In the bewildering variety of things that come over the electronic transom we now have on the internet, there occasionally comes a gem that stops you in your tracks; even more rare is the gem that gives you goose bumps. This weekend from my friend George Jardim came one of the latter. It was a video of an address by Lieutenant General Jay Silveria, Head of the United States Air Force (USAF) Academy who was responding to an incident involving racial slurs being written on a message board in the USAF Prep School there. Speaking to an assembly of hundreds of people, including faculty, staff and workers at the Academy, he began by referring to the racial slurs as “having no place in the USAF” and he went on to talk about responses to the slurs:
“The appropriate response is a better idea, which is why I’m here with all these hundreds of faculty and staff, all aspects of the 10th Air Base Wing. We have a better idea.