SECURITY PRECAUTIONS Think of this: no matter where you happen to be standing at any given moment, it is of major concern to you that the next moment may be very much like the one you are experiencing at the time. That's what we call “security.”
We say we seek it, yet we also think it to be a rather staid, dull and uninteresting way in which live. Stupid. Uncalled for.
Solid security, day-after-day with no element of excitement, adventure, chance, or change would be mighty dull for sure and most of us, I think, really favor a bit of variety in our schedule.
A One-Way Street, for example, is that 'single direction only' to the person who believes it to be so restricted. To all others, persons can be traversed in either direction. It is wise, therefore, for us to look to the right and to the left, before stepping off a curb or
berm into the path of potential traffic.
It is only natural that security measures undertaken by designated authorities to protect average people. We have our quota-plus of individuals who never consider themselves to be “average citizens” in anything or at any time. They consider any such directive telling them that it will be required in the immediate future...as of now ...to change the way they have always done things. Some even refuse to do so, often because it attracts the attention of standers-by who they think see them as patriots defying the tyranny of petty officials.
Few people like to be “held back”, “restricted”, “bossed about”, “told-what-to-do, ”treated like common criminals” or “put upon” and such feelings have changed the very nature of air travel, in
particular where the element of Time is so critical.
So much of precautions seem to be excessive at the time, and some may prove to have been so. During our Civil War the North avoided arming blacks as troops. That was a security matter and it took a while to form the USCT - 178,000 colored troops to fight against the South. At the start of the war in 1861 the Northern whites almost universally opposed arming blacks. They showed fear and scorn saying blacks could not fight, especially with whites at their side. Abe Lincoln worried and is quoted as having said:”would turn fifty thousand bayonets from the loyal Border States against us that are now for us!” Fredrick Douglas sounded alarms as well yet in 1864. Agigxpus you can see in the film “Glory” such fears were false.
Today's threats are, perhaps, as dramatic as that, but they are unique and present problems with which we are not conversant as average citizens. Samples we have had should be enough to urge each of us to respect and obey Home Security directives however “dull” they may seem to be.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-29-06 [c492wds]
