Christmas 2012
Sometime Last Christmas … Somerset UK.
Something came on the news about security in stores one
evening. My husband, prompted by the story, began explaining how waiting for me
to join him a few days back, on the high street, outside a local food store, he
was watching the security man at work. A
group of yobs (young aggressive males,
‘boy’ spelled backwards ), going in (one or two at time) taking bottles of cider, beer, whatever
and trying to walk out and the security guy was grabbing the bottles back as
they came out. He asked the security man
why he didn't call the police and the guy said they don't bother anymore ...
not worth it. The police do little or nothing and they are back the next
day.
In defense of the police, their numbers have been slashed and their budgets stretched to strangling but they are not the problem ... we all are in varying degrees ... yes even me.
What a screwed up society we live
in to have to suffer such behaviors. So
many rights have been passed on to perpetrators that it is the wrong that is
protected; not the ones who are wronged.
Are we so afraid to do the right thing that we do nothing at all?
Scary? it is all kinds
of scary.
I feel blessed being
my age and having experienced the world I grew up in when you got in as much
trouble or more when you got home as you did at school disrespecting the
rules. A time when you worried about
your parents opinion of you more than the trouble you were about to get into.
When your consciousness made you feel as bad as the lectures or even the
whipping. When our world (our parents
and communities, as we grew up) taught us to govern our conduct with our intelligence,
not outside forces. A time and place when we were taught to be responsible parts of the
communities and ourselves. When we were
taught, that the only person that could put barriers on you, was yourself.
It was those times when working hard toward a dream or desire didn't
always make it happen but made you a better person for trying and doing the
best you could.
There is something wrong when you are so afraid to go out
and tell the kids that are smashing bottles in the street they need to stop,
for fear of retaliation. A friend went
out when he heard a couple young men breaking wing mirrors on the cars as they
went down his street. He didn’t even get
a chance to say more than Oy! And two days later there was a brick through the
windshield of his car.
There are some lovely kids out there, in fact I would say
most kids are good. The bad ones, which
are not the majority, are like a wild pack of dogs with memories and more human
rights than should be humanly available.
It worries me to think that my grandchildren will live in a world where
we are afraid of standing up for the rights of the majority. I am worried our
definitions of what is right and wrong will change places and there will be no
more room for good honest people who just want to live their lives in peace.
As human beings, we have rights, not to be threatened,
molested, attacked, victimized or even killed by perpetrators that currently
hold more rights than we do. Sorry but
to think that those people who lost their children, their parents, their
friends at someone else’s hand have less rights than the guilty, is WRONG. Those lost lives who will never have rights of
their own again but the ones who took those rights, now seem to have boundless
rights themselves. And that is WRONG.
As much as this upsets the very core of my being, what can I
do to change it? What can one person do
– a nano amount to nothing. We can
analyze the hell out of the problem but where can we start to make changes. I know I am not the only one feeling this
way. So if anyone has some ideas on
where to start. Please let me know.
I am losing my faith in humanity and there are thousands out
there who feel the same. I know I have
spoken of being a troll under a bridge, who doesn’t care but it sounds a safer
place to be these days for someone who truly cares. Someone
who cares but out of frustration is lost in an ocean of warped rights and
growing wrongs.
