23 wrote:I guess, then, that someone should inform the Metro Police in Las Vegas that they are engaging in "anti-immigrant fear-mongering and dog-whistling" when they alert the public to the 100% rise in home invasions in their town.
I'm sure they already know it better than anyone. What with it being such an excellent way of deflecting the attention of the citizenry away from the mobbed-up corruption due to which the Metro Police in Las Vegas aren't interested in doing a whole lot more to address locally endemic rates of random violent crime than they have to do in order to maintain some semblance of safety in the various select neighborhoods that cater to family-friendly tourism.
Even more to the point, keeping populist anger over such things at a high boil and then directing it exclusively toward the lowest-on-the-organizational-totem-pole criminals and/or unaffiliated have-nothings who are so desperate and crazy that they'll risk something as potentially suicidal as breaking into an occupied residence just about couldn't be any more in the interests of the higher-ups to whom the Metro Police in Las Vegas are indebted than it is.
Because guess what? Those higher-ups are the ones who really profit from the shenanigans that go hand-in-hand with both the legal parts of the gambling and prostitution industry
and the illegal parts. Which include narcotics and human trafficking. Typically. All of which is very, very lucrative for the happy few. As well as generally good for business to a much more modest extent for the ever-decreasing remnants of what used to be the American middle class, in historical terms, at least.
But it simply can't be done without creating at least a small class of desperate, crazy and desocialized criminals. That (typically) preys on the classes that are one or two or three rungs above it. Even in the best of times. Which these aren't.
In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if what I guess I'll call "home invasions" for the sake of continuity (although I really prefer not to use the language of my oppressor, and don't plan on making a habit out of it on this one, btw)
are on the up-tick to some degree in the places where you'd expect to see the cracks appearing first.
Which would be cities with large and long-standing minority communities:
-- that live at significantly higher poverty rates than the majority do;
-- who have been systematically and brutally abused by a notoriously corrupt police force for decades;
-- the vast majority of whom wouldn't, at this point, even have been alive for long enough to form any hopes or ambitions about aiming for one of the few minor nods in the direction of the social contract via which they might have had some long-shot odds of working their way out of generational poverty before Reagan scrapped some altogether and gutted the rest; and last but not least
-- a visibly prosperous class in plain view on a regular and probably daily basis.
IOW: You'd definitely expect both Las Vegas and Philly to be among the front-line cities.
Also, fwiw, I personally do fully expect to see life getting more and more Weimar, wrt to stuff like crime, living standards, social cohesion, and the scape-goating of the usual demographic "Others" for the foreseeable future. And even if I didn't I'd fight for your right to keep and bear arms in your home, if I had to.
I just don't see how getting all dramatically Chicken Little -- either about calling primarily memetic trends "common," or about concentrating any political energy resisting totally non-existent and one hundred percent imaginary threats to the second amendment -- does anything apart from make it easier for the big-time criminals who call the shots to continue their unimpeded advance.
http://www.mynews3.com/story.php?id=13356
Rash of residential robberies, home invasions in west Las Vegas
(excerpted)
Over the last two months, Metro says home invasions and robberies are happening twice as often and becoming increasingly more violent on the west side of town.
(excerpted)
They occur about twice per week, between 9 am and 3 am. The days are random, as are the victims, without regard to race or the neighborhood in which you live.
Police say these crimes have happened at apartments, condos, and 6,000-square-foot homes alike.
“A few years ago the trend was, if you were engaged in some sort of illegal behavior, you were more of a target than the average citizen,” says Metro Police Lieutenant Clint Nichols. “But lately we’re starting to see regular moms and pops become the victims.”
(excerpted)
“We’re talking about people getting confronted at gunpoint as they’re sleeping. Dangerous behavior,” Lt. Nichols continues. “We just want to get the word out that this is a problem. We need for people to pay attention to what’s going on.”Even police officers aren't immune to being invaded at home:
http://www.lasvegastribune.com/index.ph ... Itemid=244Metro Officer killed during a botched home invasion
So I'll take the accuracy of those links on faith for now. And probably forever. Because you and I would still differ about what they represent in political terms and how effectively to respond to them every bit as much if they were utter crap as we would if they were pure gold.
And in any event, they don't really have any bearing one way or the other on the justice or accuracy of my only contention. Which was simply that there is no town in the United States in which "home invasions" are common. Which I'm actually perfectly willing to retract if that's what it takes to resolve the issue.
Because seriously, given that we're currently not living in a functional democracy, I can hardly make much of an argument for that particular point being worth going to the mat over. And since it was my point, if I can't, who can?
The only marginally constructive purpose of continuing to dispute it that I can even imagine would be to provide yet another illustration of what's probably the single most frequently illustrated symptom of a civilization in decline that there is around these parts.
And that's sure not gonna stop the disease from progressing, we can at least agree about that much, right?
________________