It straddles the north flank of Interstate 85 like a contemporary Colossus of Rhodes, only more Republican.
You will not find a higher incidence of GW and W: The President and Bush-Cheney'04 stickers anywhere. I am convinced of it, in a way that only the high correlation of fat, white passengers pouring out of SUVs and conspicuously un-mudded pickup trucks with Ichthys emblems and Jesus buttons and #8 antenna flags can convince. (If you know what that #8 means, you're already nodding your head; if you don't, sorry. Ask the poster next to you.)
To walk into Concord Mills Mall, the one-mile consumer racetrack length of it, is to enter the Republiverse.
Come on. It's okay. I spent an hour there already and contemporary detoxification technology works famously!
I am convinced that malls are Republican factories -- places to bond doing nothing in common with thousands of strangers, communicating as little as possible with other people, and spending more money each visit than one ever intended to spend before entering the gates.
It is a universe where your right to breathe oxygen on the premises is contingent on your having money to spend in hand, or at least redeemable credit, where any statement or action that reduces the frequency of times that the question: Cash or charge? is asked is grounds for the swift and certain appearance of security.
Ah, yes. Security. Which brings us to the issue at hand.
The abandoned handbag
On a lark, I fished a quarter out of my pocket almost as soon as I entered the mall and made a bee-line for a gumball machine situated right in the middle of the access near the food court.
And planted right between two gumball dispensers was a small bag.
I looked about. Okay...here I am in the Republiverse, where homeland security is as necessary as Christ and family values and food and money and a comfortably low proportion of minorities (less than 20% is the explicit rule of thumb that one Republican shared with me; that much diversity is okay. Any more than that is "taking over").
I collect my gum and look up; the nearest store is a Books-A-Million, which by experience I can assure you is among the more conservative retail book chains...oh, and they're sly, too. There are two 'Social Sciences' section -- one for Social Sciences, the other (two shelves down) for Gay/Lesbian books. I'm sure that's not bundling and branding, though. Then there is the Poltical Science section, an impressive arsenal of conservative polemic...and a 'fair and balanced' selection of the weaker liberal contenders...and not nearly in as much volume.
Oh -- "Unfit for Command" is placed on the middle shelf of the middle bookcase in Political Science. And there are two full stacks, two book covers, not book binders, facing the customer. Many copies, in a prominent location...but not on sale.
The point -- Books-A-Million has impeccable conservative credentials, and seemed the sort of place where mentioning that an abandoned handbag was sitting not eight feet on the other side of the massive glass wall behind the cash counter might interest the workers on duty.
So I brought the matter to attention by asking if there was any security nearby, producing the Greek croaking chorus of "Why?"
I pointed out the bag in question, clearly visible.
The quick analysis: Oh, it's not one of ours.
I smiled. "Uh..perhaps if someone could call security..." raising my hand up to my ear, mimicking a telephone.
"Lost and found's that way, sir!" one of the women blurted out, pointed vaguely in the general direction of the nearby Food Court, then turned to a paying customer. I was impairing the "Cash or Charge?" question frequency, more harmful to America than the possibility of a random planted explosive, I suppose.
I just shrugged and said thanks, adding "I'm sure it's nothing..." and let my voice trail off, as I spent the next half-hour vainly searching for one good book, but I appeared to have been between shipping dates for the sort of material that interested me.
When I left the store, the bag was right where I first spotted it, hanging out between two gumball machines.
I'm sure it was nothing.
What's for dead certain is that the clientele were oblivious to any issue, and the merchants had more important things to worry about, like getting back to asking "Cash or Charge?" as fast as they could.
Besides -- dealing with potential security issues was somebody else's problem to deal with that. What the heck was that moonbat so concerned about, anyway?
Oh, just a potential threat to innocent lives, still woefully underprepared for the 'every changed' world that I keep hearing about.
Well, I changed. And because I did, I keep my eyes open for the odd signs, ask questions where possible, get information and act to save lives. I find myself thinking about such things all of the time, a new mode of social responsibility -- it only takes a child, to save a village...or to raze it, as we witnessed last week, (though that gun-based tragedy was buried under megatons of fabricated and contrived Schiavo debris).
And where are the Republicans in all this?
That conspicuous abandoned bag is still there, sitting between the gumball machines, nothing but a giant pane of glass between it and a gaggle of oblivious clerks for whom such issues are not only not their problem -- even mentioning them is a nuisance.
But perhaps I rail too harshly against the Pubbies.
I mean, it was a mall.
What could possibly happen to decent, God-fearing consumers while engaged in the sacrament of shopping?
Except for one thing.
I once bought a book from a store in an underground mall just south of Church Street in lower Manhattan.
I don't think the mall is there anymore...but there's been so much construction down that way anyway, that nothing looks the same anymore.
Like I said -- what bad could possibly happen to people while shopping?
Certainly not while security-conscious Republicans are on patrol.
And besides: "Lost and found's that way, sir."