Assignment 7 - Tobias Cox

    It is interesting how our mind drifts to things that we assume are going to be present in certain directions. Upon the reading of this prompt, even though it explicitly states within the range beginning on September 12, my mind immediately drifted to 9/11. That being said, I decided against that, because, as is a common theme within this ongoing assignment of blog posts, I assumed that since I do my blogs later than their "due date," me using a perhaps cliche topic will be seen as copying off of the previous blogs. What made this even more coincidental is, upon choosing the random date of October 8 and scrolling through the Wikipedia article on it, I saw two interesting things. Number 1, the event of Hurricane Matthew is already listed as a significant event for that date. Number 2, the Department of Homeland Security was established on this day in 2001. This being in response to the 9/11 terror acts, I thought it pretty coincidental that that random choice would result in a date that had that as a significant event in history, seeing as my complete lapse in reading comprehension resulted in me thinking about covering that topic. Now, onto the significance of the event. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security significantly changed the direction of the United States. This was in no way a bad thing, but society is much more careful after terror attacks, and this cabinet department made that carefulness official and on the books. Many people believe that anti terrorism measures have made our society, our community, our nation, worse. I see where those people are coming from, I really do. But, when I hear that, I cannot help but think about how people are complaining about having to alter their habits, maybe sit through some longer airline lines, so that we can SAVE PEOPLES LIVES. Surely we have not become so selfish. Surely we have a slight bit of empathy left in us.