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Ordinary Lives

Ordinary
In America we have something called "spring break" where ordinary people just take a week or two off from the daily grind and do something else - something fun like skiing or going to the Bahamas and just kicking back. Baseball junkies go to south Florida or Arizona to watch the major leaguers toss the ball around and now, in the nearish future, they'll probably be going to Havana. No big deal, just another day in the "land of the free" and nothing - I MEAN NOTHING - is going to get in the way of our spring break.
"The whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people's ordinary lives," Obama said Tuesday in Havana when asked if he had second thoughts about attending the game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team.
You see, the Presidents "ordinary life" is somewhat different from your ordinary life and so while you might not feel like kickin' back with some peanuts and watching 9 innings of baseball after a massive terrorist attack in Europe - not because there's anything you can do about it (you can't), but just because, let's face it, it's pretty darn depressing and you can sort of imagine yourself in those poor victims bloody shoes (why just two weeks ago I was standing at an American Airlines check in line going on my spring break but luckily no crazed Muslim blew me and my family up) so you just might not be in the mood.  But you don't have access to a tricked out 747 Jetliner with state of the art missile defense and a red button that can launch an apocalyptic nuclear war and if you did you probably wouldn't would't want a cell of Islamic whack-jobs to "disrupt" your ordinary either. And for those folks who don't get the message FBPOTUS clarifies:
"What they can do is scare," Obama said, "and make people afraid and disrupt our daily lives and divide us. And as long as we don't allow that to happen, we're gonna be okay."
When he says "we're gonna be okay" I'm not sure if he's talking about We the People or the Royal We nor do I understand what "okay" signifies in his mind. Is being just okay enough? Now I'm all for the "don't allow that to happen" sentiment, but I think it's a lot easier to take that attitude BEFORE the terrorist attack than it is AFTER people are blown up. Because after the attack there is legitimate fear associated with the "disruption" and division (literally) of people. Pretending that it (a bomb) didn't happen doesn't appear to be winning the war and makes the bombers suppose, correctly in my view, that the West is petrified of confronting villainy.

ordinary travel plans disrupted... but he'll be okay
And if you think my words are not helpful and just instigate the jihadists to be even more violent than they already are I want you to consider the plight of Salah Abdeslam who allegedly planned the Paris terrorist attack several months ago and has been on the lam for 4 months - on the lam in a 20 block radius in Molenbeek - and nobody turned him in. Oh yeh, and he was the most wanted man in the world! That's just the way it is in Molenbeek, a community filled with Belgians trying to live ordinary lives, coming together for the greater good.


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