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Editorial |
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You’ve got mail Oct. 17 - There aren’t any likely terrorist targets in Lincolnton. We don’t expect a 727 to crash into the Citizens Center. But we are edgy. Business is off in Lincolnton, just like it is everywhere else. We are putting off some trips, canceling others. We are spending more time at church. A few of us are frightened by our own mail. It’s no longer New York, Washington and Florida, but Anytown, USA, including Lincolnton, that has to worry about the agents of terror and the swarms of sympathizers and copycats that surround them. Unfortunately, our mail is no longer safe. It doesn’t matter that you’re not Tom Brokaw or Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota. The loonies out there may use the mail to play a bad joke. We just hope they don’t have access to something like anthrax. A maintenance supervisor in Colorado who said he left an envelope of white powder for co-workers at an apartment complex as a joke has been charged with menacing and harassment. The powder was laundry detergent, but we don’t expect the court to take this joke lightly. This week alone, our law enforcement officials have had several calls about suspicious-looking mail. Sheriff Barbara Pickens said none of the complaints have turned into anything dangerous, but people are nervous. This will be a way of life for awhile: phony bomb threats that have to be taken seriously (the Gaston County Courthouse had three on Monday); cooler bans at ball games; disrupted flights when anything unusual seems to be going on with a passenger. Bring it on. We will check our mail. We will evacuate for bomb threats. We will submit to searches. We will leave our coolers at home and we will go on with our lives. But you sense a certain resolve here in Lincolnton and among the American people that those who attempt to disrupt a cherished way of life will not be tolerated. We will take the precautions necessary and look for a day of reckoning. If not today, tomorrow. If not next week, next month.
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© 2001 Lincoln Times-News |
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