Business as usual?
At some point last night I heard that there was a “credible threat” to the NYC subway system. I commute on suburban rails to midtown Manhattan where I take the subway downtown. This morning as I drove to the station I considered taking an alternate route through Brooklyn, but I ended up following my usual pattern. This made me wonder about my motivations. I’m not particularly moved by the sentiment expressed as: “If you stop/change your daily routines then the terrorists have won”. I thought of changing my route to avoid high-traffic (and presumably high-value to a terrorist) stations to mitigate my personal risk, yet I have a growing notion that like burglars, terrorists will avoid areas of obvious enforcement. This morning when I arrived at my terminal and entered the subway I saw no visible police presence. At my end stop on the subway there was a cluster of police officers but not the more heavily armed Atlas force nor the National Guard and Army personnel sent in to augment the effort.
Where does this leave me? I don’t consider myself a fatalist but I do need to show up at work and I either ride trains or lay out an enormous amout of money and time to drive into the city and park. It seems that many of us have reached the conclusion – well, what else can I do? We take risks every day in our lives and have become inured to most of them. And still, the images of London and Madrid are following me today.