Followup

Years ago, there was a phrase used to describe people who just lived their lives and didn't get involved with the great moments of their time. That phrase was The Silent Majority, and it describes me pretty well. I get pleased or irritated by things that I see happen on the public stage, but I don't do anything as a result. Oh, I may point the occasional comment here, and I might send a cash donation if I'm particularly engaged by an issue, but that's about it.

A few months ago, I noted the experience I had dealing with the US Capitol Police on a hot day. Basically, I felt as if I were being treated as some street punk, without worth. Objectively, it probably wasn't all that nasty, but at the time, I was irate. Even now, I get mildly irritated by that memory. While our guest was here, we visited the island on which the Statute of Liberty resides -- and had to go through airport-type security to do it. More if you actually wanted to go into the monument. Yesterday, I noted the decision on the part of security people for the Supreme Court to bar entry into the building from the front doors (they're now used for exit only). Like many other people, I know why they're doing it, but still: I was irritated by it. That I've never gone into the Supreme Court's building, and had no desire to, was immaterial. Part of what I could do as a citizen had been taken away by anonymous security officials. Today, I read an article wherein a fellow from Pennsylvania had written angry emails back in May to a Kentucky Senator who, after complaining that he was being kept from watching a key basketball game, voted against the extension of unemployment benefits. He wrote several times. The office of the Senator forwarded that and other notes to the US Capitol Police, who decided that this was a threat, and the man was arrested.

I know that these incidents I've mentioned are reasonable responses to a scary world. I know that terrorists and fanatics are a much greater threat to our way of life than the people making security decisions. But somehow, in my gut, I'm beginning to feel as if the security people are the problem. I know that its because they're the ones doing things every day that affect me, while the terrorists and fanatics -- for all that their actions are much, much more destructive -- don't have that much of an effect. I begin to wonder where it will stop, and my hunch it, it won't, until someone powerful makes it stop. Even then, it would just take one act of violence -- even a potential act, possibly just in the 'angry mutterings over a beer' stage -- to cause those security decisions to be codified further, and made more restrictive. It would take a bold person to say 'We're not going to lock the doors, windows, frisk the attendees, take the cameras, as a result of this. We're not going to live afraid.' I don't see any such person on the horizon. In a way, that's good -- I've never trusted the 'man on horseback' style of politics. But in another, it's not, because it means that change won't come from without; it must come from within. Us. Me. And that means not only getting involved, but staying involved. There's no way to get involve while still being uninvolved. I'm not sure that I'm up to that level of activity, especially given that I believe it won't have any effect. I'm just one of the masses, after all. The Silent Majority.

So I give money, and write polite emails, and I hope it makes a difference. At least, I think to myself, at least I did that.