EDITORIALS

This imperfect world

But good people still try to perfect it

WHAT a scary display. What a scary headline. What a scary way to start the morning.

The paper, your paper, shouted the news the other morning: Responders prep for school attack. If this were a tabloid, surely there would’ve been a slammer-an exclamation point-at the end.

The vigilant types at Fort Chaffee have built a small city on the fort for one purpose: to train those in uniform-various kinds of uniforms-to deal with things the rest of us don’t even want to think about.

This time the scenario ran like this: Somebody with a gun walked into the “school” at the fort, and began shooting up the place.

Scary.

But all too real.

And the whole all-too-possible scenario would be even scarier if nobody was preparing for it. To those who serve and protect us, and prepare for the worst:

Thank you. It’s good to know you’re there. And getting ready.

All you have to do is pick up the paper or turn on the radio to understand just how realistic this exercise was. And what a scary place this world is. Can anybody still need reminding about what happened at Columbine or Sandy Hook? And, of course, at Jonesboro, Ark.?

The other day it was Fort Smith’s police force that was training its SWAT teams at Fort Chaffee. The news stories said the trainers did all they could to make the scene realistic, even recruiting drama students at Northside High to fill the fake school and act as victims. Some of the details about how trainers made the scene realistic were . . . scary is still a good word for it. You can imagine.

Yes, some of us don’t like to imagine. And would rather take our coffee over the sports pages and the crossword. But thankfully there are those who do imagine. And train for it. And train others. They know this is an imperfect world. And they’re doing something about it. Bless them one and all.

Editorial, Pages 14 on 05/01/2014

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