{"id":1464,"date":"2017-10-06T06:00:41","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/?p=1464"},"modified":"2017-10-05T10:49:57","modified_gmt":"2017-10-05T17:49:57","slug":"what-happens-in-vegas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/2017\/10\/06\/what-happens-in-vegas\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens In Vegas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today when I went out to do my steps, it was after seeing President Trump speak at the Las Vegas Police Department in the aftermath of that city\u2019s unspeakable atrocity. \u00a0My heart was heavy when I went outside, and even though the autumn sun was shining brightly, I found no solace in it. \u00a0And then I remembered a song by Glen Campbell, may he rest in peace. \u00a0I\u2019m sure that if I wrote the lyrics into this blog, someone would come chasing after me to let me know that I had violated a copyright. \u00a0So I\u2019m not copying down the words to Let Me Be A Little Kinder, but I\u2019m including a link: \u00a0Let Me Be A Little Bit Kinder lyrics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And as I walked and hummed and worked my way back through those simple lyrics, I remembered a kinder gentler time when we spent our evenings watching variety shows on our old black and white TV sets. \u00a0Back then Glen Campbell\u2019s music was always \u2026 well \u00a0\u2026 Gentle on My Mind. \u00a0In those days there wasn\u2019t a relentless twenty-four hour news cycle with people from one side of the fence or the other yelling at one another and absolutely refusing to see any validity in the other person\u2019s point of view.<\/p>\n

And so, walking and singing, I found myself thinking about those thousands of concert goers, standing as one with their phone flashlights pointed skyward and with their voices raised together singing God Bless America! \u00a0At the time they sang those words, none of them had any inkling\u00a0of the tragedy that would befall them little more than an hour.<\/p>\n

Those people were truly innocents at the slaughter. \u00a0And yet, in the ungodly reign of terror that followed, ordinary men and women showed extraordinary courage. \u00a0They put themselves in harm\u2019s way, saving loved ones and saving complete strangers. \u00a0They lifted a wheelchair bound woman down from a raised dais where she would surely have died. \u00a0They lifted one another over fences; dragged people to safety; loaded people into cars and trucks to take them to hospitals, all the while binding wounds, supplying first aid, and giving comfort.<\/p>\n

And the cops! \u00a0Oh my, oh my as Detective Joe Kenda would say. \u00a0They went into the face of death when others were fleeing for their lives. There were no safe spaces for them, and they stood their ground. \u00a0They guided victims to safety. \u00a0For the people trapped in that killing field, the ordeal of death and destruction must have lasted forever, but it was only ELEVEN minutes from the time the first shots were fired before police officers broke into the room and found the shooter dead by his own hand. \u00a0ELEVEN MINUTES!! \u00a0And how did they locate him that fast? \u00a0They were aided by alert people on the ground who helped triangulate and identify his exact location.<\/p>\n

It is difficult to fathom such evil. \u00a0My heart aches for the people who have lost loved ones forever and for patients still in hospitals dealing with life changing injuries. \u00a0I hurt for the people who, on a seemingly carefree night of music and fun, were caught up in that horrific nightmare where, out of nowhere, the person seated next to them suddenly took a bullet in his head. \u00a0Those scenes will be forever etched in survivors’ hearts and minds. \u00a0They will never go away.<\/p>\n

President Trump said that, as a nation, we\u2019ll all be dealing with the aftermath of this event for a very long time, but for the people who were there on the ground\u2014the survivors; the first responders; the cops; the crime scene investigators; the overwhelmed doctors and nurses at the hospitals\u2014those folks will be carrying the bulk of this burden for the remainder of their lives.<\/p>\n

The point of terrorism is to terrify us\u2014to get us to go home, lock the door, hide in the closet, climb under the bed, and stay there.\u00a0 Terrorists want us to forget about doing the things we love to do or being the people we want to be. \u00a0They want us to be afraid.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not let what happens in Vegas stay in Vegas. \u00a0Let\u2019s honor the courage of those ordinary but utterly amazing folks on the ground\u2014the ones who reached out to help others in need, putting their own lives on the line in the process. \u00a0Let\u2019s rejoice that they stood up in the face of terrible evil and did what had to be done. \u00a0Let\u2019s remember those incredibly brave people every single day.<\/p>\n

And while we\u2019re at it? Yes, let\u2019s all be a little kinder.<\/p>\n

Please.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today when I went out to do my steps, it was after seeing President Trump speak at the Las Vegas Police Department in the aftermath of that city\u2019s unspeakable atrocity. \u00a0My heart was heavy when I went outside, and even though the autumn sun was shining brightly, I found no solace in it. \u00a0And then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,72,63],"tags":[174,175,172,173],"class_list":["post-1464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-passings","category-politics","tag-glenn-campbell","tag-heroes","tag-los-vegas","tag-terrorism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-nC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1464"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1466,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1464\/revisions\/1466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}