I work in the courts, sometimes daily. After the horrific shooting in Fulton Superior Court in 2005, the trial attorneys’ world grew more dangerous. In family law, we always know that danger can lurk from that nut-job opposing party who doesn’t have any better angels, let alone can listen to them, but the shooting, in addition to robbing us of an excellent jurist and fine man, Judge Rowland Barnes, made us all intimately aware of just how vulnerable we can be.
Now, the terror comes ever closer and far more generalized. Four men were arrested in our fair state of Georgia today, November 1, 2011. They are charged with plotting to kill people in federal buildings, “I’d say the first ones that need to die is the ones in the government buildings,” one alleged terrorist is recorded saying. They were also planning to spread Ricin, a deadly biological agent, as they drove down I-75, I-285 and Highway 41, “Ya get on the trunk of Atlanta, ya get up on the north side, ya get on 41, ya throw it out there right on 285, ya go up 41 or 75, go up 75 to get away from it. Keep the heater on, that way keeps the pressure out. Don’t roll your window down,” another one of the alleged terrorists said. See the MSNBC article.
I-75? I-285? Highway 41? Y’all, that’s where we live! These scum bags were plotting to kill us. You, me, mom, pop, daughter, son, firefighter, teacher, bank teller. Any one of us they could kill, they gleefully would. “When it comes down to it, I can kill somebody.”
We need to uniformly condemn this terroristic plot. We need to uniformly condemn the rhetoric that encourages these home grown jihadists against our government, against us, “by the people, for the people…”. This anti-American-ism leads inevitably to the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, to the shooting of Gabby Giffords and the others earlier this year. This “me first, America last” vitriol tears us apart.
And the terrorists and the anti-America crowd and the 1% wouldn’t want it any other way. United we stand. Divided, the bad guys win.
Michael Manely