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Post by Chahiero on Jun 9, 2004 18:04:08 GMT -5
You downplay that. My point is, it's been knocking at the door for years .. it HAS been a long time int the coming, yet people have not taken steps to avert it, really.
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Post by Hussar on Jun 10, 2004 0:21:53 GMT -5
Avert what? The fall of America? There's nothing to avert. Violent crime is down and still falling every year, life expectency in America has almost doubled in the last century, economically, America is still pretty healthy and a long ways in the front. Don't let the current administration fool ya, people are the same everywhere, they just want tomorrow to be pretty much the same as today.
And, Challenger, I would argue that America has taken a very novel approach to empire. They have not bothered with the political regimes in most countries. They've sidestepped that and gone straight to the people. They've interwoven their economic power so tightly with so many countries, that it's pretty much unthinkable to try to separate them. And, because they've left the governments alone and avoided politics as much as possible, they've avoided the nationalistic backlash that caused so many problems for former empires.
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Post by Chahiero on Jun 11, 2004 21:00:11 GMT -5
Violent crime is going down perhaps, but it seems that when it does happen, it's worse and worse. Used to be the most you had to worry about really, was someone sticking up the 7/11 across the street. Now there's muggers, cutpurses, and worse ilk all over the place downtown.
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Post by Hussar on Jun 11, 2004 23:14:14 GMT -5
See, that's the thing. No there isn't. The crimes now are no worse than 20 or 30 years ago.
Give you an idea. In 1912, a 13 year old boy was hung in New York for axe murdering his family. Now, today we wouldn't hang that person, but, the crime is no different.
What's changed is we have become the most intollerant society ever. Listen to the stories from your father's teen years. At least, my father anyway. Stories of drag racing cars, petty vandalism, occasional arson. That sort of thing. And people laughed about it. (Ok, in none of the stories was anyone hurt nor was there any intent to hurt people) Today, those same stories would get you two years in juvenile detention. Things that were laughed off as pranks twenty years ago are serious crimes now.
Look at the sitcom "That 70's Show". They make a joke about the four guys sitting in the basement getting high. If that show was set now, those same four would be shown as dope fiends, pimping their girlfriends to buy drugs. But, because it's the 70's, everyone just brushes it off and laughs about it.
No one laughs at these kinds of things anymore.
It's gotten to the point where a number of cities have instituted curfew's for minors. It's not that the kids today are any worse than they were 20 years ago, it's just that the baby-boomers in charge of things, where they once said never trust anyone over 30, have now become the most intollerant generation.
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Post by Chahiero on Jun 11, 2004 23:32:35 GMT -5
And then it was something the perpetrators laughed at, now it is done maliciously.
I'm just not getting through am I?
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Post by Hussar on Jun 12, 2004 4:55:57 GMT -5
No, you're not, because it's just not true.
Whether the perpetrators laughed back then or not is irrelavent. Perpetrators laugh about it now too.
There is no time of innocence in the past where things were better. This kind of nostagic view of the past really, really flies up my left nostril. This view that things are so much worse now than they were in the past. Life is more violent, people aren't as nice etc. etc.
It's so much not true. Two years ago, while travelling through Toronto I had two people stop on the street and help me carry my bags to the station because I was hauling so much junk. They went three or four blocks out of their way to help me. This wasn't many years ago, this was just the last time I was in Toronto. People are the same now as they were before.
Things are not getting worse. People are not becoming more nasty or evil. The end is not nigh. What has happened is that each and every crime or violent act is declared in the loudest voice from the highest rooftop every night at 6 o'clock.
Columbine was hardly the first time something like that had happened. There have been events like that all over the world. A quick Google search turned up this one tidbit:
That's nearly 30 years ago. And that's just what I could find in a 20 second google search. TO think that our society has degraded or gotten worse is a slap in the face to all those who have made our society a much better place than it was 30 years ago.
If you think things are worse today, that's a pretty easy attitude, unless you happen to be black, or a woman or any visible minority. Heck, until 1974, in Canada, it was not legally possible for a husband to rape his wife. In other words, no matter what a husband did to his wife, he could not be charged with rape. And you think the past is better? Not bloody likely.
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Post by khyron1144 on Jun 12, 2004 11:16:27 GMT -5
What would you say to someone who suggests that it's irrelevant whether things are better or worse than they were before, the real issue is:
any violent crime is too much.
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Post by Hussar on Jun 12, 2004 19:56:00 GMT -5
Well, now that's true Khyron. But not really pertinent to the discussion at hand. Chah is trying to argue that America is rotting, meaning, or at least implying, that things today are much worse than they were before. So, it is relavent that there is less crime today than there was yesterday.
Sure, in a perfect world, there'd be no violent crime. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen anytime soon.
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Post by Chahiero on Jun 12, 2004 23:01:55 GMT -5
I'd have to agree Khyron. Of course, as long as America is convinced that it's impossible, it will never happen.
Beliefe moves mountians.
Or keeps them right where they are.
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