I had a great idea for a cheap way to increase homeland security. I'll be trying to get this information out there via military channels, but if any of your have connections or know how to reach the highest levels by all means spread the word.
All military personnel, Active, Reserve, National Guard, are required/ordered to travel in uniform domestically, whether on official duty, leave, vacation, or are Reservists and National Guard. This is ONLY CONUS travel, not abroad.
But I say to that, GOOD. That's what we exist for! We signed up to DEFEND. We exist to take the heat. We defend the country so that civilians can go about their business and enjoy freedom. That's that I signed up for, damnit. Right now, people are scared, terrified, and have lost those freedoms for which so many have died. And that's a shame... it's like those that have given their lives, commited great sacrifices so that we can live are diminished each and every time we feel a twinge of fear.
I personally would love to fly/ride the rails/ride the bus in uniform. The day that we (military folks) worry about being a target in public, that's the day we cease being Americans.
Spread the word!
They are evil. They are monsters. They are the devil incarnate. How could this happen. We scream that we will destroy you. We flail, we gnash our teeth, we writhe in anger, angst, bewilderment, pain and grief. We can't work, we can't play, we can't find meaning in life again. It's just so senseless, so meaningless. How could someone do such a thing. They must not be human. They can't be from the human race. We must wipe them out, we must stop them from doing this again. Let's call on all our might, military might, wash them from existence, our existence. They are not fit to live. Why oh why are they doing this?!!
We fall back heaving, uncomfortable with our own skin, clawing at ourselves looking for answers, possibly even the right questions to define what has happened. We roll from side to side as if in a feverish nightmare from which we cannot awaken. Everything we took for granted means nothing. We aren't buying anymore, we aren't going out. We have no grasp on the reality that someone destroyed in a matter of minutes the lives of 6000 Americans and their families in a tragic and horrific manner. How could...?! why?!!
We have NO concept of what has happened to us.
But more quietly... it's happened before, recently and going back some time. We've dealt with this before. We've seen it, touched it, pulled it apart with the apathetic spirit of a child pulling the legs off an insect. We think we understand it, but we are just going through the motions, and when we close the book we are satisfied that we GET it. We executed the proper judgment, analysis, and action required and moved on. News media wraps up the event faster than anyone, before the blood is dry, we're back to Hollywood scandals, infidelity in Congress, the Pennant race... World events that are so far away... so very very very far away. We listfully drift into a pleasant slumber, a collective shrug of our shoulders as we press our hands together and rest our head upon them. So profound is our lack of understanding that the only course of action is the return to folly and sleep.
We know of no desperation in America.
We've seen its results... Columbine, Oklahoma, various other mass murders or acts of senseless violence designed to take the maximum amount of lives in what amounts to a suicide. It is an act of such desperation that neither the quantity nor the quality of lives destroyed matters at all. I don't care, I don't care, I DON'T CARE!!! My life is meaningless, I have nothing to which to look forward, my life, this thing called existence is pain, emptiness, misery, anger, fear...
Fear. There's the thing. Let me get in there. Can you shine that light over here? I need to get a grasp on it. Let me wiggle it a bit. Hmm, need to brace..., nughgh, won't budge... Are you sure that's it? Let me get the manual.
Americans live a life of plenty, generally. We are affluent, powerful, motivated, caring, loving, kind-hearted, full of life and we know no desperation. We have so little despair in this great nation of ours, we don't have tools with which to combat it either here when it rears up nor abroad where it is more plentiful. We punish it. We execute it. We launch cruise missiles at it. We sanction it. These futile actions only serve to demonstrate how ill-equipped we are to combat despair.
We call them evil. We call them war like, hateful... dogs. Kill them all, let God sort them out. Recycle their karma. We call those among us, evil, deviants, mentally unbalanced. We lock them up or execute them. We hide or bury them. Was I the only one in the country that wanted Timothy McVeigh around for another 50 years... I wanted to see what kind of adult he'd turn into. Would he leave his despair behind eventually or not? Would he find a reason to live? Would he repent someday? I at least wanted to get to know him better, learn how a human could have so little empathy, so little hope, so little understanding. I want to understand.
But we trudge on, we good hearted, well-meaning Americans, oblivious to the one true cause. It's that thing that binds us as humans... perhaps the only true commonality among us. Why are we here? We fear what comes after, tomorrow. We fear rejection, failure, pain, others, and life. We fear life because we don't understand it. It's the fear of life that leads to despair and eventually great suffering.
We Americans need to take a deep breath, think of all the horrific characters of history, those terrorists, murders, and criminals as infants newborn in their mother's arms with so much potential for greatness and life, and we should cry for them. We should never look for excuses to explain how their lives turned out. But we should make great effort to look for the reasons why they became so fearful and lost themselves.
What does it take for Americans to do great things; to go to the moon, to win wars, to dig canals linking oceans, to build railroads across a continent? In independent thought about this question, Neil Armstrong and I concluded that it takes a coincidence of four conditions, or in Neil's view, the simultaneous peaking of four of the many cycles of American life. First, a base of technology must exist from which to do the thing to be done. Second, a period of national uneasiness about America's place in the scheme of human activities must exist. Third, some catalytic event must occur that focuses the national attention upon the direction to proceed. Finally, an articulate and wise leader must sense these first three conditions and put forth with words and action the great thing to be accomplished. The motivation of young Americans to do what needs to be done flows from such a coincidence of conditions. ... The Thomas Jeffersons, The Teddy Roosevelts, The John Kennedys appear. We must begin to create the tools of leadership which they, and their young frontiersmen, will require to lead us onward and upward. -- Dr. Harrison H. Schmidt
The more you complain, the longer God lets you live.
Hehe, this one's very appropriate for me, eh? I'll bet my family has a comment or two on this one.
I recently had the pleasure to address students of the University of Puerto Rico at its Ponce Campus on the issue of Open Source. I thought I'd outline here in English basically how the address went.
I did not bring any presentation slides this afternoon, nor a computer. I did not write this speech on my computer. In fact, I am not even going to mention Linux or Open Source Software.
Instead, I am going to talk about music, the air we breathe, and creation.
Oops, Olaia needs me, finish this up later...