Nobody thinks someone will attack them because they’re enjoying their life and having a great time. At least not until it happens.
by Mauve Maude
January 20, 2025
Six months ago, I enjoyed a day in New Orleans that stands out as one of my best, in both recent and distant memory. I was with a most lovely and delightful Cajun lady, and though we started out the day with a leftover muffuletta and too many beignets, we’d re-worked our appetites walking around the French Market, followed by two or three hours in the New Orleans Museum of Art. By the time we’d made our way back down to the French Quarter, found a place among the Essence Fest crowds to park the car, discovered far too long a line at the Acme Oyster House, found a shorter (air-conditioned) wait, and waited, we were quite hungry indeed. My lovely Cajun companion had warned me of her tendency toward the “hangry”, but her characteristic tendency toward patience had won the battle, this time. With Bourbon Street at our backs, we finally feasted on charbroiled oysters, shrimp and grits, a crab special, Sazerac, and for me, a famous frozen milk punch on the house. I took my little to-go cup of milk punch out into the street, and there we were treated to our second live jazz show of the day, which we thoroughly enjoyed with the crowd, all of us standing in the middle of Bourbon and Iberville until whenever we felt like retiring. It was exactly the kind of fun and flavor-filled afternoon people go to New Orleans for, and I will go again as soon as I can.
Six months later, I’d wake up on New Year’s morning with the same lovely Cajun, and when I picked up my phone and told her what had happened in New Orleans, she told me not to read it. I took her advice, put it down, and poured myself an egg nog in my little milk punch cup, which had come home with me and stayed in my kitchen cabinet. We decided to go on with our New Year’s plans and thoroughly enjoy another day, which we did. But of course, we were able to do that. It wasn’t until later that I read more about the New Year’s morning attack on Bourbon Street, and realized it had occurred exactly where we’d stood that hot day in July. A domestic terrorist had used the sidewalk to go around the police car that was blocking Bourbon Street from Canal. He’d sped right up Bourbon Street, through Iberville, though Bienville, and crashed out before Conti, taking fourteen lives with him before he was shot by police, injuring dozens more, and traumatizing countless others, as was his intention. Trauma is the weapon that can spread to a whole nation. Because nobody thinks when they’re enjoying their life and having a great time, that someone will attack them exactly because they’re enjoying their life and having a great time. At least not until it happens.
It does me no good to ask, what if it had been us? What if this terrorist had decided to carry this out six months ago? After all, it’s happened to so many. In this young and insulated country of ours, people have found themselves in these kinds of situations for years. Sometimes it’s a vehicle, sometimes it’s a gun . . . but it’s always in a place where people expect to be safe, doing something good for themselves and others with the time that they have–getting groceries, attending a concert, going to school, just living. Outside of this country, it happens every day, in places where people no longer expect to be safe, maybe never expected it, and many believe Americans could use more of it. In fact, though he was a Texas-born, Christian-raised, United States military veteran, this particular terrorist had just pledged his allegiance to ISIS, and decided to attack Bourbon Street as his own personal salvo in the “war between the believers and the disbelievers“. He didn’t agree with the way Americans around him were living their lives, and he felt killing as many people as he could, would somehow help. He should’ve tended to his own.
I wasn’t there that day, but it may do me some good to ask, what if it’s us in the future?
The likelihood of my being intentionally run down during a street party, picked off by a sniper during a festival, or even AR-15’d by a school intruder, are relatively low. What’s more likely to happen to me while I’m living my life, having a great time, and hurting no one, the happiest I’ve ever been?
I don’t foresee instantaneous events, although that could just be a matter of me not being able to see the future. What I do see, are events lining up with other events of the past. I see vast uncertainty. Though I do not see uncertainty as particularly pleasant, I am not afraid of it. Others are. Enough people are enough afraid of uncertainty to steer the course of history in a direction that seems certain, but is irreparably perilous. This has already happened, more than once. I see people who are bubbling over with hatred, heated by ignorance and fear, people who would do away with those they don’t agree with or approve of, simply because they’re annoyed, or because they’re feeling challenged, and they’re as uncomfortable with challenge as they are with uncertainty. I see people who haven’t even begun to register the consequences of their actions, or inactions (which are decisively, actions). Or perhaps worse, they have, and they acted anyway. I see self-righteousness with no thought required, perhaps not even considered. I see people who have given up on people. Some of them even claim to love the very people they’ve given up on. What I’m seeing is an America that has offered to destroy itself for the most fleeting feeling of certainty. We’ve always called ourselves the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. But it appears we’ve decided to “re-brand” into something else, that makes some feel better by destroying the lives of others.
He didn’t agree with how Americans around him were living their lives . . . He should’ve tended to his own.
What’s more likely than a physical attack, for me, is a legal one. I am not the kind of person this country was built to benefit. I am not the kind of person this country, my state, or even the city of my birth approves of, on many counts. I am not the kind of person my society wishes to support, indulges any faith in, or cares to protect, regardless of what good I’ve done or what I’ve accomplished. There was a time when I thought my country had my back, and I returned the favor, over and over. Now, though I still love the country I was born and raised in, the only country in which I’ve ever lived, I do not expect it to uphold the freedoms of which I’ve always been taught, going forward. If anybody’s going to run me down in the street, metaphorically or otherwise, it will be America’s new order. The only difference will be that I expected it, and did what I could to prevent it.
It may feel as if this got dark fast. But it didn’t. It’s been coming to this for decades, centuries, longer than most of us have been alive.
But don’t worry. I don’t mean, or intend, to give in to gloom and doom. I do love where my life has come, and I do know who my people are–the ones who haven’t given, and will not give up on me, or give me up. I also know who might. I know who respects me as a person, worthy of respect, worthy of dignity, and worthy of my freedom, whether others believe it or not. I have also had a long-standing belief cemented in me. I know people by their actions, and only by their actions. I have no party, no friends or family, no neighbors, certainly no elected officials–but the ones who have welcomed and supported me in the past, welcome me or support me now, or welcome and support me in the future. I have no need for words that haven’t been thought out and expressed with an intention of honesty and respect, nor words that haven’t been backed up by action or proof.
I intend to keep living my life, have a great time doing it, and fight anyone who tries to force how I do it. I’ve already done it their way for far too long. And, my fellow Americans, I have now seen how much respect it earned me.