Living in Lockdown Times

Living in Lockdown Times

We are living the unthinkable today, compared to ten years ago. We are trying to survive in a world filled with multicultural and global turmoil, hate and fear and our elected politicians are not helping the situation any by their reckless behaviors, rhetoric and demands for more war and more troops on the ground to support an air war in the Middle East that is being fought for all the wrong reasons.

While I am proud of our troops and their courage, I question the reason we are at war over there. The government has been busy storytelling us why we are killing each other and what motives the jihadists carry with them as the world fears their terror. In the end we all know war makes profits and people die for corporate greed. Another aspect of this war is religious pandering of extremism and how a major religion views the world they seek to dominate and control.

Troops fighting terrorism is not new to our society. It has been done for centuries and the costs are enormously in both human lives and plant destruction. Terrorism rules the world today. It has become the world’s most powerful weapon aside from nuclear warfare. It has created a lockdown world for millions of people who live with fear. Fear in our schools, malls and movie theaters. The thoughts of violence, whether guns or knives or other weapons, is fresh on the minds of many.

Even the exposure to explosives has become a common thought after the FBI revealed the numerous homemade explosives found in the Redlands home of two terrorists who went on a killing spree in San Bernardino. Even when the county had completed their regularly scheduled lockdown drill in the Inlands Regional Center, the real massacre of fourteen people shook the country with horror.

The term lockdown used to be applied to prisons or jail settings only. It has expanded from jails to airports and reaches out globally from country to country as public places are targets for terrorists’ hell bent and drawn to violence and mass killings to spread their hate. This preoccupies many mindsets especially our children.

Our precious children are becoming innocent targets of radical extremists who have no value for such precious cargo or audience. They come home and describe how they were gathered into a large group, herded down the hallways towards a pre-destined location in the school where they remain for the lockdown seeking refugee during such lockdowns is frightening.

During our time, the most urgency we experienced were civil defense drills for nuclear war shelters in our school and at home. Those days are no longer practiced as the violence has found their way to most vulnerable places and the world feels unsafe.

Today, lockdowns of many places are more common than the routine of going to work and taking a long trip or vacation which in many ways, also accounts for some psychological adjustments to avoid being trapped in an ambush or terror filled event now threatened to become more frequent and intense.

It makes me angry to see this. It makes me angry our country is not doing enough to protect us as their response has been reactive more than preventive in nature. Even when the San Bernardino police acted so quickly to find these killers, these two-gun toting terrorist managed to clear the crime scene and conduct other activities before being caught. There have been some plots revealed and suspected terrorists have been arrested but in general, most violence still occurs spontaneously and dangerously in our community.

Living in California, the state with the strictest gun laws, does not make me feel safe. People who live here are scared and fear another attack. The terrible sound of gunfire, explosives and other means to destroy us, has awakened a giant nation of its vulnerability to such acts. Lockdown drills and lockdown police mobile command centers intensify those fears and expectation that somebody is about to die.

Gun-free zones make it easier for killers to murder innocents and the presence of cops is lacking due to various reasons beyond our control, Lockdown drills whenever kids talk about them, adds anger they have to go through this trauma. Most are scared of lockdown drills. They shouldn’t have to practice surviving a mass killing at one of their favorite places during the time they are in school.

America should wake up and reject any further assimilation attempts by the government to forcefully merge cultural and religious sects or groups against the natural laws of the land. Congress should put their foot down on immigration laws and restructure them to provide national security and confidence in the law enforcement systems corrupted deliberately by those who take our personal safety for granted and allow slipups to occur due to political interference and deliberate tampering of our laws and regulation concerning our well-being and preservation of life.