Ann wrote:
Why is the United States of today so different from the United States of the 1990s? Silly question. 9/11 happened, that's what. (And maybe the Bush administration. I still wonder if things might not have been very different if Al Gore had been President in 2001 instead of Bush.)
You're probably right, Ann. We probably would have suffered more terrorist attacks in the months following 9/11 had Al Gore been president at the time.
Shayne, this is indeed a marvelous story. I love where you're going with this. I still want to see Pilar eat some crow in front of Lois, but I can wait. What I'm really ready to see is what Lois will decide when Clark tries to return the plane and its passengers to his world.
As far as how "paranoid" and "horrible" the government is being perceived in this story, I ask once again - what would you do differently? Would you release a plane full of people who don't exist into society? Would you blindly accept their assurances that they're perfectly innocent when there's no way some of them could even be alive, much less be here in the first place? Would you disregard the safety of the entire country for the sake of a two hundred impossible people?
I doubt it. Oh, it's easy to criticize from our comfortable computer chairs and rant about how terrible the political situation is today in America, but hysterical denunciations do no one any good. I don't know what Shayne's political affiliations might be and I don't care. What I do care about is this marvelous story being told, and I'd much rather hear about the readers' reactions to the story than political posturing.
A couple of years ago, I read a comment by an Australian blogger that put forth the opinion that the American Civil War (1861-1865) wasn't over slavery because the earliest document he could find addressing slavery was Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, issued in January 1863. The guy was so far out of touch with US history that I didn't bother to correct him. I bring it up now only because some of the reactions to this story are even less informed than this guy's opinion was.
Please don't think that I believe that political opinions should be banned from this board. I don't believe that. And please don't believe that I think that anyone who disagrees with me is a moron. I certainly don't believe that. What I do believe is this: if you have an opinion, you should be able to support it with facts. If you can't support your opinion with facts, do some research to gather facts to support your opinion. And if you do this, you will occasionally (as I have done in the recent past) change your opinion.
One opinion I find constant is that this is a terrific story. I'm still with you, Shayne! Keep up the great work!
