We’ve all been there. On the bus, on the train, standing on the street, waiting for the light to change. And that guy…you know the one, that guy with the vaguely threatening air starts ranting. Maybe he’s just ranting. Maybe he is being aggressive towards someone. And we quietly edge away, hoping he won’t direct his venom at us, hoping that the light will change, that he’ll move on. But this Memorial Day…this day when we honor those who lost their lives in the service of our country…
This Memorial Day, we watch in horror as one Democratic norm after another gets thrown under the bus.
On this day, when we learn that one of the men who lost his life defending a stranger on a Portland Oregon streetcar, was an Army veteran, we learn a new meaning to the phrase service to our country. Neither he, nor the other two young men who stepped up to defend two teenage girls who were being harassed on the streetcar, turned their backs and said this is not my fight.
The young man who was killed by this attacker had just graduated and was at the start of a promising life. He stepped up to protect two young women, one African American, the other wearing a hijab, who were being verbally attacked by that guy, he made it his business to defend people he did not know. A third defender is still in the hospital in critical condition. I am sending light and healing his way.
In the face of seemingly state sanctioned hatred, love and compassion still exists.
A GoFundMe campaign for the families of the three victims has raised over $700,000 in less than 48 hours. There is still good in the world. I will have to hold on to that.
And meanwhile, back in the land of Panda Satire….
Don’t be endangered, be dangerous
Panda On!
Bob T Panda
