Saturday, July 15, 2006
Gangs and men
I saw "Wide Angle: 18 with a bullet" and it raises a lot of issues of what it means to raise sons. The gangsters were largely from fatherless families and gangs do take such boys into their "family." One thing I noticed was how irresponsible, how boyish their attitude was about killing and then getting caught and spending time in prison, even though they had their own children. And the film maker's comments see similar trends and even puts it succinctly: Boys masquerading as men. It kind of reminds me of the book "The Postponed Generation: why American youth are growing up later".
Very sad to see how much US has done to make life worse for other countries. Like El Salvador had civil war supported by US military so at least one gun shown in the TV program was an automatic US made .223 caliber pistol/rifle (rather than your AK "assault" rifle you see in videos from, say, Africa). As well as deporting US trained gang members to their countries which they seem to have been introduced to the US based gang life.
The other issue is if US becomes a lawless country (where police are afraid of the gangs), what then? As we have seen in post-Katrina, it doesn't take much of a disaster to cause a havoc in the U.S., esp. in big cities. I can foresee something like an earthquake in California causing similar chaos and gangs taking over the weaker citizens. Merely being armed, unfortunately, won't be good enough. Physical proximity to those who are like minded would matter, as well, since no man is an island and you can't do everything by your self [and your family]. Something for me to think about as we move to SoCal in few weeks....
Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.
Very sad to see how much US has done to make life worse for other countries. Like El Salvador had civil war supported by US military so at least one gun shown in the TV program was an automatic US made .223 caliber pistol/rifle (rather than your AK "assault" rifle you see in videos from, say, Africa). As well as deporting US trained gang members to their countries which they seem to have been introduced to the US based gang life.
The other issue is if US becomes a lawless country (where police are afraid of the gangs), what then? As we have seen in post-Katrina, it doesn't take much of a disaster to cause a havoc in the U.S., esp. in big cities. I can foresee something like an earthquake in California causing similar chaos and gangs taking over the weaker citizens. Merely being armed, unfortunately, won't be good enough. Physical proximity to those who are like minded would matter, as well, since no man is an island and you can't do everything by your self [and your family]. Something for me to think about as we move to SoCal in few weeks....
Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.
