Friday, August 23, 2013

What in Hell is Going On?

As many of us look on in horror we see one almost unbelievable story after another of inexplicable violence in towns and cities across America. The murder, late last week, of Chris Lane for example. Or last night's brutal murder of 89 year old WWII vet Delbert Belton.

Neither killing can be explained by anything we have come to see as the typcial "justification" for murders -- the type that made for good, traditional, television crime shows. Neither was a crime of passion -- the result of a love triangle. Neither was an unlawful expedient for getting wealth such as a bank robbery or even a common mugging.

What in heaven's name (or, more fittingly, our own) is going on?

Sociologists will no doubt soon be (maybe already are?) being interviewed on TV, giving their own long, often convoluted, explanations for what is going on.  My own explanation is not very convoluted at all. Here it is...

In some parts of society - especially academia - everything has long been seen as being governed by the forces of "power" and "victimhood." 

Some years ago I had a discussion with a very bright college student who insisted -- based on what she had been taught -- that prejudice and racial hate can only
, by definition, go one way: From those in power to their victims. That "victimized" peoples are guilty of nothing at all if they hate the empowered. But interestingly, when she and I looked at various  hate-related words in the dictionary - something that she, to her credit, was very willing to do - we saw that no such distinction existed. She was, quite honestly, surprised by this. So, I suppose, would have been her teachers.

The current administration acts as if its actions, too, are based on the above misunderstanding. And that such an understanding colors all its decisions.

Thus when a "white" person does a misdeed he is judged wicked and fully deserving of punishment - he is, after all, one of the "empowered.". (Note that if the perpetrator does not exactly fit the "white" model a new part of the "empowered class" may be created for him - a "white Hispanic" for example.)

But if someone judged to be in the "victim" class commits a bad -- even a murderous -- deed (something "frowned upon," as Jesse Jackson said of the killing of Chris Lane)  it is explainable, and thus at least in part excusable, due to the perpetrator's said "victimhood."


It is worth noting that within the above scheme a person's having their home and/or neighborhood repeatedly violated by criminals is not judged to be "victimhood." I have yet to see this addressed much less explained.

As citizens in any supposed classification -- "empowered" or "victim" -- see this pattern of condemnation and acceptance of violence, they absorb the lessons and act accordingly. This is, IMO, why we are seeing an increase in meaningless interracial crime during the Obama era. And as programs based on these viewpoints -- be they lessening enforcement of drug laws (or changing such laws), forced "diversity", etc. -- are put into place, the increase of interracial tensions will get worse and worse until either the political climate is changed (such as occurred under Mayor Giuliani in N.Y.C.) or there comes to be outright "war" between increasingly hostile groups. Scary stuff this!

The media does not write about the above largely because they do not see it -- they have themselves internalized the power/victim argument.

The police as a body do see what is happening - and in many cases reject the "empowered vs. victim" argument. But they are being forbidden by the politicians to act upon what they see. "Profiling," "stop and frisk" laws and the like have been made illegal. Thus all the mechanisms for a peaceful resolution under the law are one by one being taken away. If that fully occurs what options will remain?


What is presently occurring in the Middle East -- the open strife between groups each struggling for power (and in some cases basic survival) -- may on the surface appear to be something completely different from what we see occurring in America, but it is not.. The left's distorted thinking about classes -- the "empowered" versus the "victimized" -- has over the last several years been applied there. The "empowered" have been disempowered, their leaders removed, jailed or killed, and the representatives of the perceived "victim" classes put in their place. The violence and strife we are now seeing throughout the region is the result. How it will end is anybody's guess (apart from the many hundreds of thousands already killed -- their days of "guessing" having come to a close).

 
Are we ready now for a "Question of the Day"? 

Are Western cities and nations next?

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