(no subject)

[technoir]

I read this on plantyhanchuck's page and grew angry.

http://69.93.170.43/

Is this the society we have now? You know fear really is the mind killer, cuase it makes people stupid. You know I haven't seen any evidence to indicate that all the changes we have made in our laws and society since 9/11, changes we made out of fear, have made us safer. All they seem to do is foster more fear.

Comments

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

No wonder you're angry. I'm horrified and disgusted and angry right along with you.

This is the second time I've heard a story like this.

My first week on the floor at my current job, I had a little old man on the phone with me. He wanted to know the address for the corporate office. I told him I'd gladly look it up for him, but would he be willing to give me a little background so I could see if I could help him.

He said he didn't think I could be of much help, but thanked me because he thought it was very kind of me to offer. And then he went into his tale.

He's a 70-something year old man who lives in a suburb of Atlanta, GA. He has paid his bill either in advance or mostly on time since he retired and went on fixed income. Because he's that old, he doesn't really like or trust online billpaying or telephone billpaying, and he likes the personal touch of being able to walk in and say hi to the same people behind the counter every month. No biggie, right? Right.

So he walks into the payment center to pay his cable bill, but this time he has a camera with him, which he sets down on the counter while he's making out his payment. The person behind the counter assumes he's actually taking pictures with it, and documents his account with this. The gentleman says the counterperson asked if he was going to take her picture, and he replied, "No, ma'am." He went on to explain to me that it's a $500 camera, and he has no insurance because he can't afford it, what with being on a fixed income and all. I had asked him if he thought maybe to leave it in the car, and he said he had, but didn't dare due to the concern of theives and his lack of insurance.

A week or two after this exchange, he finds out the counterperson reported it. The police were called, and the kindly, harmless old gentleman was marked up as "suspicious". He got a copy of the police report and was aggrieved and appalled. Insult was added to injury when the cable company I work for sent him a letter requesting kindly that he never conduct business in person at one of their payment centers ever again.

He was extremely sweet and nice to me about it, but it was obvious this guy was very upset about what happened.

I was upset on his behalf, but the thing that made my jaw drop was when I went to one of my managers. He just shrugged and said, "Well, post 9/11, you have to expect this kind of thing."

The older gentleman was all but in tears on the phone with me, he was so upset. You know how you can just tell a person is harmless by a vibe you get off them? This old man gave this vibe to me over the phone.

Plus, you could tell he was on in years and kind of on the frail side now that he was getting old. There was no way this little old man could be the mastermind of any sort of terrorist plot. No way at all. He even went into some detail about his back problems and why this contributed to his fixed income, because he can't even take one of those jobs old people take for a little extra money.

He felt his good name had been slandered by the counterperson, and that he'd been humiliated by the police report and the letter asking him never to set foot in one of the company's payment centers.

And I don't blame him.

[technoir.livejournal.com]

I wish I could say these are the few isolated stories but more and more they are not. Fear pervades our culture. I wish i knew how to change that.

[newsedition.livejournal.com]

"To, thru verrious & divers machinations, transmute the lead weights of fear into sweet golden humour, woud bee the gratest alchaemical feat of all."

- Malaclypse the Hunger