We are not the enemy


Some history notes: I live in Alexandria, Virginia, just south of DC. After 9/11, the army base south of here, Fort Belvoir, closed two roads that had been open to the public, without public consultation or warning to the community. Because of this closure, traffic on Richmond Highway has gotten a lot worse, and Mount Vernon hospital is citing the closure of these roads as a reason for possibly moving or shutting down.

Last night at a town hall meeting, one woman stood up and shouted "We are not the enemy!" You can read more about the meeting in the Washington Post today.

When 9/11 happened, the people put up with additional security measures, because we were scared, and because we wanted the government to get us secure quickly. Since then, though, there has been very little discussion of the cost in terms of our lives of those security measures.

Security is one thing, but the various governments (local, state, and federal) are not taking into account the human cost of the security, and are not trying to minimize these costs. When we start asking them to count the human cost, they usually say "No, security" and wave us away, as if by asking we're part of the problem. We're not the problem, we're the citizens who make up this country. It's time to start reminding the government that we are not the enemy.

Popular posts from this blog

New post-convention poll Results look good to me. Now, we have to keep them coming. Further down in the article, there is discussion of how Kerry is gaining ground as a person who understands the needs of people, and a person of character. Key problem is going to be keeping these issues in front of voters, when the Kerry campaign will have a finite amount of cash to campaign on. Bush won't have a finite amount until the Republican convention at the end of August. Other people are going to have to step up and start hammering the Bush administration. Kerry Leads Bush in Post-Convention Poll (washingtonpost.com) : The new poll shows Kerry now claims the support of 50 percent of all registered voters, compared with 44 percent for Bush, with independent candidate Ralph Nader at 2 percent. On the eve of the convention, Bush led Kerry 48 percent to 46 percent. Among those most likely to vote, the race is tighter: Kerry holds a 2-point advantage over Bush in the current po...
Read more
Sometimes headlines just write themselves Like this one from the Washington Post today: Ex-FEMA Head Starts Disaster Planning Firm Michael Brown certainly has shown he can plan a disaster. Look at how awful Hurricane Katrina was. For preventing or fixing things afterwards, he's not so good.
Read more
Reading List It is a good thing to be married to a librarian. Our local system has a web-accessable catalog where I can put a book on hold. Depending on how many people are waiting for the book, in a few days to a few months, my wife comes home with the book I've requested. I was reading "A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market" by John Allen Paulos. It is the kind of book that makes mathematics of investing accessable to non-mathematical types (and some of us mathematical folks as well), even as he tells the story of his failed love affair with Worldcom stock. Of course, I set this aside as soon as I got in "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth" by Joe Conason. This book takes all of the distortions of the right-wing media, the Bush-Cheney administration, and the Republican "conventional wisdom", and proceeds to refute them, citing facts chapter and verse. I think this book is great. But I've g...
Read more