Canton on Emergency Management

Emergency Management Solutions - May 2019

Featured Articles

Why Are Your Projects Always Late

    By Lucien Canton

Updated ICS Training Courses: A Critical Review

   By Tim Riecker

3 Expert Tips To Help You Through Your Media Interview Or Public Statement

   By Erik Bernstein

Emergency Management Solutions May 2019

Why Are Your Projects Always Late? Here's a clue: It's YOU!

 

Why Are Your Projects Always Late?

Here's a clue: It's YOU!

Download Why is your project always late

Emergency Management Solutions - April 2019

Featured Articles

Why Are You Writing This Plan?

    By Lucien Canton

10 Considerations for Your EOC

    By Tim Riecker

Crisis Prevention: H&R Block Agents Take 'Empathy Training'

    By Eric Bernstein

Emergency Management Solutions - April 2019

 

Paranoia Strikes Deep

Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away

These lyrics from “For What It’s Worth” were written by Stephen Stills back in 1966 and reflected the turbulent times surrounding the Vietnam War and the social upheaval that was taking place. It seems, however, that they are just as relevant, or maybe even more so, to our times, as we have allowed our fears to overcome our good judgement.

Here’s a recent example that highlights what I mean. Former FBI Director James Comey tweeted an innocuous message that was interpreted by a right-wing conspiracy group to be a reference to Jihad and was construed as the “go” order for a false flag attack. Using the first five letters of various Comey tweets with the same hashtag, the group identified the “target” as a charter school in a rural California county. As luck would have it, the school’s annual fund raiser was scheduled for last weekend. After reading about the threat on the Internet, several people contacted the school and local law enforcement to express concern.

There was never a direct threat to the school and local law enforcement felt that the threat was baseless. If you had to make a decision to cancel the fundraiser or go ahead with it, which would you have chosen? It’s a “damned if you do; damned if you don’t” no win situation for the school leaders. In the end, the school leaders opted to cancel, not out of concern over a potential attack, but for fear that armed vigilantes would descend upon the festival to “protect the children” as has happened in the past in other locations.

I do not question the decision of the festival organizers to cancel. It was a difficult decision to make and had financial consequences in terms of lost revenue and sunk costs, not mention subjecting the organizers to second-guessing and ridicule. What I do question is how have we sunk so low that a group of conspiracy theorists writing on a discredited website can force the cancellation of an event completely unconnected to them. Anyone who has studied mechanisms of violent social change understands that acts of terrorism or anarchy are intended to force us to overreact and create the very conditions required for the change we oppose. When we live in fear, we allow small erosions to our freedoms in exchange for security. The trouble is these small losses add up to create significant, far reaching losses of civil rights.

I’ve written before that we cannot eliminate all risk in our lives. This means being willing to recognize when a risk is acceptable and when it is not. It means we have to stop letting our fears drive us where we have not desire to go.