If you read nothing else today, read this:
According to my wife, who was at a stop sign just feet from the altercation, two older men were arguing and one threatened to shoot the other. The second suggested the first didn’t have a gun. yelled. Challenged, fellow number one pulled out his gun and waved it around a bit. She didn’t wait around to see if anyone was shot, but pulled quickly in to the school yard and told the security guards there. They told her to call 9-1-1 and went back into their cubicle. She she just called me in anger and went back to work. There were no bodies lying on the corner when she went back past.
This kind of altercation is disturbing enough, but what rattled me was my daughter’s reaction when she go home tonight. Her friends thought that my wife had completely overreacted. “She must not be from a very big city,” she reported was their response. To these kids, some of whom go to very hard schools in the inner city, this was no big deal; just another day in the City That Care Forgot.
[snip]
Its bad enough that we’ve let one set of children become predators in an urban jungle. We must not let our own children think that this is a normal way to live, or the jungle will prevail and there will be no safe place of retreat. Even if we all flee the animals, deprived of prey, will simply follow us. And for all of our fine rationalizations based on prejudice or economics or politics as to why things have turned out this way, we will have no one to blame but ourselves.
Read it all.
Mark’s post, on the surface, is about NOLA…. but the problem is much, much bigger than that.
Yes, it’s a problem in New Orleans… but it’s also happening in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Houston and St. Louis. Barack Obama touched on it in Dreams From My Father, when he wrote about young men with dead eyes in Chicago.
It’s all across the country, in every major urban area.
Is it possible to turn this around? I hope so, because what we’re talking about here is our future.
From the link…
Someone needs to take these children by the lapels, …
Right there is part of the problem. Outrage typically devolves into “somebody should..” or “The government needs to…” but only rarely does the public get off its duff to attempt to make a difference. Only action, not wishes and normative statements, will bring about real change.
Polimom, read the whole thing and would caution (because we’re both parents and I’m a grandparent as well), that no, there’s no turning this around. Having said that, I’d caution as well that you and yours might well be advised to “do as I’ve done, not as I’ve said” and buy a sustainable rural retreat. And the Gov’t knows there’s no turning this thing around. How do I know that? Look at the first Bill that the Governor signed this session, the revised concealed handgun legislation based upon the Castle doctrine. Yep, the gov’t knows this thing’s a lost cause, least ways as to the major urban centers.
As the gov’t loses control over certain geographic areas and ultimately certain populations, it slowly retreats and yeilds last defense to those who can afford to license with weaponry. It wouldn’t surprise me at all to see the U.S. gov’t silently begin to cede authority over California after this last Republican Governor/President, (by last I mean I don’t expect to ever again see a Republican win either of those offices. As from “The Stand”, the center will not hold.
Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely? Not so sure. I do have some thoughts on the subject, which I’ll have to put down (hint: for a preview, look at my MLK day post.)
~EdT.
I’m not sure that its that we no longer care at all. It is more a view that “these people” will always be out there, and so long as they live in “certain areas” then that’s normal. It is when “those people” move and cause “those areas” to move that there is increased concern.
Sure every major urban area has something of this kind of problem. A bigger group of people will carry with it more crime. You ever watch the local news in a viewing area of 200,000 and then compared that to the local Houston stations? Its a much bigger deal in that smaller community for someone to get shot. I’m not sure that it is that people in large areas don’t care, but the closer the incident is to where you live, or someone you know personally, then the more you care.
Oh and about the Castle Doctrine mentioned somewhere up there, this is not a new law. It was altered by the Legislature this year to make it harder for a criminal to seek a civil suit against someone who was likely defending themselves.
This all goes back to what we were talking about the other day. civilizing our childern
As you noted, it isn’t just a NOLA thing.
~EdT.