming on has been raised to be non-observing; "experts," they are told, are there for them, wherever they may desire to trip along.
And trip, they do.
At the company where I work, I bought the fire extinguiser months ago. I bought the flashlights in case the power goes out. I bought the analog telephone so that when the digital units are dead, somebody can still call out. All, at my own expense.
Last July, at a gasoline fuel depot nearby, I stopped to investigate when the siren was blowing --- nobody was there; gates wide open; no guards; no track of how many thousands of gallons the terrorists had driven away with; no mention of it in the news; and nobody there or downtown or in the F.B.I. would care to know this, because the event caught them all completely ignorant of what is going on out there.
I watch the airport fence perimeter, and sure enough, there is no patrol at all. Somalis drive the taxi cabs right up to the doors of the terminal, no security checks at all, while passengers must park many hundred yards away.
Delta Airlines B-757's sit only a hundred feet from fences which are not watched; the jets' hatches are open; anybody could plant a bomb therein; but nobody is watching ... except the Somali taxi cab drivers.
I carry a many first aid supplies in the car; fire gloves; fire extinguisher, etc., because unlike Nancy Pelosi who thinks that President Bush has not offered up enough money for "the first responders," I am painfully aware of the entire lack of 2nd and 3rd responders throughout the country --- such as the fire last evening.
When the 1st team goes in for, you may say, a busy day, who will be minding the 'burbs? Nobody but volunteers who suddenly realize, that while something big blew up downtown, and the "1st responders" have all rushed there ... well, guess what, out on the beltway around the town, that is where an even bigger disaster awaits, and there are absolutely no firemen, no fire trucks, no water, few ambulances, and ten thousand people in need of the now lost "1st responders."
Nobody is watching the schoolyards to make sure that some Muslims do not plant a few landmines brought in from Kosovo. Nobody is watching the outside of the buildings which are on the threat list.
There's just a whole lot of inside discussion that is near incredible in its centricity.
You could drive up to that gasoline depot and leave with 10,000 gallons of fuel, and nobody would stop you; there is nobody there, even tonight.
Sleep tight.
Not a problem. Others have expressed similar thoughts as mine, i.e. What could have caused the people in the club to continue to stand around and watch as the place began to go up in flames??? I can't help but wonder what I would have done in the same situation; the lesson is well taken. If something looks amiss; do something! It's almost as if their fight or flight instinct wasn't in place. Alcohol???
I am rarely in a crowded environment, but the inferno in RI will force me to assess EVERY situation encountered EVERY day. Where are the doors/windows? How difficult will it be to get there in the event of a sudden event? Who is with me that may need my alertness to survive? I think of grandkids here and it makes me shudder. The term situational awareness is military in origin is it not? We would do well to remember, no?
Thanks for the post.
FGS
I posted the following on another thread recently, and I believe it (especially the bold type) applies here as well:
This nation was founded by decent, visionary men (yes men, and white men, to boot) whose goal was to establish a country whose people harbored a genuine, undying reverence for the God-given gifts of life and individual liberty. (Sometimes the simplest things are the most beautiful .... and the most difficult to retain. They are so easily taken for granted). In an effort to establish that vision, our Founders also drew up a blueprint for minimal government, whose role would be the same: to respect and defend life and individual liberty. Nothing more, and nothing less. Both within our borders and without.
Of course, over the past two-plus centuries, there have been many glaring exceptions to the life/liberty reverence (both in our government’s relation to us, and in its interference in other nations’ affairs .... the most recent being the inglorious period from 1992-2000). But, as a rule, America has continued to stand for those two noble concepts -- both here, and wherever else they have been threatened, and wherever we felt called to intervene in their defense. Greece under Truman, and Grenada under Reagan, are just two of dozens of examples that come to mind
There are (always have been, and always will be) people, and belief systems, in this world in which neither human life nor individual liberty are considered of significant worth. And it is with those people, and belief systems, that the fundamental vision of this nation has been at odds for more than two centuries. Communism and radical Islam are the two most provocative enemies that we have known in that regard in my lifetime. But there will always be forces at work which seek to destroy life and liberty for the sake of power/ideology/’religious doctrine’. Those forces go by different names, but under the façade lurks the same dark and devious heart that seeks to declare some men of less value than others.
Something that has troubled me for a long time now is the increasing movement in this country toward diminishing the value of both (life and liberty). And in continuing to allow that erosion of vision to happen, we are losing our once-unique and noble identity. (There are those who say the demeaning of life and liberty has always been a definitive part of this culture .... it was merely more covert in the past. I don’t agree.)
We need only look to events of last weekend to see the latest evidence of this erosion: In Washington DC, a man was gunned down in broad daylight at a gas station, while onlookers continued to passively pump their gas, pay for their purchase, and drive away. No one called 911 for many minutes, and the onlookers seemed completely disconnected from the violence that took place just a few feet away. They went on with their mundane activities as if an insect, rather than another human being, had been extinguished in front of their eyes.
In Chicago, twenty-one (or more) people were trampled to death by fellow party-ers when a large group of people were frightened by the existence of chemical mace in the room in which they were dancing/drinking. Human beings, believing that their own lives were more valuable than the lives of those unfortunate enough to be in front of them, stampeded over other human beings, crushing or suffocating them .... ending their lives in a heartbeat.
Yes, these are hideous exceptions to the rule, but they are becoming more prevalent exceptions with the passage of time .... and with the re-programming of our national conscience.
I live in an area of the country in which people, in large part, cling to the values and traditions of the nineteenth century. Some people ridicule this area as being ‘behind the times.’ Yet people in rural areas such as this are more closely aligned with the values and vision of our founders.
Take last Monday, for example. We experienced a 26”- 28” snowfall. My husband is under the weather just now, so I spent about four hours very early that morning attempting to shovel out our driveway and the road to the mailbox. When neighbors saw that I was alone in doing that, no less than five of them came over to help. Such behavior is not uncommon here. It is a way of life.
What concerns me is that we, as a nation, are falling away from serving as an example that other nations can emulate. Our people are becoming more and more like those in DC who continued pumping their gas, or those in Chicago who, in their self-serving panic, didn’t give a damn about the torturous death they were inflicting on others .... and less like my neighbors .... with each passing day.
There are many reasons for the decay (the gradual, but continual, removal of God from our public consciousness, parental permissiveness, the influence of television/entertainment, the welfare/entitlement state, the leftist curricula in public and higher education, etc.). But the most unfortunate outcome of that time when the less than noble finally outnumber the noble in this country will be that there will be no nation willing to stand as an example, or step in when stepping in to preserve life or liberty is necessary (and whether the stepping in is popular with the majority of mankind or not). Because the sad fact is that the majority of mankind, if given the choice, tends to choose the path of least resistance. It’s the nature of the beast. But, up until now (and with few exceptions), it has not been the nature of this republic.