Posted on 09/10/2002 9:47:36 AM PDT by Korth
Yet, the response of the planning agencies has been to establish more and more elaborate command-and-control structures, which will force a population that is not about to panic into panic behavior.
It’s always their response, because what they don’t control, they don’t get paid for.
The same response was evident when the federal government insinuated itself after the attack into the realm of "charity." (I use the term loosely, because charity usually means giving of your own money.)
Now that the fed has set the standard of multi-million dollar payouts to victims of a disaster, nobody will see the benefit of giving money to charities in response to such events.
That lack of charitable giving, that they precipitated, will be cited by the government as the need to increase federal spending in response.
The pie’s never considered good enough, if the government can’t get their fingers into it.
Great article.
This very same paradigm is still at work in the way the media cover the drop in air travel since 9/11. The media covers the story from the angle of people being "afraid to fly." They do this partly out of laziness - it's very easy to go out to the local aeropuerto and get people saying things about fear - and partly because of the "panic paradigm." The media loves panic.
As for the laziness of the media, that's another story. How do you cover people who don't fly because they refuse to put up with all the phony feel-good airport security BS? Where can you find these people? You certainly cannot go out to the aeropuerto with a camera crew and tape people who aren't there. So where DO you find them?
Answer: the media pretends they don't exist OR they go to a travel agent who might say a word or two. But the problemo with this is that people who refuse to put up with the airport security BS DON'T CALL their travel agents - they just get in their cars and DRIVE. How does the media find THEM? Set up a roadblock and keep interviewing motorists until they find someone who is driving instead of flying? No, of course not. They just call the Triple-A, who has only vague statistics about gas prices and "miles driven" to spout.
So the real story goes unreported and the false story prevails - first, because it's in The Terror Template, and secondly because it's easier to get that story than the truth.
Michael
I agree the "Homeland Security Department" is a bit of a ditsy idea in some ways...however, some folks seem to need that sort of thing, like "color-coded alerts", and I do think there's a real need to co-ordinate various agencies to facilitate communication and hopefully pare back on the beaurocratic "work force" needed.
Otherwise than that, this is a most excellent article, and a true "testimonial" to the resourcefulness, bravery, and inherent goodness of our fellow Americans...thanks for posting it!
I have also not seen much coverage of the Transit Authority, which shut down the subway stations in lower Manhattan within minutes of when the first plane struck, and managed to reroute all the trains heading downtown.
That could be part of the reason for charitable giving dropping, but the use of 9/11 by the Red Cross as a method of raising funds for other things, along with the telethon where contributions intended for 9/11 families were given to the Million Mom March and Handgun Control Inc. left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.
I believe this is the underlying mindset of those (like the President) who are against arming airline pilots.
But the Salvation Army is still OK in my book. And everybody's better than the Federal Goverment, whose solicitations for "donations" are enforced under the threat of imprisonment for non-compliance.
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