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by Russell Beattie.
Original Post: Overreaction
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I'm starting to see over reactions to my last post. Yes, that call this morning jolted me and Ana a bit, but that's where it ends. I'm so *sick* of this culture of fear that we live in here in America.
No, in fact, there are *not* a lot of wackos out there. No, in fact, there are *not* stalkers waiting at every corner. No, in fact, most people are quite fine and good and honest. Even today with the horrible news in Madrid and my personal problems with a single nutter - 99.9999999% of the people in the world are not wackos. Period.
I didn't post that post to give people some sort of justification to hide themselves away or not post pictures of their kids or lock their houses with alarms, load up on amo and assume the worst about their fellow man. That's the way the Republicans think of the world: Gated communities and those weird "don't touch my child" people at the park. Fuck that. That's not how I'm going to live my life, thank you.
Remember back when we were kids in the 70s and suddenly Halloween became a Life or Death sport? Some ridiculous event happened in some random part of the U.S. and suddenly every neighbor was just waiting to slip razor-blades and poison into the candy of unsuspecting trick-or-treaters. It ruined the holiday and all you heard for years was how society is just going down the drain and this was a perfect example. It had nothing to do with razor blades, but hysteria. So yeah, when you cave in to those random idiots out there, society *does* in fact go downhill.
An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure is what my Dad just told me on the phone (they were none too happy to read my weblog today). And that's what I'm doing now - I'm making that ounce of prevention. But you know what, if someone wants to find me, they'll find me. If someone wants to kill you, they'll kill you. It's as simple as that. What's wrong with the world is not those random wackos, it's this horrible lonely look-out-for-yourself us-against-them most-shocking-news-possible-at-11 American society which breeds them.
In Madrid kids played at the park and they were rough and tumble and all the parents just hung out and pretty much let them go at it. If a kid did something really stupid, a half a dozen parents would yell and berate them and it was good. If a cute little boy wandered by learning how to walk, another half dozen hands would be out to help and pat him on the head. Here in the U.S. it's "don't go near my child you potential paedophile" and I'm sick of it already and I just got back here.
No, I'm sorry. One idiot does not mean that suddenly I'm supposed to lock up my life and hide my photos and barricade my life. One idiot does not give you justification to point fingers and talk about how you need to protect your precious privacy. No, privacy just causes *more* of this shit to happen, not less.
Look - we live in a country with hundreds of millions of people, yet we have communications tools that make any event in any part of that society seem like it's in our living room. It's *not*. Every day the media presents the absolute worst, shocking news possible on the television and in the papers and on the web. They pander to the worst parts of every one of us and breed a society of hatred and division and suspicions and fear. Stop it. Stop paying attention to all that crap. Look, there are 6 billion people on the earth so the odds are that someone, somewhere is doing something incredibly bad and now it can be instantly beamed into your dinner newshour. But that has nothing to do with you and the society you choose to live in. Society is like traffic: you can't bitch about it and point fingers because guess what? You're part of it.
I'm not going to neglect my duties to protect my kid, but I for one like to think that participating and sharing in society (as broken as it is) is better than locking myself away. You may feel different, but don't you dare point your finger in my direction as some sort of example of how you to live a fear-stricken life.
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