In a Nutshell

Sometimes a story comes along that is such a perfect Racing to the Bottom piece that I know I can’t even get 500 words of snarky comments out of it; I can only present its moronic goodness to the Universe (or whatever part of the Universe wanders by my blog from time to time) and let all of my readers (assuming I have readers) bask in the dull-witted glow. This is one of those times: I bring you the story of a large group of people who live in public housing who decided to attack safety and rescue personnel with incendiary devices just for the fun of it…


You can pick up the story from the local news here if you want to, but the basic story is that a mob of people who live at the Oakwood Housing Complex in Alton, Illinois, decided to call in a false alarm to the local Fire Department, and when the firefighters showed up, the people in the crowd started shooting bottle rockets and firing off Roman candles at them. The same miscreants decided to give the same treatment to several Alton police officers who showed up to investigate as well. However, there are currently no suspects, since no one who lives in the complex saw or heard anything, or was within 50 miles of the place on Sunday night. Or, at least, that’s the story they’re all telling the authorities…


Now, I’m not going to sermonize about the lack of trust that has grown up between various at-risk communities and the police in the United States over the past fifty years. The fact is, there have been enough atrocities on both sides of that war to make you wonder if anyone left in this nation has pure intentions, and I don’t have anything approaching the arrogance to assume that I can settle anything with a little humor blog. I do have to wonder about the intelligence of people who do something like this and then complain that emergency services are slow to respond to their complex, or even to their part of town, however…


Several authors, notably including the late Robert A. Heinlein, have argued that once basic courtesy disappears from a society, that civilization is simply and frankly doomed, and there is no way to save it. Heinlein in particular cites several examples, noting that this sort of decay is almost rationalized by the people who are doing it as a matter of “strength” in taking full advantage of their opportunities and not allowing anyone to take advantage of them. I call this to your attention because it takes little imagination to picture the people shooting fireworks at firemen being very pleased with themselves, for taking advantage of “the man” or “the system” to provide them with free entertainment, or justifying their treatment of these underpaid rescue workers by citing some wrong done to their parents, grandparents, or ancestors at some point over the last 150 years…

So far, this is still drawing outrage and Internet ridicule from the so-called “decent people” who object to this sort of hooliganism, but it’s hard to imagine any such events occurring even 50 years ago in this country. Which means it’s just possible that I might be onto something with this whole “Racing to the Bottom” concept…