Low lifes and future public policy

Many decades ago our various parts of America were united on one thing for sure: basic police security was a fundamental function of civilization, and the local citizenry cooperated and supported their local police in all ways, to include providing tips as well as going to school together and attending church together, in other words, living together. Even in the double standard racially segregated parts of America, basic respect and even fear of the law was a common bond. Today we don’t have this bond in too many places, but we can get it back for mostly good reasons.

Sometime in my lifetime, we Americans decided to make attacking the underlying causes of poverty a number one priority, to the detriment of protecting us from the low-lifes responsible for so much crime back then. Many people back then even thought society should attack on two fronts: addressing the underlying causes as well as locking up the low-lifes to protect us from them. Well, that did not happen then, but it can now. Rather even where I lived in the Washington D.C. area, newspaper crime reports by the Washington Post and the Evening Star suddenly quit including pictures or racial descriptions of suspects, which in that area were mostly Negroes. Now I live on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee, and the normal suspects are not Negroes, but still descriptions and photos would sure help the citizens in reporting suspects to the police. And since nothing in America is on or off, but rather tends towards slow change, leaders at all levels need to reinforce today’s slow reintroduction of suspect descriptions and photos to help we citizens help our police.

And low-lifes are not automatically associated with the circumstances of their birth. A certain percentage of any society will always be low-lifes, and public policy should address this criminal class, as well as not confuse this class with just being poor. Most know that dignity and respect have nothing to do with being poor. Public policy must recognize this quality, and reinforce success, not failure. One of the great benefits of the USA’s military is that it is a true meritocracy; the circumstances of one’s background being absolutely minimal compared to performance and hard work, especially after one’s initial period.

Also America’s preoccupation with racial themes has skewed the most obvious problems in the Negro population. The out of wedlock birth rate is one (new in the last five decades) since it has been used as an excuse to obfuscate the low-lifes’ impacts on the Negro communities which still seem to be self-segregated in so many areas of our Country. Fine, but never-the-less, we must lock away the low-lifes to protect the fine upstanding people who deserve to be reinforced in their communities and where they live. The high incarceration rate of young Negro males pales in comparison to what we can do to reinforce our hard workers and positive role models. None of this negates also attacking the underlying causes we think may be at play, nor imagining not even holding people accountable for their own behavior, though we will for the obvious reasons.

Less many fellow Americans think this is some kind of subtle code discussion about Negroes, forget it. Again, I now live on the Cumberland Plateau and crime here is much of a non-Negro flavor. And the present “sub-prime” financial crisis has much to do with personal life-style choices of fellow Americans, and nothing to do with race. Even the old joke about Marines wanting to break things and kill people has nothing to do with race, as Marines know. Again Americans must be held accountable, vice we fellow Americans accepting the excuses of those losers and their politicians, especially if they want us to pay for their mistakes or mis-applied public policies. The recent murders of young women at Auburn and UNC, apparently for robbery for money, is a hint that things are wrong these days if there are robbers about who can murder by concentrating on education centers.

The long run of changing society for the better by prioritizing our American efforts to address the underlying causes has been exposed as a failure of the basic idea, not the intent. Now it is time to take a two-front approach, with the first front being locking up the low-lifes as part of old-fashioned public policy. The three-strikes rule seems reasonable as a start, and if reinforced. Remember, the burden is on the low-lifes to reenter our American society on our standards. Our society’s burden is to protect and promote our winners, our best, our breadwinners, and our children. Now it is time to vote, mostly local and state.

This is both an esoteric subject and a real subject. Having been home and driveway invaded in Atlanta and Charlotte, back to the basics makes sense for our collective American future of locking up the low-lifes, and keeping them locked up, mostly away from us. And I have relatives who have hired extra neighborhood security on top of the local security, mostly because they need it, and also because they can afford it. This is a terrible state of affairs, when our basic reason for governments cannot even provide home security. Yet it is happening, today at least in Atlanta and Charlotte.

Real change in America is at the local and state levels. Most Americans recognize this, and some local chapters of our two national parties even recognize all this. Some even predict another national party is on the way. If it arises, it will probably be bottom up, vice top down.

And all we want to do is be safe in the pursuit of work, living, and education.