You have likely seen the video making the rounds this week, of the woman in Boynton Beach, Florida who passed out at the wheel of her car, then lay slumped in the front seat as her vehicle drifted out into a busy intersection.
A co-worker of the driver was in her own car, in another lane, when she saw what was happening. She leapt from her vehicle and ran into the intersection. Reaching the car, she pounded on the passenger window, trying to awaken the unconscious woman. No response. As the car drifted toward oncoming traffic, the co-worker waved off cars in its path, calling for help as she did.
From all over the intersection, a handful of other drivers jumped out of their cars and sprinted to help. Together, they were able to slow the car and hold it in place, while one of them fished a dumbbell from her car, and another man used it to smash through a rear window. Still another crawled through the window, opened the passenger door, and the co-worker hopped in to try, unsuccessfully, to wake the senseless woman behind the wheel.
The group was finally able to get the car into a nearby parking lot, where a 911 nurse talked them through some first aid procedures until paramedics arrived. The woman didn’t awaken until the next day, but doctors seem to think she’ll be all right.
The interesting question, of course, is: why do some people, seeing such a desperate situation, immediately leave their cars – foregoing their errands or urgencies or appointments, and risking serious bodily injury – to help? To work together? To do … something?
While others briskly move on. Steer around them. Ignore the crisis – the need – the danger. They speed off. And don’t look back.
Something like that is happening in our country today. The latest poll says 75 percent of us think America is moving – more and more quickly – in the wrong direction. So, at least three-fourths of us are aware of the danger. But we don’t see that many of our fellow citizens jumping out of their cars. A lot of us aren't exactly jumping, ourselves.
What would you have us do?, you may ask.
To tell you the truth, I don’t know. But then, I rather doubt that those leaping from their cars the other day in Boynton Beach knew what they were going to do, either.
Something seems to have told them that sitting in their car was not enough. That’s about like waiting for the next election. Everyone seems so sure that mid-terms are going to magically change everything – bring the great vengeance, the sudden turnaround. Prices will fall, wars will end, borders will close, dangers will pass. If we just sit here, something good will surely happen.
That’s what all those people who sat watching the Boynton Beach Samaritans must’ve been thinking, too. Their sitting didn’t do much, though, for the unconscious woman at the wheel, and for all those trapped in her path.
Maybe, if we just turn off the news and don’t think about it, all the bad stuff will go away. Just pay whatever inflation demands. Submit to whatever law the crazed Leftists pass. Shrug at the dangers growing with the hundreds of thousands of illegals pouring over the border … the election rules being tampered with … the criminal laws going unenforced.
The important thing is not to read about it, talk about it, think about it. Not to feel like we ourselves have to actually get involved. Just keep driving. Steer around whatever’s in front of you today. Gun the engine and get out of this situation-of-the-moment.
Fine, fine, I get it, you say. But what can I do?
Again, I don’t know. Don’t know if I’m doing all that I can do, and if not, what more I can add to it. None of those drivers approaching that intersection this week expected to leave their cars and run out into traffic. To be wielding a dumbbell, or crawling through a window, or opening a stranger’s door. Or grabbing a wheel from the limp hands that held it.
Certainly, none of them thought they’d be the one stepping into the path of a runaway vehicle. They just knew something had to be done. Because the one responsible for driving the car no longer know what they were doing. Or was too far gone to care.
Our nation is at a crossroads, drifting in directions that will mean death and destruction for more and more of its citizens, and growing dangers for those who depend upon us, all over the world. Most of us can see this. Most of us know this cannot, must not go on.
We also know that the people who embrace the path of self-destruction are more committed to wrecking the country than those of us who love it are to taking action to save it. “The wolf’s not at the door,” we tell ourselves, when in fact the wolf pack is in the house, has eaten our children, and is standing on our beds, gnawing at our arm and eyeing our jugular vein.
So what are we supposed to do?
I don’t know. But think I’ll know when it’s time to get out of the car. Think you will, too. And we‘ll probably have a pretty good idea, in that moment, how we can help.
Trouble is, that’s not the moment to begin making up our minds to do something – risk something – help.
The time to decide that … is now.
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