Global insanity hurts local children!

“Be careful! There are a lot of crazy people out there!”
Earlier this morning, a helpful checker said this to the woman just in front of me at the supermarket. As the customer left, I recalled a driver on the road in front of me who was doing 50 on a 30 MPH residential, two-lane road and had passed the car in front of him by crossing a double yellow line despite oncoming traffic.
Always the conversation-maker, I helpfully echoed her thought.
“Yeah, there sure are!”
I might be wrong, but from her next remark, I got the distinct impression that crazy drivers were not what the store checker had in mind.
Everyone in the world has gone crazy!
I didn’t have a tape recorder, so I’m paraphrasing the words. But she made this universal statement with a tone of such grim hopelessness that I just sort of intuitively knew that there was more involved than bad driving patterns.
Agreeing again, I dropped the subject of mass mental illness, because it was just too early in the morning to hear a rant, and she was nice enough to clue me in on a canned dog food discount I might not have noticed.
But if I may be illogical for a moment, I’d like to speculate about what may have been on her mind from the tone of her voice. I think it’s safe to assume she reads the papers and watches the news, and if she does, surely she might be thinking along the following lines:

  • In addition to uncontrolled “gun violence,” Philadelphia children are being murdered by their parents at an unprecedented rate — even in homes which are on record as being suspect with the city’s Department of Human Services. This occupied much of Sunday’s Inquirer, and it remains on the front page today.
  • Ordinary everyday working fathers suddenly go on shooting sprees, and do things like shooting Amish schoolchildren.
  • Powerful Republicans in Congress are molesting little boys even as they pretend to be champions of moral virtue.
  • Schoolchildren in her store’s neighborhood are forced to spend time in jail for writing bathroom graffitti about bringing guns to school — which has of course led to copycat graffiti, causing a total lockdown of the school. (Imagine the uproar certain T-shirts might create….)
  • An unpopular president (shunned by his own party) conducts an unpopular war with fierce determination.
  • Uncontrolled nukes are being manufactured by homicidal mental cases, presumably so they can be shipped to terrorists who’ll smuggle them into New York.
  • I know it’s a bit silly to cite media stereotypes as reasons for why a total stranger might think the whole world has gone crazy, but the above spontaneously came to mind.
    But in my defense, I think the statement that everyone in the world has gone crazy allows me a sort of artistic license in my analysis.
    This was a very nice woman, and I felt like reassuring her by telling her that the election will be over soon — but that might not have seemed as reassuring to her as it does to me, so I held my tongue because I hate to seem like an insensitive and uncaring person in a world suddenly more insane than usual.
    Making wisecracks about elections would have been almost as insensitive as posting a picture of my dog holding what isn’t really an AK-47. Or wearing this T-shirt:

    CrossDiv.jpg

    (On the bright side, I should probably be glad I’m not in high school, nor subject to the jurisdiction of the Child Police. I think there may be a rule along the lines of “Have a kid, lose the humor!“)
    AFTERTHOUGHT: The serious side to this is that sometimes I worry that public fear might be working in collusion with powerful bureaucratic forces, towards an ultimate goal of a gigantic, society-wide safety “lockdown.” The more accustomed we are to having airport-style security measures everywhere, the more likely that the tentacles could extend from nearly every school into nearly every home. I’m sure it’s just paranoia to think in terms of jettisoning our freedom in favor of a national security society.
    I mean, really.
    After all, we still have the First Amendment…
    (But my paranoid inner voice asks whether it might not be better to be paranoid before the fact than after the fact.)


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    9 responses to “Global insanity hurts local children!”

    1. DocNeaves Avatar
      DocNeaves

      You are not wrong, my friend. The public fear is what will make us all lose our freedoms. They know this, and intend to scare us into voting them into office one way or another. Just remember, nobody was ever made safer by giving up their freedom to another, at least, not one wit safer than they would have been if they’d just learn to defend themselves.
      It all started when they taught us that fighting was wrong. What they didn’t say, and what we didn’t hear until it was too late, was that they were saying FIGHTING BACK was wrong. Had they been forced to say it properly, we’d have argued the same day. Now, it’s too late. It’s accepted as given that the government’s job is to make us feel safe.
      You wear that shirt everywhere you can, and continue to fight for freedom, and hang the labels put on it. Remember, they came for the (fill in the blank) but I was not into defending them, then they came for the (FITB) but I was not into defending them, either, because I disagreed with them. But now, they are coming for me. Do I lose my freedom because I am not the majority? Freedoms must be fought for BY everyone FOR every freedom, whether or not you like it, or even agree with it.

    2. Jon Thompson Avatar
      Jon Thompson

      Fear is the ultimate driving force behind most attempts to protect people from, well, other people. Fear that employers will collude to lower wages, fear that people on drugs will kill us all, fear creates the perfect environment for the mass government intervention that is so increasingly popular.
      And our best defense is the Second Amendment, not the First.

    3. Jon Thompson Avatar
      Jon Thompson

      I was literally posting as DocNeaves was, so I’d just like to say that he hit the nail on the head and pretty much articulated what I meant better than I did.

    4. Gaius Avatar

      We are in no way even close to ‘jettisoning’ our freedom. We are, however, very close to acting foolish and not taking meassures that are reasonable and do protect us. I for one do hope the dems take over in congress, because then they can be accountable instead of just complaining. Complaining is easy, children do that, making it work is difficult and almost impossible in an environment with so many mis or uninformed people.
      You call your page Classical Values, but after studying classical literature for over 20 years I can say with reasonable certainty that classical values (those principles taken from the Greco-Roman world) are not very liberal at all. Their not entirely conservative either but they lean toward or are colored in a traditional to conservative hue.
      Aude sapere!
      Gaius
      http://thecapitoltribune.blogspot.com/

    5. Alan Kellogg Avatar

      Eric,
      In my experience it is those who don’t have children of their own who are most likely to get all hot and bothered about their antics. Kids are amoral beasts with a talent for pushing adult buttons. Add a tendency to act on impulse, and you get a “gross out war” such as the one which resulted in a threat to football stadiums around the country.
      Add in a reluctance to use their pre-frontal lobes on the part of some adults (journalists and public officials for example) and you’ve got a formula for a tizzy fit.

    6. Gaius Avatar

      Big problem Eric. If the enemy is amongst you, you have to have a way to defend against that. The government does have, and should have, as a representative of the people, the obligation to defend those who can’t (unlike you) defend themselves. It seems awfully foolish to have people amongst you plotting to kill you and you can’t do anything about it because of their “rights.” That’s an Idol of the Cave. We are the freest nation on earth. We are in no way close to losing our great society. The British have greater police authority than ours and there nation is in no danger of falling into tryanny. Let’s be real.

    7. Eric Scheie Avatar

      I have no problem with getting real, but I think reality in a free society includes not only the right to self defense (almost completely lost in Britain), but the right to humor and satire (which I see as being eroded by colluding forces).
      Things are getting pretty ridiculous if I have worry about things like wearing a rather tame, obviously humorous T-shirt. I’m not saying that I don’t have the right to wear it, because I do. But would they stop a child from wearing it to school? Would they stop me from wearing it onto an airplane? Should I be allowed to wear it to go shopping?
      Why not? Because it might “offend“?
      (The above T-shirt, of course, is not the issue so much as it’s a metaphor. Bear in mind that many “liberals” believed that Glenn Reynolds should have been fired for wearing the same T-shirt, so I don’t think the issue of the right to engage in political humor is an idle one.)
      As to “Classical Values” not being “very liberal” and “not entirely conservative either” but “lean[ing] toward or [] colored in a traditional to conservative hue,” I’d agree that this describes a major part of this blog’s philosophy. But please don’t forget that satire is a heavy component, and the name is (very) tongue-in-cheek. (Along the lines of whose traditions are more traditional….)

    8. Gaius Avatar

      Satire and humor are a must in a free society, I agree. Even in Rome they had Juvenal and Horace. As for Britian I think your wrong there, it depends on what you mean. British law allows for far greater leverage in the war on terror for them. For example, they can wiretap based strictly on ‘reasonable suspicion’ only, we have a ‘probably cause’ bar to meet. They have many other allowances we don’t, all brought about because of their experiences with the IRA. They learned and adapted in ways we have not—-Yet! That day is coming for us, but only after a disaster, unfortunately.
      As for your blog, I like it. I am a classial studies lover, so I came across it while suffering the net. You seem prolific in your entry-isms. Keep up the good work.

    9. Eric Scheie Avatar

      Thanks Gaius! I appreciate the kind words.