I moved to Florida five years ago and chose to do my banking with Compass because they had a branch right across the street from the apartment I lived in at the time. Let’s just say it was a lazy, stupid reason for choosing a bank, and that I will never again open a new account without doing my research.
For the first few years, my main issue with Compass was their overdraft policy. Compass Bank made and still makes a fortune off the poor. I had a few years where I was pretty much living paycheck to paycheck; rather than inform its customers when they’re out of money, the policy at Compass is to let the transaction go through (”to avoid causing the customer embarrassment”).
Thank you Compass! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I spend a lot of time worrying about the opinions of gas station clerks. Thank GOD I’ve never had to have one of tell me my card was declined. Same with the high school kid who answers the Pizza Hut phone, and strangers from Missouri who I buy books from online–if any of those folks ever knew I had no money in my bank account, my life would be over.
In exchange for the bank’s willingness to save us from such paralyzing humiliation, they charge a small fee of $40 bucks. I’m serious. And not just once per pay period either.
Suppose you get paid on Friday. So after work you (1) get a haircut. Then you (2) fill your car with gas and (3) order Chinese takeout. While you’re waiting for your food, you (4) pick up a movie next door at Blockbuster and (5) a bottle of wine to enjoy with your significant other. Five relatively inexpensive purchases, except that you used your Compass Bank debit card. And forgot that the money won’t be made available to you until next week (due to a bullshit floating game that Compass also plays).
(1) Cha-ching!
(2) Cha-ching!
(3) Cha-ching!
(4) Cha-ching!
(5) Cha-ching!
$40.00 x 5 = $200.00
So next Tuesday, when Compass Bank finally acknowledges the existence of a paycheck your employer sent them five days prior, the bank gets to keep a nice little chunk of your hard-earned money for themselves. And the more you are struggling to make ends meet, the harder it is to ever break out of this predatory pattern.
Chris Novoa explains what it’s like to be a Compass customer:
Gas transactions are another noteworthy thing regarding the $1 approval on pumping with credit as payment type. In my experience, specifically with Compass Bank, the practice is to let expenditures clear BEFORE deposits, so say I pump $20 with only $5 in my account as credit – well aware this is not a good thing to do, I have in mind to make the deposit the same day, so it’s only a matter of convenience.
Compass (specifically), will allow – days later showing as rearranged transactions – the gas transaction post against the amount available AT THE TIME of the transaction regardless of a deposit having been made 10 minutes later and will then post retroactive overdraft fees days later after everything seemingly has settled which can then easily become a $300+ problem if one doesn’t notice the activity within a day as their daily overdraft fee adds up very quickly, it seems very intentional that this end of the business has an negative feedback loop quality to it as deposits are slow, but expenditures are fast.
Compass Bank, now BBVA Compass is exceedingly money hungry when you’re in a pinch to a should-be-illegal extent.
(Read other complaints from angry customers victimized by this NSF charge here and here).
About a year ago Compass was acquired by BBVA. For some reason BBVA is in a huge rush to plaster their brand all over the old Compass junk. It should be noted that Compass Bank sucked long before BBVA took them over; maybe that’s why BBVA’s being so pushy about divorcing itself from it’s crappy predecessor.
Recently BBVA sent me a new card in the mail, indicating that I was REQUIRED to activate the new card, thereby voiding all my financial account info. It just seemed like a hassle to me; I didn’t want to change it, as all my Direct Deposit stuff and eBay/PayPal accounts, etc. are saved under my prior account #. Sure enough though, the jerks over at BBVA Compass gradually whittled away the functionality of my old account. First, they revoked my right to buy things online; then they took away my ability to sign for stuff (so I could only use my card as a Debit card). And finally, sometime around last Thursday now–heading into a holiday weekend no less–they cut off ability to use my Debit and ATM. So all weekend my assets were frozen, which meant I was basically on house arrest for the 4th of July. I’m afraid my rent check is going to bounce as well–those pricks! I feel violated!
And supposedly all of this harassment is for my safety.
I’ll tell you what. If my safety is in jeopardy by being able to obtain my money whenever I want and request it and then spending it as I see fit, then BBVA Compass is officially my ex-bank!
Sure, I probably still have the new card they mailed me laying around my house somewhere; and simply activating it will be exponentially less annoying than finding a new bank, transferring all my funds, updating my records, and wasting a morning answering stupid questions. But that’s not me–out of principal alone, I not only have to sever all financial ties to this shady bank, but also see it as my civic duty to warn others: Never do business with BBVA Compass!
On May 19, 2008, a man named Christopher M. Comins shot two Siberian huskies in a field in Orange County, FL.
Initially the prosecutor was hesitant to file even misdemeanor charges against this well-connected businessman. Thanks in large part to a grassroots Internet movement and an online petition signed by thousands, Chris Comins now faces third degree felony charges for animal cruelty!
Now for the bad news. The dog shooter is trying to bankrupt anyone who speaks or spoke about his crime, and unfortunately that includes me.
Twice last summer I wrote on this site about these events and how they affected me.
Comins has now sued me for libel for writing these truthful blog posts about what he did.
As a lover of dogs and of the First Amendment, I believe it was my right to speak out. I’ve decided to defend that right in court. Even if it means going into debt, I simply cannot allow this rich and powerful bully to intimidate me into silence.
Thank you to all who have offered their support and kind words of encouragement. For those who inquired about how to contribute to my Legal Defense Fund, here’s the link.
Please don’t feel bad if you can’t afford to contribute anything. I understand that times are tough; the best way to help is to spread the word about my situation. If you know people who care about animal cruelty or Freedom of Speech, please invite them to visit the following website for more information about this lawsuit against me:
About a month ago I went to post at one of the blogs I wrote for and found that I wrote for it no longer. Logging onto Jones Town, I learned that Fairlane had replaced his Barbie doll banner with an empty screen, and one last headline: “Everything went black.” No explanation or set of instructions as to where we could find his writing in the future. Just a Shakespeare excerpt, insinuating that all of this vigorous blogging “signifies nothing.”
In a way, he’s right. It’s not that what we’re saying is always all that insignificant. But our would-be readers don’t recognize significance when they see it anyway. Why else would we be where we are as a nation? For all our bloviating about corruption in Washington, that corruption exists on both sides of the aisle. It takes a truly gullible and simplistic to society to know the difference between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And the fact that we elected them in the first place—much less reelected—these sneaky men who were their capacity for corruption on their face, means that our society sadly has a long way to go before it’s ready to know the truth.
I’m sick of hearing politicians praise the strength and ingenuity of the American people. Candidate John McCain went so far as to attempt to pass off his Freudian slip—“the fundamentals of our economy are strong”—as a hat-tip to the American workers’ resilience.
But maybe being patronized is exactly what those of us at the bottom of the IQ Pyramid need.
Now more than ever, the average American seems either indifferent or incompetent in public affairs. It’s contagious, and I feel myself catching the bug. What is with this latest round of bailouts, and why can’t I bring myself to care the way I did a year ago? Why can’t I hold strong to the hope I had as I feel it fading? Why don’t I care anymore if I get forced into a life that’s not rewarding, the “American dream”—i.e., my life may always suck but by golly I’m gonna make sure my kids’ life sucks a little bit less.
Part of it is that I see it’s not as simple as I thought it was. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are indeed gone, but our troubles are not. And I can’t say with my former, naïve certainty that I know enough to criticize every decision our government makes. Yet I see through its trickery, the gimmicks that fool most people most of the time. And if our safety and security and happiness, collectively, depend on fooling most people most of the time, then where does that leave people like me who aren’t really fooled at all?
What’s more, if we organize our lives around criticizing “power”, how is it possible to hope for a resolution? Many of the blogs I read leave the distasteful impression that if corruption were thwarted and we suddenly lived in a perfectly harmonized world, the authors wouldn’t know what to do with themselves. Their world only has meaning insofar as it is completely and utterly fucked up. I don’t want that to be me, a scowling pessimist whose sense of purpose is tied to the assumption that there can never be a shortage of evil people whose goal it is to make our lives painful and unjust.
I am not strong. I am not resilient anymore. Months and years of no rewards have stolen that from me. The shear ignorance of simple, simple people has taken its toll. It starts to dawn on me, that I care too much about strangers who don’t care about each other, let alone care about me back.
That I haven’t posted anything in two months should have told me that I’m feeling a bit like Fairlane. The way to happiness for me does not travel through this blog. And so alas I realize it’s time for The Public Intellectual to join his legendary Jones Town among the list of blogs on hiatus.
As for political affairs, I may write again, but probably not here. As my first blog, it will always hold a spot in my heart, but it’s just not me anymore. What the hell is a “public intellectual” anyway? I realize I posed that question but never fully answered it. That’s because “public intellectual” is a concept invented by people in academia who briefly lamented that academic research was all about the pursuit of their own private interests. And they regretted this fact just long enough to coin a new phraseology for some obscure, little-read journal within their discipline. Talk about signifying nothing!
Now I’m off to finish writing my dissertation. To those who enjoyed my writing, please check back periodically, as I’ll be sure to post any new developments regarding my professional progress. Thank you to all who supported and encouraged me when I had a younger soul and still believed one person’s words could make some difference. And as Fairlane has already taken Shakespeare, please accept Live’s “White, Discussion” as my official “swan song”:
“I talk of freedom; you talk of the flag. I talk of revolution; you’d much rather brag. And as the decibels of this disenchanting discourse continue to dampen today, the coin flips again & again & again & again, as our sanity walks away.
All this discussion (though politically correct) is dead beyond destruction (though it leaves me quite erect). And as the final sunset rolls behind the earth, and the clock is finally dead, I’ll look at you, you’ll look at me, and we’ll cry a lot—but this will be what we said.
This will be what we said:‘Look where all this talking got us baby.’”
Tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune will publish “An Open Letter to Barack Obama” by Robert L. Schulz, chairman of the Foundation for Constitutional Education.
For several years, rumors swirled regarding Barack Obama’s birthplace, with partisans and concerned citizens alike contending that he was not really born in the United States, but in Kenya. TheObama campaign tried to squelch these rumors by posting an official copy of official copy of the candidate’s birth certificate online, at FightTheSmears.com.But that only gave conspiracy theorists a concrete document to inspect and discredit, upping the ante for those committed to bringing down Obama’s campaign.
“Where is the embossed seal,” they asked, “and the registrar’s signature?”
Obama’s detractors knew this could be more politically damaging than attending a church with an unpatriotic pastor. With the authenticity of Obama’s birth certificate in question, what choice would voters have but to conclude that the black guy was an un-American liar after all? So the silly questions persisted.
“Why is there no crease from being folded and mailed? And what’s up with the ‘07 date stamp bleeding through the ‘08 document?”
Increasingly, the conspiracy theorists weren’t just playing in Tinfoil Hat City.Some of their questions were genuinely intriguing. And we Americans tend to embrace illogical and scandalous explanations when logical and mundane ones aren’t immediately readily available. The observation that Obama’s birth certificate is a bluer shade of green than most Hawaiian birth certificates, for instance, leads many an uncritical thinker to conclude that Obama’s must be a forgery. Never mind that dyed paper fades over time, or that our laptops’ color and brightness settings may cause digital images to look slightly different from how they appeared in the real life light.
As this game went on, it almost looked like another Swift Boat had arrived to taxi all of us out to sea again.But when nonpartisan watchdog organizations launched their own independent investigations, they concluded that the birth certificate was authentic.
Barack Obama's birth certificate.
Though the elections are long over, this rumor and its adherents evidently will take one last swipe at the President-Elect in tomorrow’s Chicago Tribune.
Dear Mr. Obama:
Representing thousands of responsible American citizens who have also taken an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America, I am duty bound to call on you to remedy an apparent violation of the Constitution.
Compelling evidence supports the claim that you are barred from holding the Office of President by the “natural born citizen” clause of the U.S. Constitution. For instance:
Legal affidavits state you were born in Kenya.
Your grandmother is recorded on tape saying she attended your birth in Kenya.
You have posted on the Internet an unsigned, forged and thoroughly discredited, computer-generated birth form created in 2007, a form that lacks vital information found on any original, hand signed Certificate of Live Birth, such as hospital address, signature of attending physician and age of mother.
U.S. Law in effect in 1961 denied U.S. citizenship to any child born in Kenya if the father was Kenyan and the mother was not yet 19 years of age.
In 1965, your mother legally relinquished whatever Kenyan or U.S. citizenship she and you had by marrying an Indonesian and becoming a naturalized Indonesian citizen.
First of all, the last two bullet points are completely superfluous, though I do appreciate the heads up about four-decade-old citizenship clauses in Kenya and Indonesia.How old his mom was at his birth, and what rights she relinquished when he was a toddler is irrelevant.They only remotely apply if you buy into the first three, in which case we’re drawing straws about whether to deport the guy or just impeach him.
One wonders at this point, what is the goal? Even if Obama’s birthplace can neither be confirmed nor invalidated,the most they can hope to prove is that Hawaii is as bush league as Alaska.As of Obama’s birth in August of 1961, Hawai’i had been a state for less than two years. Perhaps the Kapi’olani Medical Center for Women & Children had taken its time adopting the standard bureaucratic formats of American bureaucratic forms. Do the birth certificates of other babies who were born at Kapi’olani in ‘61 include their moms’ ages and the hospital’s address; and if not, shall we revoke their citizenships, too?Or perhaps our rule of thumb will be to take everyone at their word as long as they’re less than 49% black.
Regarding the Kenyan affidavits, I’m assuming they contain the “vital information” that Obama’s birth certificate lacks, such as the “hospital address, signature of attending physician and age of mother.”It would be logically inconsistent to offer the former as evidence after calling the latter inadmissible for similar omissions.
All of that aside, the tape-recording of old lady hearsay does sound “compelling.”
Some right wing bloggers have declared today Victory in Iraq Day. I think this is a good idea, actually. If our goal was to kill Saddam, we’ve killed him. If it was to make sure the US wasn’t susceptible to a surprise nuke attack, that too was accomplished when we confirmed what weapons inspectors and the majority of intelligence insisted all along: that the WMDs never existed in the first place!
Even our improvised afterthought “to give the Iraqi people a chance at freedom” has now been achieved. And what better way to demonstrate independence than for Iraq’s democratically elected government to boot out its occupiers.
If we don’t declare victory soon, we’ll have to redefine our goals again.
I said something to that effect in an online forum the other day and got the following response:
So riddle me this…the war is won, and the people are free…we fought Germany and Japan, two countries who were far beyond the levels of infrastructure and civilization that Iraq was at the time…what’s the rush? We still have military presence in Korea, Germany, Japan, etc…none of which we have annexed…why the fear of colonization? They can boot us when they want, but I believe we will have a presence there for some time…
I’m not concerned about colonization because colonization is impractical. If we officially annexed Iraq, then we’d have to offer its citizens the same rights and benefits that we enjoy here in the U.S. And that’s not happening anytime soon, nor could it, after the debacle that ensued after we invaded. But that doesn’t mean our indefinite presence in Iraq benefits the Iraqi people.
The Germany/Japan/Korea argument was valid until Iraq explicitly told us to leave. They are in effect testing our claims that we respect their sovereignty. If we don’t leave, then we’ll yet again come across as disingenuous in the eyes of world opinion. More importantly, we forfeit our ability to claim we’re over there for the good of the Iraqi people.
Our military presence in the countries you mentioned was mutually beneficial both to the occupiers and occupied, especially during the Cold War. Our presence in Eastern Europe and Asia during the Cold War decreased the likelihood of a Communist invasion in the countries we occupied. On the other hand, our presence in Iraq lures terrorists into their country; who wish not only to inflict physical harm on American troops, but also attack the Iraqi people in order to create an even greater public relations nightmare for the US.
The damage to the infrastructure in 1946 Europe, was far greater than in Iraq today. While we helped save the economies of the countries we occupied after WWs, we are hurting the economy in Iraq. In post-war Europe, we employed the Marshall Plan. This created jobs for the European and Asian people. Germans construction firms employed German manual labor workers. This enabled the European people to actively take part in their own recovery, and it prevented the economies in these countries from self-destructing. In post-war Iraq, our overbearing debaathification policies left many of Iraq’s most competent men unemployed, forcing many of them to pursue less legitimate forms of work in order to feed their families. Any reconstruction efforts employ American firms, as does much of the war effort in general. KBR, Halliburton, Blackwater, Parsons, TITAN, CACI, etc. have been awarded no-bid contrasts for services ranging from laundry-washing to truck-driving to construction of military bases to firefighting. That some of these corporations are affiliated with Vice President Dick Cheney (and perhaps with high-ranking characters in Obama’s administration, too) makes this a conflict of interest. So not only does the Iraqi economy suffer as the war drags on, but the longer we stay in Iraq, the more money these war profiteers stand to make.
Some of the Asian countries rejected the Marshall Plan, saying that it amounted to economic imperialism on our part. We respected their wishes and did not impose our will upon them. If we overstay our welcome, as you and I agree that we probably will, then this shows yet another disparity between post WWII reconstruction and our current foreign policy.
When our occupation becomes solely about our interests, that’s when it’s time to go.
This is not news now, and might not even be news later.Something that may or may not happen four years from now is not a current event.Yet, there it is, the top story at CNN.
Presidential elections in this country now span well over half the length of the sitting president’s term.The elections are barely a week behind us, and already we’re blitzed with speculation and hearsay about what’s in store for 2012.Perhaps Americans wouldn’t be so economically screwed today if, back in 2004, when the mortgage crisis was still avoidable, our citizens been less concerned about when Hillary would officially announce her future plans to run for President?
As unprofessional as our friends in the mainstream media have been, the “dumbing down” of the news is as much our fault as it is theirs. They are, after all, in the business of making money.The higher their ratings soar, the easier it is to find sponsors willing to pay to advertise during their programs.That means what we see on the so-called “news” is a function of what we most desire to see—and not a reflection of what is important.If, collectively, we were more informed, we’d be outraged over the fact that this bullshit passes as newsworthy.We’d cry out for details about Blackwater shadiness, or about the growing U.S.-Pakistan conflict.Were we an engaged citizenry, our sneaky Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson wouldn’t have gotten away with his $140 billion gift to banks, courtesy of taxpayers.
In fact, fuck it; I’m deleting CNN.com from my Mozilla bookmark icons.For too long I’ve let that network remain my “most trusted source” of Internet news every morning, the site I check when time only permits me to check one. As MSNBC leans Leftward and Fox News bends unapologetically back toward the Right, many viewers remain convinced (as I was until recently) of CNN’s fairness and neutrality.Is that because they dump on all U.S. presidential candidates equally? Of course, nearly all my early assumptions about media bias were misguided or wrong, starting with the premise that “news” should be considered “objective” and “fair” so long as it doesn’t clearly favor one major political party over the other.That might have made sense; but only if all possible worldviews and political stances were covered by one major political party or the other.
But another imbalance exists, taking the form of an apparent consensus, by all mainstream news channels, to over-report on the presidential race and under-report on everything else.That’s where the real bias lives.They do it because they’re lazy and self-absorbed; they get away with it because, so are we. Far from being fed up with these overblown non-stories, we rather prefer to read trumped up rumors about John McCain’s mental health fluctuations or Barack Obama’s scandalous adolescent acquaintanceships—while American wars persist on multiple fronts and our economy continues to crumble.
I don’t mean to imply that election outcomes are not important.But the day-to-day gossip mill that churned out pages of useless trivia about different spats among presidential hopefuls is not (as CNN would have you assume) the most pressing news event on any given day.
So engrossed were we in our own insular political sideshows that it barely registered when noteworthy events occurred outside of U.S. borders.So, if you’re from one of those countries that are having a crappy decade, please pardon our outward indifference to your plight.We have no idea what’s happened in the world these last two years.We missed it all, or tried to.Eliot Spitzer’s prostitute’s sucky MySpace songs got more play than genocide in Sudan, the Cyclone Nargis, and the Sichuan Earthquake combined.
The hyping and overmarketing of presidential campaigns lets the media to ignore the crucial or controversial news stories.This is good for the media because it can refrain from reporting real-life news that might aggravate their sponsors.And while this is problematic on their part, we viewers give them an excuse by reinforcing the notion that we care more about the presidential race than we do about other important happenings in the world today.That we care more and more about the presidential rumor mill means we care less—or not at all—about Congress passing some obscure, quickly buried bill that will allow domestic spying or torture.We care more about which presidential candidate’s religious affiliates offended which rich white person today.
Rather than solely condemn CNN and Fox News for the stories they choose or refuse to supply, one might blame the American citizens for our own spoiled ignorance and the information we do or do not demand.
As a result of the media’s failure to cover stories outside the soap opera, any sly scumbag with aspirations to cheat, swindle or manipulate large majorities of people knows to wait until election season to do it.Alas, perhaps that’s why the next campaign season is starting before our wet-behind-the-ear President Elect even knows who his Secretary of State is.
Still, there are some who saw and see nothing wrong with the saturation of Election ’08 coverage.They believe they need to mull over the vibes they get from the candidates, and that requires constant surveillance.As long as we crave that overconsumption, CNN will happily pour provide it; see which comes up with the goofiest Freudian slip; inspect their medical records; condemn the drugs they did in high school; make sure the male candidates don’t act too flamboyant; make sure the women are both feminine and sufficiently masculine; evaluate their acquaintances; insist they ditch the ones we deem too rude.
It’s a tough job—being an American citizen, juggling so many pertinent subplots at once.But we’re happy to do it, because we are “the American people”, whose honorable character is exceptional in every respect.All we ask is that there are no distractions as we’re diligently scrutinizing our candidates; our mainstream media must never burden us with trivial headlines, like:
Was not the whole point of free-market capitalism that the market, allegedly, regulates itself? We stop buying Chinese toys when too many of them contain lead or other toxic materials? If too many jets from the same airline, crash, then I’m done flying with that airline.The risk of losing business is the only incentive powerful corporations have to do right by the consumer. It’s the same for toys that poison our kids as it is for planes that malfunction and, as it should be, for financial expertise that turns out to be sucky advice.The “freedom to succeed” fosters a more efficient and productive society. That’s the anti-regulation rationale that props up capitalism while condemning socialism. And, at the risk of angering fuzzy mainstream liberals, I tend to agree with it. But only if the same reasoning gets applied uniformly. Which it won’t be if this Wall Street Bailout, or any subsequent version of it, is passed.
Just as businesses should be “allowed” to succeed, they also must be free to fail. Currently, only the masses are free to do that. Only when our failure trickles up finally to economic elites do any of them consider changing how they do business (and even then, not out of any altruistic concern for the greater good, but because they understand we won’t be buying their products anymore if everyone’s broke from chronic overconsumption). The risks that are said to balance the free market and naturally compel people to responsibly self-regulate are only useful if they constrain all of us equally. This bailout sets a new precedent, whereby some are powerful enough to warrant their own safety net. We the people can no longer take the risk of our risks applying to them; so the rich get their very own mulligan as long as their mistakes endanger the rest of us as well.
If those who lend money to hardworking Americans are incompetent and/or corrupt, then they deserve the same fate as Chinese toymakers. That’s freedom, no?If a “free market” government can’t be bothered to intervene on behalf of the common man, then shouldn’t the common man be “free” to gradually inform himself? And if an informed citizenry means people will self-regulate more and start to live within our means, then maybe The Market deserves this hangover.But rather than learn from our mistakes, 2/3 of House Democrats and 1/3 of their opponents advocate borrowing our way out of them, to the detriment of future generations. The result will be an entire society that doesn’t understand the value of a dollar; where in essence we tax the poor and give to the rich.
Why give us more reasons to try to keep up with the Jones’es?Now is the time to laugh at the Jones’es, as they’ve been laughing at us for some time now.
Countless times we’ve been reminded that “the world changed on 9/11.”
In both parties’ National Conventions, we heard it again.
Everything changed.
This durable one-liner isn’t just a limp platitude anymore.Nowadays, it’s the alibi when politicians tinker with democracy, and the rationale when citizens lower their standards of what it means to be American and Free.
Tragedy and fear have ushered in a new politics—a blueprint for how to be corrupt without appearing evil.Usually “the change” is mentioned in order to legitimize some aspect of the shady shift that’s now occurring—whether in business, politics, ideology, world policy, military strategy, civil liberties, or the advent of barefaced media propaganda.
Everything changed.And thus we have to govern in a new way now—the only way—for your safety.
With crooked leaders come docile followers who believe it’s patriotic to be scared and vulnerable, but not to participate in democracy.Soon new catchphrases emerge, and are more effective.
A population trusts and believes and complies, because things have fundamentally changed and must change again, ASAP.
While surface references to things changing are ample, clarity about what exactly changed, and why it had to, is hard to pin down.
Concretely, many things did change on September 11th, 2001.Jumbo jets disappeared into towers; towers toppled like tiny wooden blocks in a “Jenga” game.Thousands of Americans never came home, and thousands more will never come home the same.
But is this what they mean, when pundits and elected officials who speak of profound change?
Ultimately, the lasting casualty from that fateful morning may be the loss of a great nation, one that remains unable to function as it did in its glory.
Nations die lingering deaths. They disintegrate gradually, over time, as opposed to airplanes which vaporize on impact. Great nations do not collapse violently, as do great buildings made of steel, but softly, a little more each day, one parcel at time.
If our nation crumbles, it will happen slowly, so everyone can watch, no loud explosions to mark the moment when at last we finish our fall.This second, slower death will be the enduring legacy of 9/11, the important ending heard not with the bang but only inside the relative whimper that follows.
The changes history will remember aren’t necessarily about the people who died on 9/11.It may be that our most profound changes have yet to occur.
This newly updated, wounded America is one the victims never knew.It belongs now to the three-hundred-million of us who weren’t murdered that morning: Americans from other regions of the country, New Yorkers who worked in other parts of Manhattan, WTC employees who called in sick or were running late that morning, and those who raced out of the buildings moments before they fell.
We are the survivors, and 9/11’s ramifications matter to us.
Yes, our hearts are with the victims.But must our minds fixate solely on the dead as we ask what should come next in life?
“Everything changed” is one version of 9/11.But it’s not the only way human beings might make sense of losing.Change is not fait accompli; but just one possibility among many, a choice we should’ve been given that’s still rightfully ours to make, together.
Readers of this blog may recall the Lake Nona-area dog-shooting fiasco.On May 19th, a wealthy business elite by the name of Christopher M. Comins fired nine shots at a pair of Siberian huskies in a field in central Florida.
For a brief time, it seemed likely that this man’s violent act would go unpunished.The Orange County Sheriff’s Office initially concluded that Comins’ behavior was legit and legal.The wounded huskies had been bothering cattle; the cows appeared concerned for their calves.
The predator Chris Comins has a prior record of violence, an improper exhibition of a firearm, after having pointed a gun at his stepchild’s head in 2005.But he also has deep pockets, and knows “important” people.Usually that’s sufficient when mean people do bad things and want to get away with them.
But like Hoochie and Raley, this story refuses to die.Christopher Comins, a savvy businessman, figured he could talk his way out of trouble by concocting an elaborate story, in which the pets acted like vicious wolves, first trying to eat the cows and then turning their wild fangs on Comins himself, who, fearing for his life, fired only in self-defense.He didn’t anticipate having to contend with real footage that documented the events and debunked the Comins’ version of them.But the emergence of a YouTube video a few days after the shooting did just that, sparking a global outcry.
Investigators on Monday recommended that (Comins) be charged with animal cruelty.
After reviewing the videotape and interviewing more than 20 witnesses, investigators concluded that the last shot Comins fired crossed the line, sheriff’s Cmdr. Stephen Garrison said. That shot occurred after the dogs’ owner, Christopher Butler, jumped a fence and ran to his pets, who had escaped from his street less than two miles away.
“We didn’t feel there was justification to shoot” the last shot, Garrison said.
“Where Butler is physically in control of the first dog and the second dog is having difficulty standing or moving far, the need to continue shooting the second dog to protect the cattle is no longer required,” the sheriff’s report states.
In addition to whatever charges the state brings against him, Comins also faces a civil lawsuit, filed by the dogs’ owner, Chris Butler.
An Orlando businessman criticized for shooting two huskies in a pasture near Lake Nona in May faces a civil lawsuit over the dogs’ injuries.
The lawsuit seeking more than $15,000 in damages was filed Thursday in Circuit Court by Christopher Butler, who owns the dogs, Hoochie and Railey, according to Orange County court records. Veterinary bills for the dogs wounded seven times exceeded $7,500.
Christopher Comins also is accused of endangering the dogs’ owner as well as motorists and bystanders who stopped to watch the pets chase cattle within view of the Central Florida GreeneWay.
Some right wing bloggers have declared today 
