Violence in America: Homegrown Terrorism: Part One—Introduction
Watch the three URL’s below (you won’t watch but a few segments of the 2nd). Comments follow.
(You will need to copy and paste each URL on a browser it seems)
(You will need to copy and paste each URL on a browser it seems)
No longer available
This musing originated several weeks ago when I viewed the first URL above. Then the second URL was listed on the first as a way to view more homegrown assaults on U Tube. This second site offered a subscription so one could view these clips on an ongoing basis. I didn’t of course subscribe, but the free ones here seem to have no ending, so I desisted watching any more. Then the next day I saw the third URL, no video here. Note: I noticed the second URL doesn’t exist anymore. I am going to guess some agency shut it down. It really was disgusting—one cell camera video after another of amateur beatings. Just as disturbing as the videos themselves was the obvious entertainment it served for the observers.
The next couple of days I spent wandering around the Univ. of Wisconsin Arboretum and began to think a lot more about violence in America today. We tend to think of Al-Queda and ISIS as the terrorists to fear the most, and we need to try to eliminate them, but we lose far more American lives with domestic terrorism (violence) than we ever do to to these international terrorists.
I began to think about why so many Americans are so eager to commit violent acts on each other. Times have certainly changed. When I was young it was still risky to wander in a urban, suburban, or rural ghetto, but mostly it was a fear of being robbed. I am going to leave out rape here as this is, at least in part, a sexual motivation and sexual activities are mostly hopeless to analyze. So this will be restricted to senseless physical attacks meant to kill or knock out someone as the sole purpose. No robbery involved. Hurting others in a rage of anger is the sole purpose.
It is rare for more affluent people to venture into any nearby, or far away, ghettoes—the most we ever tend to do is to drive through them en-route to somewhere. In my younger days these neighborhoods were teaming with people outdoors—kids all over the place—riding bicycles, playing games, chasing each other around—adults sitting on entrance way steps chatting—just people everywhere. Today, ride through these kind of neighborhoods and it almost looks like an abandoned neighborhood. No kids in sight, maybe one or two people walking to a store or bus stop. Windows with bars, doors with bars, and all activity is inside on electronic devices. Most neighbors don’t even know each other.
But in parks, near schools, and other designated areas, groups of mostly young adults will congregate when they are too old to be kept restricted indoors. Many of these teenagers or young adults are dressed in a way to maximize the impression that no one better mess with them. In some sort of generalized way we have the predators, and then victims ripe for predatory assaults. When there are no obvious victims present there is verbal jostling amongst the predators, and this can lead to a violent interaction, as two or more are forced to ’stand their ground’. The basic emotions prevailing in these young teenagers and young adults, raised in these modern American ghettoes, is anger, frustration, fear. So the question becomes, where does all this negative emotion come from?
Are these people genetically deficient, full of ‘bad’ genes? Most affluent Americans are very angry at these ‘kind’ of people, find their behavior and culture disgusting, and are all for getting tough with their bad behavior. But we have been getting tougher and tougher on them for the last 50 or more years. We have mandatory long term prison sentences, we have more policemen. We also have more soup kitchens, shelters, food stamp programs, and especially more prison cells. 25% of people in prison globally, are in American prisons even though Americans only make up 5% of the world population. The cost of keeping these prisoners locked up is @$30,000/year. So we certainly do spend a lot of money on the ‘poor’—to protect ourselves from them. And yet the size of these ghetto communities keeps growing and these ‘ghettoes’ have spread to suburbs, and of course rural poverty continues to grow also.
The question becomes, just where have we collectively, as a society, gone wrong? In the last 50 years the amount of solid scientific knowledge has increased exponentially. But right step in step with that has the amount of anecdotal knowledge, upon which many form some of their strongest beliefs.
As much as ever, huge cabals of people believe whatever they want to believe, and never let facts get in their way. With the internet we can always find others who believe in the same anecdotal stuff we believe. And this seems to fit in nicely with the way our own country has handled the lowest tier economic population in our country.
For example, of course almost everyone really does understand that if property taxes are to be the means to finance schools, then the affluent communities would have better schools and better teachers. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to understand this. And of course we all know if universal health care is not in effect, that the poor will get inferior health care. Most people also realize that mental and physical health are most greatly impacted on during the formative years. We all know these basic things—and yet, we do little to protect the poorest families. They are essentially left to fend for themselves, with things like food stamps to soothe our consciences, plus exemptions from many taxations. Oddly enough, this is coupled with a fierce and ever ongoing debate about abortions and birth control. The ethics is solely exercised on maximizing the likelihood of fertilization, ensuring that every fertilization is brought to term—then after that, the child is left unprotected from any other kind of poor environment during their formative years. As these neglected children reach adults we are then very disgusted at the product of these environments. Maybe we need be more disgusted with ourselves for our collective failure as a society in this respect. Part 2 will follow
