I was recently unemployed. I had made an agreement to quit, so that my employer would not badmouth me to future employers. I hadn't done anything bad, just people complained about service and my employer had basically enacted a three complaints for whatever reason and you're fired.
I had received some job notices and applications for employment with Los Angeles County and it was an hour and a half drive from where I lived in Riverside County. I was turning my applications in person to get a receipt, so the job service for the organizations couldn't dump my application in the round file and say "we never received it."
When I got to Downtown Los Angeles it was fairly empty and the few people still working didn't know why things were closed. All of the county offices were closed and locked up with no note of explanation. I returned home and turned on the TV. They were talking about terrorist attacks on the east coast using passenger jets. They had stopped showing the jets flying into the buildings by then. I wasn't a big television watcher, so I stopped watching television for a while. I went back the next day and the offices were open again and I was able to file my applications.
I do remember color-coded alerts, new laws passed, lots of flag waving and saber rattling. The Patriot Act certainly affected me as someone with diagnosed mental illness, but not visibly moreso than the Brady Act. Any way, I never was big on firearms even while in the Army, and never have owned or possessed one outside of a job requirement, even to the point of not taking advantage of a credit of $900 to purchase an off duty weapon while I was an Immigration Inspector for the INS. I haven't flown since my Army days, so that doesn't affect me. A lot of time has passed and many things have occurred since then. I don't believe we know the truth as a people about the real facts behind what happened.
Things are taken out of context, people put 'spin' on things and wrong conclusions are made. The term terrorist threat has made itself into the lawbooks and greatly misconstrued from its original connotation. I don't see that the world is better, but good people still exist and do what they can.
Each day I still draw breath allows for hope of positive change, despite all that is wrong and can't get better. Yes, people who don't know my full situation and will try to blow sunshine up my *ss, so when I correct them and give them the facts they're usually dumbfounded and usually say "Oh."
Anyway, I guess the 4 agreements are a pretty good guide to ethical behavior even if I can only remember two of them: be impeccable with your word and treat each other excellently. Feel free to correct me if I got that wrong.
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