I think I’m a pretty good person. I don’t steal. I don’t cut in line. I pick up after my dog. I open the door for ladies. I don’t talk loudly in movie theaters. I work hard. I’ve never cheated on my wife. I try to be polite. I put my shopping cart back, I don’t litter and I pay my taxes.
All in all, I sound like a pretty good guy. But here’s the
thing… All that stuff… it’s a pretty low bar for a person to be considered good
in a civilized society. None of that
stuff is anything I should be patting myself on the back for.
Actually, I’m not. I, like many people, gauge myself more by
my failures than by my successes.
Despite all the above, I’ve failed at numerous businesses, sent out
seemingly millions of resumes and mostly got crickets in return and I’ve been
in debt for most of my life.
Those things are not good.
They are terrible as a matter of fact.
But they are what they are.
All of that being said, I hope, when I leave this mortal
realm, I find St. Peter welcoming me at the pearly gates. But hey, who knows?
Why the introspection?
Because I recently watched a video of a very troubling interaction.
Before I get into that, I have to admit that I kinda feel like I’m the way I am
because of osmosis. Other than my
parents telling me to respect my elders and not to lie or steal – particularly
after an incident with a candy bar when I was about five - I don’t remember
getting a bunch of explicit moral lessons while growing up. I’m sure they were there, but I just don’t
remember them. No doubt there were teachers and priests (I was an Altar Boy)
and coaches who helped form me into who I am along the way. I appear to be the product of my own agency
and the people around me, but I can’t say for sure what the ratio is, nor when
I became the biggest driver of my character.
And now, that troubling interaction.
That was the catalyst for the above introspection. I wondered, how does a six-year-old boy
become such a menace? He didn’t come out
of the womb already knowing that language or how to shoot a gun. Somewhere over the first six years of his
life he learned such, either by explicit intent or osmosis.
What kind of family life must that child have been raised
in? What kind of community? What kind of
socialization was he exposed to?
I immediately wondered what the reactions from the parents
might be. I’ve not seen their reactions,
but I’ve seen many videos of black family / friends saying
about black criminals some version of “He was a really a good boy” or “He just fell in with the wrong crowd”. And in one memorable case where a homeowner
shot an intruder dead, someone asked how else someone raised in the hood was
supposed to get money for school clothes.
All of this got me thinking about not only that little boy, but
black America and America writ large.
America is a nation like no other. We’ve existed for 250 years guided by a piece
of paper. Seriously… a piece of paper. Unlike most nations in history, we’re
not controlled by a heredity dynasty or military regime where fear of violence
keeps our union together. What’s more, we’re not a democracy where the mob or
majority rules at the expense of the minority. No, we’re a republic where
individuals have their own rights that the majority can’t, ideally, trample
upon.
A nation such as ours only survives if the vast majority of
the citizens share roughly the same values and mores. The big values are right there in the
Constitution, things like freedom of speech, freedom from unreasonable searches
and seizures, the right to trial by jury, etc.
But a nation needs more than that to survive for a quarter
of a millennium. Religious hegemony isn’t a requirement, but something close to
it has helped. A belief in hard work and
merit being a key element of success was a bedrock principle from early on,
whether on the part of frontiersmen, farmers or factory workers.
Closer to home, things like doing chores, respecting other’s
property, and supporting the community were traditionally common throughout
most of America’s history.
Together, those things and more created something of a
social contract that allowed Americans to thrive like no people ever had. America was never perfect nor were any
Americans, but most were fundamentally good and lived by that implied
contract.
But 60 years ago LBJ destroyed that contract. His Great
Society programs weakened the family structure for far too many and sent America
down the path that led to that little six-year-old boy bellowing “Fuck you,
Bitch” after shooting a teacher. Virtually everything in the story of American
success is based on individual responsibility. To the degree that LBJ eviscerated
that core principle, he opened the door to where we are today, a point in time
where a staggering number of blacks feel no respect for anyone, no affinity to
America and no respect for the mores and values that made America great in the
first place.
Forty years ago activists pushed for dashcams and later police
bodycams because they were expected to show large numbers of police abusing
minorities. They didn’t. What they showed
instead was the disdain and contempt many blacks have for police and a
willingness to use violence. We see it regularly. One doesn’t have to imagine very hard that
without a drastic change, that little six-year-old boy is going to grow up to
be the next Decarlos Brown or one of those “teens” we see so often trashing
stores or otherwise causing mayhem.
This 6-year-old should be a wakeup call. When we see a little boy who, through either
instruction or osmosis, has such anti-social behavior problems, we need to
recognize that he wasn’t born that way.
He was indoctrinated by a culture that no longer even pretends to
conform to the norms that made America so successful. That’s a problem. Not only for the child, the family and the
community, but for America as well. Until
that is dealt with, we’ll likely end up seeing more heartbreakingly maddening
bodycam videos…
Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA
