BAGS PACKED TO FLEE? WHAT DO YOU TAKE WITH TEN MINUTES NOTICE

You’ve got your bags packed to evacuate, to leave right now.

What’s in your boogie bag if you thought you’d return to a home in flames?

More important, what’s not in your bug-out bag?

Good Housekeeping has a list, an ultimate list, of what to pack.

However, if you’ve got ten minutes to pack and leave, what do you take and what do you leave?

As an older person, getting bags packed takes a different turn than a nineteen year old.

I’ve got a shelf of vitamins I’d put in there.

Better snag a toothbrush, toothpaste, and liquid soap, along with a hand towel.

With experience gained from overseas travel, I’d take the quick dry undies and t-shirts and socks that I washed and dried in a Paris hotel room.

My pants would be the heavy black logger trousers that feel thick and stiff when I put them on. I’m taking a belt too, just in case I can’t hog down every meal and lose weight.

The huge Columbia parka in the closet with a winter liner goes.

I’d lace up the same size fourteen trail shoes I wear on every occasion.

With all that I’m ready to go? Not yet.

Be A Good Refugee

By the example set by self-interested leaders, too many folks have drawn a line.

That line separates people from their own good natured instinct to help others.

When a wealthy showboat catches the imagination of people who didn’t know they even had an imagination, there’s an implied permission to be an A-hole to others.

It’s permission to celebrate when their ‘sent from god president’ leads cheers on locking people up in prison.

But there is a downside:

Americans who cheer for Putin need a reminder.

Big fans of dictators have found themselves on the receiving end of what they’ve cheered for.

Step out of line, brother, and you may need to pack your bags for a bad camping trip, the worst.

Or maybe a knock on the door in the middle of the night and getting a one way ticket to a gulag.

What we’ve learned about our neighbors recently is not encouraging.

From the cheap shot artists joining in to pound law enforcement during the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6 we’ve learned mob mentality is more real than ever.

Guys took their free shots at officers with the idea that they were magically protected by their president daddy’s encouraging words. In Trump they trust, but it’s a one way street with no lights beyond those which show his reflection.

Carrying out another person’s jackassed fantasy is not a protected act.

If Trump hasn’t shown enough of his true colors, what is anyone waiting for?

Bags Packed To Flee With Trump?

The man in the earlier link was a tall white man giving orders to the the three police he was uncooperative with.

In this version he invites the police to arrest him while taunting them with ‘Genius.”

So they did, and the taunting took another turn.

“Do not hurt me,” he said while he struggled against being handcuffed.

“Do not hurt me, understand?” he said, turning to the policeman nearest him.

Then he made an unintelligible threat before getting eased to the floor where he seemed to plead with on-lookers to see what was happening to him.

The man was described as a 59 year old doctor.

He wasn’t described as an entitled whiney-ass bitch who wasn’t aware of the consequences of his actions. He also wasn’t described as a racist piece of shit who got what he asked for.

“Do not hurt me?”

While on the ground none of the police put a knee on his neck. No one pinned the back of his head with a forearm and leaned on it while they dug his clasped hands out with their other meathook. No arm bar or cross face.

The man was accustomed to a certain level of respect and treatment based on his social standing and professional success. He’s a doctor in an airport. That’s some high living.

Then he met the ground.

But he wasn’t treated like the insurrectionists did the police on Jan. 6.

Mike Fanone, a D.C. Metropolitan police officer, said he was defending a doorway to the Capitol on January 6 when he was pulled into the crowd alone, beaten with fists and metal objects, stripped of his badge and ammunition and shocked multiple times with a Taser.

Fanone, who normally works on the Metropolitan Police Crime Suppression team, did not need to be at the Capitol that day, but said that he self-deployed to answer a call for backup. He and a few dozen other officers were positioned at a West entrance to the Capitol building where they faced off against a mob of rioters who were attempting to storm the building, where Congress had gathered to certify the winner of the presidential election.

Fanone ran into the fire.

Think Of Others While You Get Your Bags Packed

Will you be walking to safety on a bone to bone arthritic hip?

Marching with chronic breathing problems?

Are you on extensive meds for your health?

Think of others who would be burdened by your participation.

If you got the news of imminent threat to your safety and everyone around you, and were instructed to run for your life, what do you do?

Give your loved ones the assurance they need to get moving, to save themselves.

Then what?

Children Of Men shows an old man confronting shit-birds with, “Pull my finger.”

If younger people need hope and time to escape, you could worse in Ukraine.

Just know who is on your side.