Ghosts of the past, present, and future

Exactly twenty years ago. I still remember that morning in more detail than all but of a few of the mornings that have come since. The sky was a beautiful blue, the sun was warm, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. A typical Central Florida day. My shift, C shift, had just started our 24 hour workday.

I was driving Engine 2 that morning. Dennis was riding in the seat next to me as the Lieutenant, and Justin was the back seat firefighter. Our shift had begun at 7:30 that morning as it always did. We did our morning routine as we always do. At 8:30, we left the station to do annual flow testing of fire hydrants.

By 8:45, we were behind the Winn Dixie and just about to test our first hydrant. Our Battalion Chief called us and told us to return to the station and turn on the TV. I remember jokingly asking Dennis who the guy on the radio was and what they had done to the Chief, since he would never tell us to watch TV during the day.

We arrived back in the station just in time to see the second plane hit the south tower. I remember watching Fox news and seeing them switch to the DC bureau, where reporters said they could see a column of smoke. Things were happening so fast, I couldn’t figure out what that smoke was coming from. It was then that a fellow firefighter told me that the Pentagon had been hit.

The chief called us, and when I was on the phone with him, the first tower fell. The chief said to me, “Oh my God. 30,000 people just died.” I remember being stunned that so many people could be in a building.

By noon, we had an armed SWAT officer with an MP-5 riding along with us on all of our calls “for security.”

For weeks, we firefighters were stunned at the loss of 343 firefighters. I felt a sense of awe that the guys who went into that second tower after watching the first one fall went into that building, in awe of the guys who were in the second tower when that first one fell, all the while knowing that they would never come out of the second tower. What was going through their minds? I asked myself if I could make the same choice, if I *knew* that I would not come out?

We all wanted to be able to say yes. It isn’t the same thing when you go into an ordinary fire. Firefighters are a cocky, professional bunch. When we run into a burning building, we tell ourselves that we are trained and experienced enough that it will not happen to us. Not so those guys in the towers. They went in KNOWING that they wouldn’t come out. That is a time that you don’t know what you would do until the moment of truth comes.

I just hoped that I would have the fortitude to make the choice that needed to be made, to have the courage to choose duty and honor over self preservation, and the fortune to never be placed in that position. I hoped that I would never have to make that choice.

I spent the majority of my adult life in one uniform or another, dedicated to the protection of American lives and values. I spent six years in the Navy, doing two combat tours in the Persian gulf. I wasn’t a big hero or anything. I, like millions of others did my job. After that, I spent two decades in a firefighter’s uniform. I that time, I ran into hundreds of burning buildings, jumped into a dozen lakes, thousands of medical scenes, and 22 natural disasters. I was injured three times in the line of duty. I saw a couple of thousand dead bodies, dozens of shootings and stabbings, and saved more than a few lives.

In 2011, I retired. I had seen enough death, misery, and blood for one lifetime. I thought that the time of risking life and limb for the good of this nation and its people was over. I had given enough. I deserved to be left alone to grow old and enjoy the rest of my life in as much peace as I could manage.

All I want is to be left alone to grow old in peace. The events of the past 18 months make me believe that this won’t happen. I fear that I may have to make that choice after all.

Combat continues

The ongoing battles continue in the Interstate 5 corridor from the Canadian border south to Eugene, Oregon.

For that reason, the entire I-5 corridor is still considered an area of active, low intensity combat. I would also point out that the violence that we saw is still taking place in many areas, it’s just that the press is no longer covering it.

But it’s their culture

Young Afghan girls have been forced into marriages in order to escape Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover. Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases where young girls were presented as ‘married’ to much older Afghan men, as well as polygamous families. Afghan girls at a transit site in Abu Dhabi have alleged they have been raped by older men they were forced to marry in order to escape Afghanistan.

History doesn’t repeat, it rhymes

How much of this sounds familiar to you?

Benito Mussolini coined his system of government the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento on Mar. 23, 1919, in Milan, Italy. Mussolini thought that democracy was a failed system. He thought that liberty of expression and liberty of parties was a sham, and that fascism would organize people under state power. This, in his mind, would make people more free because there would be no classes, no decisions to be made. Everything would be decided for you by the state. Mussolini wrote:

The Fascist conception of life accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. . . . Fascism reasserts the rights of the state. If classical liberalism spells individualism, Fascism spells government. The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity.

Benito Mussolini

Violence was seen as beneficial to society and a necessary function of government. The main way the fascists got to power was by killing off and intimidating what was the largest and most popular party, the Socialist Party. Squadrists, terrorists who would descend upon towns in trucks, uniformed in black shirts, had knives and they killed thousands of people from 1919 to 1922. The violence escalated to the point that the people began clamoring for someone to end the violence. Mussolini led a protest march to Rome, where they planned to demand an end to the violence. and demand an end to the Prime Minister’s term. On October 28, 1922 Mussolini was named Prime Minister in his place.

At first, Mussolini’s rule looked great. The budget was balanced, competitive elections were held, freedom of the press was still present, and trade unions were still permitted to strike. Then 1925 came. The largest businesses supported the new plan. Select individuals, those who had garnered Mussolini’s favor, supported the new economy.

The economy became centrally planned with heavy state subsidies, and high tariffs prevented foreign competition. Cronyism was rampant, large deficits as far as the eye could see were caused by profligate government spending. Bank and industry bailouts were widespread, the bureaucracy grew ever larger, mostly supporting massive social welfare programs, crushing national debt, inflation, and a highly regulated, multiclass, integrated national economic structure. In short, the government decided the winners and losers.

Benito Mussolini identified his economic policies with “state administered capitalism,” the exact phrase that Vladimir Lenin used to describe his “New Economic Policies.” Mussolini’s fascism combined market-based mechanisms and socialism, similar to China’s “market driven socialism.” In fact, Mussolini often said that he was a follower of Keynesian economics.

Reading all of the above, which of America’s political belief systems do you think sounds more like fascism?