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Welcome to the first day of my 30-day writing challenge. In an attempt to power through writer's block, I've decided to give this a shot. My #30DayWritingChallenege will be posted here and shared on social. You can also join my mailing list to get updates. I don't have any predetermined topics, at least not yet, but I hope you'll find it interesting nonetheless. Ok, here we go ...
I subscribe to the NYC.gov text message alert service so I've grown used to the notices of police activity, weather alerts and "don't worry, it's just a drill" flyovers. But this week, those text messages coincided with news alerts about suspicious packages containing bombs.
Yesterday, a 56-year old Florida man was arrested in connection with sending the bombs from the Sunshine State to New York City, Washington D.C. and the home of George Soros north of NYC. Each package was directed at a vocal opponent of Donald Trump and, not surprisingly, it turns out that the man accused of sending the bombs is a supporter of the president. If you haven't seen the van he was living out of, you should. It tells you a lot about the man and the times we are living in.
Thank goodness he was caught and even more so that none of the bombs detonated. His acts of terror have been called shocking, but given the state of our politics, should any of us be surprised? Wasn't this or something similar inevitable? Isn't it still?
One thing that's continued to stick in my mind these last few days, but that I've not seen much coverage of is the number of people who became unintended targets in this act of terrorism.
Elected officials have rightly applauded the work of first responders and bomb squads -- each of whom put their lives on the line every time they go to work. But what about the other people who came in contact with these packages? There was the Soros staffer who found the bomb outside the front gates, picked it up and walked it away from the home before calling police. The package was supposedly hand-delivered by an individual not in the employ of the USPS.
Speaking of postal workers, who knows how many of them handled the packages from the moment they were dropped off by the bomber, all the way until they arrived at their intended locations. The messenger who supposedly hand-delivered the first package to CNN. The mail room clerks and Secret Service agents who discovered each one.
The targets may have been high-profile people, but we could have lost many others if any of the bombs had gone off along the way -- in the streets of NYC or DC, in crowded mail rooms.
This attack and its repercussions have already sunk us further into the disgusting, child-like political mudslinging world we live in. We didn't arrive at this place over the last two years. We've been trending in this direction for decades. The question for all of us now is how we climb out of this morass? How do we avoid future targets -- intended or otherwise.
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