- Robert Luis Rabello I find it odd that I agree more with you than I do with most of the people who claim to share my faith . . .
- John Robarts And yet, with all this truth, you can't see the "plan" behind it all? How, EXACTLY, did our nation arrive at this condition? Hmmm?
- Alan Petrillo Eyeroll. Which one of the many conspiracy theories did you have in mind? The one where "they" want to destroy America from the inside? Oh, wait, that's all of them.
- John Robarts They are not even remotely theories. But have been proven time and time again to be real. And the truth is that deep inside you know. But you refuse to see past your agenda.
- Jay Ashworth None of it pissed me off. Except perhaps in that you said it much better than I generally have the energy to do. :-) make sure it's a public so I can share it.
- Alan Petrillo It is, in fact, public. Which makes me wonder why it hasn't drawn more fire yet.
- Alan Petrillo One would expect the Facebook Algorithm to be all over this, since it's certain to piss people off.
There is something in this note to piss-off just about everyone, so the Facebook algorithm should love it.
A problem exists in human perception. We humans are really lousy at evaluating threats. We tend to put way too much weight on edge cases, especially when those edge cases generate the availability illusion.
Aviation, especially airline travel in the US, is the safest mode of transportation in the world. In terms of fatalities per passenger mile there is no safer mode of travel anywhere. “But sometimes” planes crash, and when they do the loss of life can be spectacular, and the incident is splattered across the headlines for weeks, if not years afterward. Because of the edge case, nervous airline customers drink “liquid courage”, take tranquilizers, and sometimes get sick from fear before flying. Yet we think nothing of getting into a car and driving to the airport, even though that’s the part of the trip that is far, far more likely to get us killed.
Property crime in the US has been declining continuously for 45 years and is at historic lows. “But sometimes” burglaries and thefts occur, so people spend silly amounts of money installing home protection systems. In fact, while I have not run the numbers on it, I would bet money that all of the wealth spent on protection systems for homes and businesses exceeds the wealth lost to property crime, probably by quite a bit.
Violent crime in the US has been declining for 25 years, and is at historic lows, and keeps getting lower. “But sometimes” criminals do Bad Things to people, so people demand more and more protections, militarize the police force, put more and more inmates in prison and demand harsher sentences, and don’t feel safe without concealed weapons, traveling in large groups, and other things people do to prevent the edge case from happening.
Terrorism, especially terrorism perpetrated by foreign nationals, is fleetingly rare in the US. The most likely perpetrators of terrorism in the United States are white men, usually Right wingnuts with Christian white nationalist tendencies. “But sometimes” foreign nationals, who claim to be Muslims, do Bad Things. Because of this edge case people demand that Muslims be banned from entering the country for little other reason than that they are Muslim, even though the greater threat is from within.
Crime in immigrant communities is below the national average, often quite a bit below. “But sometimes” Bad Hombres commit crimes, so even though immigrants, even illegal immigrants, are less likely to commit crimes than the general population, the edge case gets the most attention, and we have demands to spend stupid amounts of taxpayer money building a border wall, and cracking down on immigrant communities.
And now to the parts that will get people mad at me.
Violence against women is at historic lows, “But Sometimes” women get raped, abused by their partners, their coworkers, their bosses, or all of the above. I denounce in the strongest possible terms violence against women, and abusers should, without question, face harsh penalties. That said, and I do acknowledge I’m writing this from a position of male privilege, actual figures published by law enforcement agencies at all levels indicate that such violence is an edge case rather than any kind of accepted norm. But because violence against women is such an offensive subject, and gets such media play, as I think it should because it should be dragged out into the light of day for all to see, we have the perception that the situation is worse than ever even though it’s the exact opposite.
Violence against children is at historic lows, and getting lower. There has never been a safer time to be a child, especially in the developed world. “But sometimes” Bad Things happen to children. Because of this edge case we have, as a country, wrapped our children in such a cocoon of protection that they don’t have much of a childhood anymore. We keep them inside, safe behind walls. When we do let them outside it is only in carefully fenced-in areas. People have been prosecuted for the simple act of letting their children walk unsupervised to a neighborhood park. People have even been prosecuted for letting their children play unsupervised in their own yard. We demand defense in depth in our schools, armed school police, armed teachers, monitoring systems, “walking school buses”, and continual close supervision from the nursery to the classroom and back again, even though in school is already the safest place for children, and outside of it is only hardly less safe.
And now we come to the biggest elephant in the room: Guns.
Rifles are the firearms least likely to be used to commit crimes, and among the weapons least likely to be used commit crimes. Rifles occupy a section of the statistics so small that if they were eliminated entirely the crime rate would hardly notice. “But sometimes” deranged individuals do spectacularly bad things with them. Even though mass shootings make up a tiny fraction of a percent of our overall homicide rate, the edge case of mass shootings has made banning assault style rifles and high capacity magazines one of the most important political issues of our time. It has become a litmus test of who is a proper Liberal, and who isn’t. Because of the spectacular edge case gun control has become an issue on which much political capital will be spent that would most likely be better spent on other subjects, such as healthcare.
I went back and forth as to whether or not I should publish this. I expect it will piss people off, and may lose me some friends. Including friends with whom I overwhelmingly agree on just about everything. Alas, including friends with whom I want to work on other things, especially mass transit and infrastructure. But the worst kind of censorship is self censorship, so I decided to publish it anyway.
At least that’s my opinion.
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