No Child Left Behind gets scary

This was some sort of snafu accident, of course. No one is blaming the Bush Administration for this. However, the symbolism is blinding: a high-tech fighter jet actually fired upon an elementary school! The plane, an F-16, flying for the Air National Guard--that's the folks who are supposed to be our homeland defense, right?--the symbol of our military superiority fires live ammo at an institution dedicated to the care and education of our children. Thank God it was at night and no kids were there.

Sometimes life employs literary devices. Sometimes we actually experience foreshadowing or a thematic mood is set within unrelated situations. Coming so soon after Bush II's victory this incident dramatizes the progressive's fear of the next four years: all that is good and valuable in America will be subsumed by the quest for military might.

No, I'm sure this act was not intentional. Quite the contrary, which speaks, perhaps, to other forces trying to warn us about the times to come. It is a dark harbinger, indeed.

ref: Fighter jet strafes New Jersey school - Nov 5, 2004