THE
VIGILANCE FACTOR POST FOUR
by
Cliff McKenzie, Editor
vigilancevoice.com
GROUND
ZERO PLUS 1460 DAY--New York, NY, Sunday, September
11, 2005--America
has learned little since that fateful Tuesday, fourteen hundred
and sixty days ago when the security of millions vanished in
less than ten seconds.
That's the time it took
for the World Trade Center to collapse. I was standing a few
blocks away, huddled against a brick wall with three women I
was trying to soothe as we all expected to end our last moments
on earth in a pile of angry, twisted rubble.
 |
Cliff
McKenzie, editor of VigilanceVoice, at Ground Zero |
On this, the fourth anniversary
of the Terrorist Attack that shocked the serenity and ripped
away the safety net Americans felt for decades that they were
exempt from third-world violence, another 9/11 is boiling to
the surface.
It is the shock and awe
not of a war against masked Terrorists or crazed madmen slitting
the throats of passengers aboard airline planes heading for
the World Trade Center, but of a nation of helpless people to
stop the threat of Nature's Terrorism.
Thousands of dead bodies
are floating to the surface in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina
that devastated New Orleans and other coastal cities, displacing
tens of thousands and stirring a cauldron of racial angst where
blame and accusations of prejudice and class marginalization
have been hurled at the White House and all America for standing
back while a 9/11 of Nature's making ripped at the moral fabric
of our nation.
 |
The same
pall hanging over America post NineEleven..... |
Four years ago the handful
of Terrorists brought America together into one angry fist of
people bent on revenge for the 21st Century Pearl Harbor attack
on a bright, sunny September day. Flags flapped in the wind
everywhere, even from windows of those who historically rejected
nationalism and made it a crusade to spit or burn the flag as
a protest against the ills of big government seeking to oppress
and violate the rights of minorities.
No flags fly in the wake
of hurricane Katrina except the skull and bones signet of the
pirates who loot and pillage with a sense of impunity that only
devastation and lack of moral or physical authority offers such
bloviators of selfish disregard for law and order.
The same pall that hung
over America in the shocking immediate panic of the 9/11 attacks
four years ago, hangs over the nearly 300 million citizens of
this nation as the after-shock of Katrina settles in. Following
9/11, America's blood boiled and there was a national cry for
reparation with a rallying of common effort against the faceless
enemy of Terrorism that threatened every man, woman and child.
But the shroud that exists
today in America is far more insidious. The great Terrorist
Cloud hanging in the air in the wake of Katrina is our own shadow.
It is ominous, laced with race and politics and class distinctions
and endless finger pointings about who was most at fault. Worse,
the enemy is us. We are the Terrorist.
Americans realize from
the devastation in New Orleans and other hard-struck Gulf cities
that we are powerless over Nature, and, more than ill prepared
to face her wrath.
If the roving bands of
looters symbolize one thing in New Orleans, it is the Beast
Within us all that comes unleashed in times of crises and forces
the most sedate and peaceful into a state of defense, capabable
of becoming a looter if for no other reason than to defend one's
family and loved ones against the ravages of caveman survival.
 |
...hangs
over America as a result of Katrina's Terrorism |
Worse, New Orleans unveils
the lack of Vigilance within each community to protect itself
from harm.
Long ago, the VigilanceVoice
called for each neighborhood, each community, to create a Parents
of Vigilance Team and bind neighbor-to-neighbor as one against
the ominous threats of Terrorism from without as well as from
within.
What brings blacks and
whites and reds and yellows, and conservatives and liberals
and Jews and Christians and Muslims and Agnostics and Athiests
to sit on one big couch is the belief in the safety of the Children's
Children's Children.
 |
We must
learn to be like the world's children we wish to protect |
Only when there is a
force beyond our own selfish and often twisted points of view,
can we see beyond engrained, learned and often fatal bigotries
and prejudices. When we look at the innocence of children, we
see a duty and responsibility of community that far exceeds
self righteousness.
The Katrina Hurricane
has flooded the moral consciousness of America to reexamine
its readiness to protect the children of this nation.
What is clear is that
the external Sentinels of Vigilance--government, at the local,
community, state and national level--have failed to provide
the needed support and protection.
We know must look in
the mirror.
We must see ourselves
at the Sentinels of Vigilance, and assume that role individually
and collectively.
If you want to become
a Parent of Vigilance, a Grandparent of Vigilance, a Citizen
of Vigilance, read this site thoroughly. All the answers lie
within.
Cliff McKenzie
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