The narrative keeps changing
First, this uptick in violence was blamed on guns. Then the NRA. Then right wing radio. Then a 911 operator. Now, it’s the economy.
11 Responses to “The narrative keeps changing”
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April 9th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Might be the first time they’re actually on to something. Economy bad = stressor = pushing the fragile cogs over the line.
Too bad the current administration seems vested in destroying it for good.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
I think people are lashing out because this massive government is leaving them feeling powerless. Violence is just breaking all the rules at the same time.
“Air rage” is the same thing — no smoking, stand in lines, take off your shoes, cram yourself into a tiny seat and then BEHAVE!!!
And the likely answer? More rules.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:06 pm
It’s too bad the Post reporters people don’t actually think before they write. Was crime appreciably more common during the Great Depression? I would suspect not. Some people are simply a bomb waiting to blow up. It’s pointless to look for reasons for the unreasonable.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Hmmmm.
“Was crime appreciably more common during the Great Depression?”
Machine Gun Kelly. Baby Face Nelson. Wasn’t it the Golden Age of bank robbery?
April 10th, 2009 at 3:20 pm
I have worked in the depressingly-liberal environment of acute psychiatric emergencies for 30 years. Whenever there is an increase in admissions, there is no shortage of theories spun by my coworkers to explain why conservative government policies are somehow to blame. That there is no correlation between admissions and unemployment, party majorities, stock market, full moons, etc does not stop them from believing in a causal effect anyway.
These are people with graduate degrees, remember, many with statistics courses under their belts. The power of favored narrative frequently overwhelms reason – especially in the well-educated, because they are better at imagining abstract connections.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
AVI – what you need to remember is they’ve had those classes in statistics to put them all behind them. They don’t have to worry about that sort of thing now. Facts are so – yesterday.
April 10th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
“Machine Gun Kelly. Baby Face Nelson. Wasn’t it the Golden Age of bank robbery?”
Nice job. Two serial criminals obviously proves that the Depression caused crime. And I’m sure the organized crime that arose during prohibition had nothing to do with it.
Seriously, the danger in picking a few spectacularly notorious crooks is that you can do that for any decade, thereby “proving” that whatever the economic conditions were at the time caused a dramatic increase in crime.
If you’d like to find and present crime (specifically violent crime) statistics for the population at large, then we can begin to answer my question.
April 10th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Crime levels during the Depression were low in comparison to today, but there have been too many changes to make that comparison meaningful.
Comparing the Depression to the period immediately before is impossible, as crime stats are confounded by Repeal.
It would be interesting to see where crime levels went during the Roosevelt Recession of 1937, as the period immediately before wasn’t significantly different except for the economy.
April 10th, 2009 at 5:18 pm
When you get right down to it, the real reason the “average” person commits violence is that people FEEL that they can get away with it. When the “average” college student decides to murder 30+ people in a violent rage, (s)he isn’t thinking at all, except to make vague plans for vengeance: the only relevant thing in his/her mind is a black cloud of anger/despair/hatred. If we really want to see a reduction in violence in America, we first need to examine what changed in the American mindset to allow these emotional extremes to go unchecked.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, America started to become obssesed with “The Will and the Word” (kudos to David Eddings). Many Americans began to believe that, if used properly, negotiation and bargaining could solve all problems (Ask any parent in the world at all, and they can tell you that this is utterly false). As this belief continues to spread, America has become an environment where laziness, ignorance, and emotional problems (NOT mental illness) are allowed to thrive. As many people can testify (parents, policemen, military personnel, doctors, teachers, etc), these problems cannot be solved by negotiation; they are the products of an emotional precedent that is utterly immune to logic and reason. The proper way to fix these problems is to create an even stronger, negative emotion that destroys that precedent.
Example: before it was deemed evil, children who did something horribly wrong like lying, bullying, etc, were spanked. Why? Because the child is incapable of logically understanding why it’s wrong. To the child, it looks like this: “Bullying makes other kids give me things I want.” That’s all that matters. End of discussion. If you wanted to teach the child that it was wrong, you had to make the child believe that bullying was VERY BAD; a.k.a, BULLYING HURTS ME. So when you caught the child bullying, you spanked him/her in order to create that “BULLYING HURTS ME” feeling. You repeated the process until the child stopped.
Now, the rise of the “The Will and the Word” ideal caused a roughly equal rise in dynamic timidity. Dynamic timidity is when a person is afraid of any form of powerful, “invasive” action, especially physical action. If a person believes that (s)he can fix all problems by controlled, moderate speech, (s)he begins to ignore other means of problem solving. Once these other means are ignored, the person trains him/herself to respond to all problems by some form of speech.
Let’s examine the stereotypical “Rapist-Murderer Enters A Woman’s House” scenario. Back in the 1800’s, specifically, the Wild West, most women had some form of Derringer, revolver, rifle, or other firearm that they were fairly proficient with. When the R-M went after the woman, she would do her level best to shoot that SOB as soon as possible. If there were any decent, good men within shouting distance, they would immediately pick up the nearest gun and go help her. Why? Because in those days, women were taught that it was unlikely help would come before they were raped and murdered. In fact, if two women were equal in looks and smarts, the one who could and would shoot fast and accurate was far more attractive than the one who didn’t/couldn’t shoot. Similarly, men were taught that you always helped out the ladies when they were in trouble, ESPECIALLY when that help required a quick eye, a steady arm, and a solid gun. If you didn’t help out a damsel in distress, you were a @#$%^&* coward at best, and a God-forsaken piece of *&^% at worst.
Unfortunately, neither of those attitudes are popular today. When a R-M enters the average woman’s house, she responds by calling the police, then cowering in a “safe” place. When the R-M finds her, she screams at the top of her lungs for as long as she can, and tries to use a can of mace or a taser if she is one of the very few who has one. Since neither of these weapons is very reliable, she is almost certain to be raped and murdered. Now, the screaming would be very helpful, except that the usual response to screaming is “It’s not my problem”.
In short, the “average” American relies on mostly ineffective means to avoid/survive violence, and is rendered helpless when these methods fail. This knowledge is why people believe they can get away with violence, and that is why the number of violent incidences keeps rising.
April 10th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
Den Mother,
Early in the 1930s, crime was rampant. So much that Roosevelt’s Department of Justice created the FBI. There was also the Civilian Conservation Corps. This program relocated men ages from 18-24 from urban areas into rural work camps. These men were determined to be “at risk” for committing crime. Over 500,000 were relocated to over 2,500 such camps. Crime went down but the government paid a heavy price for it.
April 10th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
> Crime levels during the Depression were low in comparison to today, but there have been too many changes to make that comparison meaningful.
One of the interesting differences is that virtually every state had something like “three strikes” and DAs weren’t looking for ways to get around it.