Two thousand two. Bernard DeVoto wouldn’t have thought much of
it. Eighteen forty-six was a year rich in epochal events that
enabled him to write an enduring The Year of Decision, but
2002 was one of those marking of times, getting ready, a caesura in
the beat of history. Even so, we are at the turning of the year
and, as my great-uncle the rustler would say, “It’s time to take
stock.”
We learned of the awful differences in the pace of fear and that
of remedy. At this writing, the FBI is seeking five, and perhaps
more, men with Middle-Eastern monikers who are believed to have
slipped over the northern frontier just in time for Christmas. They
had consulted a purveyor of phony documents in Canada just before
heading south, the documenter himself having skipped bail of
$200,000 previously in the United States.
Were they wearing sailor suits we could believe they were part
of a terrorist group that owns a flotilla of ships any one of which
may be steaming for a U.S. port with a cargo of death, nuclear,
viral, take your pick. The existence of such a veritable armada was
made
known at year’s end by the Washington Post.
Not to worry. Slowly, we are putting together a giant
bureaucracy that will tend to Homeland Security and its outlines
should be visible when we celebrate the coming of yet another
year.
Your aerial baggage is now being checked for bombs as well as
safety pins, but your pilots are as disarmed as ever. This too is
being worked on and who knows, one day the aircraft commander may
have the means of defense. But not this week.
And perhaps never if he has to obtain that means in Maryland. A
law is now effective requiring fired shell casings from new
handguns be on deposit with the state police before a Maryland sale
is allowed and many arms manufacturers are simply writing off the
State of Maryland as a place to do business. Ah, but the sale of
cheap used handguns continues apace. New Jersey has gone Maryland
one statute better. It has passed a law requiring handguns to
recognize their owners and refuse to fire if held by anyone else.
Admittedly, the science to achieve this has not caught up with the
law, so the Trenton solons have decreed the law to be in effect as
soon as tardy technicians are abreast of the legislation.
A valued lesson in arms was learned on the international front
in 2002. Dictators of emerging countries were put on notice: one
atomic bomb, even under development, can get you in deep trouble.
But five shiny new ones and you’re home free. As Saddam’s no-fly
zones are about to be expanded to free fire zones throughout, Kim
Jong Il is being accorded the diplomatic niceties of a true
statesman. The lesson: get ‘em first and get ‘em early, and then
start pushing.
It was a year when “a pox on you” could no longer be said in
public. Fearing terror, the President decreed the Armed Forces be
vaccinated for smallpox and he as commander-in-chief submitted
himself right away. Several hundred thousand health care givers and
frontline emergency crews are to be next. Way down the line may or
may not come the general population. No one dare ask why the health
care givers might be exposed and by whom: the general population?
Is there something haywire in the hypothesized progression
here?
It was a year when history itself was doubted. When historical
fact was being stealthily skewed. On the Internet. This vast
research resource is riddled with misinformation as well as
information. In recent years, the lunar landings of the United
States have come into question as historical fact. It was all made
up on some back lot, the doubters said. A couple of years ago the
Fox television network aired some of the doubters’ speculations. As
2002 was ending, NASA took two steps in this regard. It
commissioned a well-known space author to write a monograph
outlining the doubts and putting them to rest with facts, and then
the Agency withdrew from the project, apparently in the belief that
it would look foolish even to duel with the doubters.
Former astronaut Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin had come face-to-face with
a doubter on September 9 in Los Angeles. 37- year-old Bart Sibrel
approached Aldrin and poked at him with a Bible, accusing him of
being part of the conspiracy, demanding he swear on the Bible he’d
been to the moon, and calling him names. Aldrin punched him in the
face.
But most Internet-spawned error cannot be dealt with so
directly. The written word, even wrong, bears a strength of its
own. Some years ago this became apparent in a script I was given
quoting Lincoln as saying “Important principles may and must be
inflexible.” I suggested he had said “flexible.” I was directed to
the place on the Internet where the quote, one of his last public
utterances, was enshrined in error.
One day, the task of cleansing the Internet will dwarf that of
constructing the Home Security edifice.
Meantime, as the year of indecision recedes, we must search for
the verities that endure through all the years. Not drawing to an
inside straight is one of these.
The Aldrin approach to calumny is another .
