Month: January 2025

Tweets

After the massacre in the streets of New Orleans, Americans were desperate for information about what happened.  After all, there was also a bombing in Las Vegas, an explosion in Honolulu, and a mass shooting in New York City.  Were they all tied together?  Were we under a small scale 9-11 style attack?  And what about those large scale targets? There are big college football games scheduled, particularly the Sugar Bowl in New Orleans itself – can it go on?

 In the morning hours of New Year’s Day, Fox News put out a scoop via tweet on X  (formerly known as Twitter).  They identified the truck used in the massacre. It was one that crossed from Mexico two days before at Eagle Pass. And the terrorist driving it was an illegal migrant. 

That tweet was quickly echoed by a Trump statement on his own Truth Social. “When I said that the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in the country… it turned out to be true.”  We know where that was headed.  The attack was another result of Biden’s terrible, awful,”open-border” policy.  As Trump would say, “I alone can fix it”.  

In less than an hour, Fox deleted the tweet.  The FBI identified the driver/shooter as Shamsud-Dim Jabbar. He was a born American citizen of the great state of Texas. And he served honorably in the US Army and Army reserves in Afghanistan.  The truck didn’t come over the border, it was rented through a “rent my car” app called Turo a couple of months before in Texas.  Trump, of course, didn’t issue any correction.

Red Solo Cup

Soon after, there was a “grand” press conference in New Orleans.  Everyone was there: the Mayor, the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI, the Louisiana Head of Homeland Security, the Police Chief, the Governor of Louisiana, Senator John Kennedy, the Sugar Bowl Football Game organizers, and many, many more law enforcement officials.  Each official took a turn at the microphone, delineating what their task was in the investigation.  

Senator Kennedy (R) actually looked like he was a New Year’s Eve reveler himself. He was dressed in blue jeans and a “cowboy-style” shirt, and held a Red Solo cup in his hand.  He spoke about the horror of the attack, oddly saying it should trigger the “gag reflex” of every American (I guess fitting after a night of New Year’s celebration).  But then he went off on a rant. He spoke about how he would make sure that the public would know the “truth” about what happened.  And, after a few more words, it was clear that he was telling America that he would do all he could to reveal any coverup of the facts.

Except for one thing:  no one was covering up any facts.  John Kennedy wasn’t promising to get to the bottom of how dim-Jabbar was radicalized. And he wasn’t going to trace the attack back to Isis.  No, Kennedy was promising that the US Government wasn’t going to lie to the American people.  

The fix was in.

Information Silos

Americans get their information through “silos” slanted to their own political predilections.  Many are conditioned to ignore the “mainstream media”. That’s because, as one conservative Reddit commentator put it, “they use too many facts”.  A large segment of Americans get their “facts” in a silo of chosen Twitter, Truth Social and online sources.  So , don’t be surprised, in a few months, when the story of New Year’s in New Orleans gets rewritten.  The “source” is already there, the now-deleted Fox News tweet, backed by the future President himself. 

Senator Kennedy may have looked hung-over, but he was actually being very politically shrewd at that press conference on New Year’s Day.  He established himself as the “defender” of the “real truth” , no matter what the FBI or Homeland Security or NOLA Police or anyone else has to say about the matter.  He’ll be able to cite now deleted sources to “prove” that the somehow the government (the “deep state” intelligence agencies in particular) covered up something even more awful than the reality we see now:  an American soldier radicalized, willing to murder dozens of innocents for ISIS (the death count stands at fifteen today).  

And they’ll be thirty to forty percent of the nation who will believe the Senator, because that’s what America does right now.  It will further Kennedy’s career, and stoke the fire of the Project 2025 guys in the Trump Administration who want to replace everyone in the Federal Government with those that only drink their brand of Kool-Aid.  The real truth won’t matter, only the truth that furthers their interests.  

The Fix is In.

Bourbon Street

An ominous start to 2025:  a car drives into crowded Bourbon Street in the middle of the night on New Year’s Eve in New Orleans.  Ten killed, more than thirty injured, and the driver jumped out to exchange gun fire with police (two officers hit).  Maybe there’s bombs as well, maybe not.  Maybe the driver/shooter is dead by his own hand, or by the police, maybe not.  But the FBI says he’s dead, and it’s only 8 am.  

Bourbon Street – an iconic location in American “lore”.  Walking with the crowd on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve, or better yet, Mardi Gras, is on the  lifetime “bucket list” for many.   I’ve been there a couple of times, but only with high school teams along.  Bourbon Street is about music, and parties, and “show me your — beads”.  Walking there in the daytime doesn’t really give the true “feel”.  As one of my athletes found out when he stepped in the door of a “nude dancers” club at one in the afternoon; “When it’s family night we’ll let you know!!!”

Bourbon Street never really has a family night.  But, like New Year’s Eve in Times Square, or Key West, or on the Vegas Strip; it’s where Americans go to party the New Year in. Now, they’re blowing up suspected “bombs” on the streets.  Maybe they’re really bombs, maybe they’re packages left behind in the panic of the moment.   Better safe than sorry.

Lone Wolf

It’s a reminder that we live in a dangerous world.  What we used to worry about was planned terrorist attacks by Black September or Al Qaeda or Isis.  That’s changed.  It’s not organized anymore. It’s a crazed “lone wolf”, who may be radicalized on the internet, or may just be nuts, or both.  We’ve all got cars, a weapon of choice.  And, since it’s the United States of America, many of us, including those who have lost their minds, have guns as well.

So what should be the “mindset” for 2025?  Should we go back to the weeks after 9/11, when Americans avoided malls, stadiums, crowds and celebrations?  They were all “soft targets”.  And it took a while before we went back to those events, and stopped looking up at each jet in the sky as a weapon.  

There is a theory of avoidance:   stay “small”.  Don’t put yourself in a position when you could be at risk.  Stay away from all of the events, national ones like New Year’s Eve on Bourbon Street, or local ones like the village festival.  But this violence can happen anywhere. It happened at a local school, a private Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin.  Or at a place of worship, like the one in Sutherland Springs, Texas.  Or at local grocery stores, like the Tops Friendly in Buffalo, New York, or the King Soopers in Boulder, Colorado.  How “small” are you willing to be?

Kismet

There is an Islamic word, Kismet.  It is a word for fate, for the pure random chance that put those folks in the path of a vehicle in the wee hours of New Year’s Day on Bourbon Street.  We can take precautions: Times Square is ringed with barriers and trash trucks to prevent exactly such an attack.  They don’t even allow port-a-potties, a place where a bomb could be assembled and detonated.  (The great mystery of New Year’s Eve on Times Square –  where do those people go to go?).

Surely Bourbon Street will be closed to  vehicle traffic next year, concrete barriers and, maybe New Orleans trash trucks as well.  But in the end, you can choose to live life, or you can choose to live “small”, avoiding the unavoidable, try to hide from Kismet.  But, no matter what your religious beliefs (or lack thereof), in the end there’s no avoiding that.

Resolution

So here’s a New Year’s Resolution:  Live Life.  2025 is a new year, one that you will never experience again.  Don’t let fear stop you from experiencing everything that 2025 has to offer.  You don’t have to be reckless, but you don’t have to be “small” either.  Living is more than existing, it’s experiencing the world.  There’s an Chinese expression; “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.”

As one with some experience with dogs, I can tell you that even in our times of chaos, they can be tranquil. And in tranquil times, they can create chaos.  We can’t control our world and our current times (the election of 2024 certainly proves that), but we can still strive to make it better, even with danger of other’s lunacy.   Kismet will find us when it does.  In the meantime, we can live, and experience, and find joy wherever we can. So live a Happy New Year!!!!