When Economic Stress Becomes Terrorism
The Bell has an op-ed worth reading.
When Economic Stress Becomes Terrorism
Poverty, Rather Than Anti-Anything Ideology, Is the Common Thread
Joseph Stack is not a terrorist in the sense that we apply this word to operatives for al-Qaida and other groups and he certainly is not a Tea Party terrorist. The same is true for Terry Hoskins. However, both these men provide useful illustrations of the link between economic distress and terrorism.
Stack, of course, is the Austin Texas software engineer who last week set fire to his house and then flew his single-engine Piper Cherokee airplane into the Ecehelon building, housing government tax workers. Friends in Austin called him a straight-laced, quiet person who struck them as incapable of such carnage. However, those who knew him longer said Stack had great animosity for the IRS.
Back in the 1980s and 1900s, two entrepreneurial ventures started by Stack ultimately were put out of business by California’s Franchise Tax Board. The first was suspended for non-payment of back taxes totaling $1,153. The second was suspended for failure to file a tax return. Stack acknowledged his errors but was apparently driven over the edge by the federal government’s bailout last year of various troubled banks and auto companies.
Stack wrote that a little guy like him making little mistakes was ultimately hounded by the government in disputes that cost him his marriage, more than $40,000, and “ten years of my life.” Yet when the companies were deemed too big to fail, Stack wondered, “Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities . . . and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?”
Terry Hoskins probably is not known to most but in my hometown of Cincinnati he was making headlines locally at about the same time as Stack was making them nationally. Hoskins is a successful businessman. Several years ago, he built himself a sprawling, luxurious $350,000 home, complete with swimming pool and tennis courts. Over the years, he got into several payment disputes with RiverHills Bank, which holds the mortgage on his property.
When his brother and former business partner sued Hoskins, the IRS placed liens on his commercial properties. The bank promptly claimed his home as collateral. Hoskins asserts he eventually found someone else to loan him the $160,000 he needed to pay off the mortgage but the bank refused, saying it could get more from selling the house in foreclosure.“When I see I owe $160,000 on a home valued at $350,000, and someone decides they want to take it – no, I wasn’t going to stand for that,” Hoskins said. So two weeks before he was due to turn the property over to the bank, Hoskins rented a bulldozer and turned his dream house into rubble. His business is scheduled to go up for auction on March 2 and Hoskins says he is considering leveling that building too.
Stack and Hoskins clearly committed acts of violence and wanton destruction but are they terrorists?
In response to Stack crashing his plane, Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett of Texas released a statement calling it “a cowardly act of domestic terrorism.” Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo said he preferred to describe it as “a criminal act by a lone individual.” Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post reports that caused an acquaintance of his to wryly observe, “If a white Texas guy flies into a government building, it is a contained criminal act.”
Democrats seem eager to depict Stack as a terrorist and none too coyly point out some striking similarities between his list of complaints and the sorts of things sometimes said/yelled at Tea Party gatherings. Republicans call this nonsense, insisting there is no equivalence – ideologically or in results – between Stack’s plane crash versus the men who crashed four commercial jet airliners into the Pentagon, World Trade Center, and a Pennsylvania field, killing thousands.
I have to agree that neither Stack nor Hoskins were likely inspired to their acts by Tea Party rhetoric, even if it turns out they attended or closely followed the events. While these gatherings attract their share of fringe individuals, they are far too loosely organized to be called an anti-government group. Nor is it fair to characterize Tea Partiers as exclusively Republicans, even if they generally trend toward conservatism.
Moreover, as Stack’s suicide note/manifesto, posted on the Internet hours before his death, reveals, the same individual can mix hatred toward big government, big business, and even big religion in equal measures.
However, I think it is a mistake not to consider the presence of distinctly terrorist elements in Stack’s and Hoskins’s mental states and actions. Robert Wright observes in today’s New York Times that, like other terrorists, Stack “saw himself as part of a cause, as one in a long line of fighters against tyranny.” More than a few Americans identify with that cause, even finding a heroic component in Stack’s desperation. Hoskins has received similar expressions of support.
Mark Potok, a Director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, say that extreme and violent acts of rebellion, such as those committed by Stack and Hoskins, “[tap] into a very deep vein of rage against the government.”
Also like other terrorists, Stack had a message to get out and was willing to foster fear through violence until his grievances were addressed. “Sadly,” he wrote, “though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, violence not only is the answer, it is the only answer . . . Nothing changes unless there is a body count.”
Likewise, Hoskins hopes banks view his act of destruction as a kind of veiled threat, leading to a desired end. He told reporters he hoped to “make banks think twice before they try to take someone’s home, and if they are going to take it wrongly, the end result will be them tearing their house down like I did mine.”
When a crazed olive-skinned Muslim Army psychiatrist goes on shooting rampage at Fort Hood and/or crazed black-skinned Muslim student attempts to blow up an airplane with an underwear bomb, conservatives accused the Obama Administration as being soft on terror and decried resistance to wide scale profiling of Muslim males as “political correctness.” Yet when the attackers are white, middle-class males, these same conservatives are quick to dismiss them as unconnected lone crazies. It seems a tad inconsistent.
Yet in one sense, they may have a point. Wright and others think the term “terrorist” has become overused and ought to be dropped. I sympathize with their frustration. Terrorists” have come to connote all-powerful super-villains, so evil and so impossible to contain that our ordinary system of laws is powerless against them and citizens should gladly sacrifice basic rights for safety.
However, assuming we keep the term, Stack and Hoskins nicely demonstrate how economic distress can turn to terrorism. Granted, they are/were not Third World impoverished peasants. Both are/were affluent, educated, middle-class men who took advantage of numerous opportunities afforded them and made some foolish choices along the way that came back to haunt them.
Yet if the sudden loss of affluence – and perhaps more important, a sudden sense of no longer being in control – could drive these educated, middle-class men to acts of violent desperation, consider how a life of abject poverty with no hope of advancement might affect Third World Muslims or create guilt in Muslims living in Western democracies.
Radical Muslim clerics do not create the violent hatred that fuels terrorism anymore than Tea Party organizers; they simply use it constructively or destructively toward their own ends. The roots of terrorism and violence lie in poverty and hopelessness.
That is something to think about as we consider the current economic distress sweeping across this country and debate the best ways to address it. We are faced with a situation where more and more middle class are quietly drifting in desperation into an underclass.
If we do not address how to create employment and stem the bleeding of jobs overseas, if we do not address how to reduce the spiraling costs resulting from continued reliance on non-renewable energy sources, if we do not address how to reduce the spiraling costs from out-of-control healthcare and health insurance industries, we are heading for a reckoning.
Failure to deviate from the status quo means that the anti-government and anti-business activists of the near future will not need to poke about the fringes of society to find a few extreme individuals driven to desperation, such as Stack and Hoskins. Instead, their potential converts will be legion.
The Bell http://blog-thebell.blogspot.com/
i am grateful to the writer of this for reminding me of some things I had forgotten. I used to experience great anger at the government… because the government has power to do stupid and unjust things to people. Fortunately I learned to overcome my anger… mostly by noting that it wasn’t only the government that did stupid and unjust things, and also by noting that my anger was not always so well informed. It is easier to see other people’s anger as foolish than it is to see one’s own as foolish, but i suspect I am not the only person who has had to come to terms with anger… foolish or justified.
I don’t think it’s hard to imagine that terrorists of the official sort are angry. whether their anger is justified or not, or manipulated by others, it is almost certainly the perception of injustice that rationalizes their retribution.. as they see it.
This need have nothing to do with “poverty.” Certainly the Americans the author discusses were not victims of poverty, though they may have been victims of injustice. Certainly they saw themselves as victims of injustice.
Whether we call it “terrorism” or not is almost a foolish question. It is only a not-foolish question if we understand whether we call it that is purely a political question, and then think about what political advantages someone seeks by choosing to use it or not There are elements the domestic “terrorists” share with other “terrorists” and there are differences that some people would find distinguishing. Some people want an excuse to treat foreign “terrorists” as non people outside the protections of American law… an extrememely dangerous idea. And some people… apparently here… want to call attention to “poverty” or economic dislocation as a kind of justification, or excuse, in order to “terrorize” the rest of us into “doing something” about the politics/economy to make life better for the poor.
Well, we should make life better for the poor. But it is not poverty itself that drives people to acts of violence. It is perceived injustice. And that is something that ought to be easier to fix.
Don’t over think it.
The silicon chip inside his head
Gets switched to overload
And nobody’s gonna go to work today
he’s gonna make them stay at home
And his friends don’t understand it
They always said he was good as gold
And they can see no reasons
‘Cos there are no reasons
What reason do you need to be show-ow-ow-ow-own?
Tell me why
I don’t like Taxes
Tell me why
I don’t like Taxes
Tell me why
I don’t like Taxes
I wanna shoo-oo-oo-oo-oo-oot the whole day down
Freedom has its cost but then I say to myself that it’s freedom that we’ve chosen — I never bother to ask what a more ordered world would look like without freedom — because it has nothing to do with the freedom and choice that we’ve chosen.
Hi coberly,
I agree with you that it is more than poverty and a “sense of injustice” is a good definition for another necessary component. However, I would argue that economic injustice is probably the most common injustice experienced by members of a modern society. I described it in my post as a (perceived) lack of control over one’s economic future but it comes down to the same thing. To be clear, I do not see poverty as a justification for anything. I would simply argue, as you seem to do as well, that foreign or domestic, those compelled to commit desperate acts of violence do share (some) common elements which are distinguishing.
Hi Cantab,
No question the link between taxes and individual liberty in our country is a long and closely-connected one but keep in mind our Founding Fathers broke from Great Britain crying, “No taxation without representation,” and not “No taxation – period” or “No taxation and no strong central government.” Cutting or eliminating taxes or shrinking the size of government will do little to fight systemic economic disenfranchisement, in my opinion.
Hi Bell:
I lost your email addy so I couldn’t email you to let you know. I was hoping you would see my comment on your blog.
I know we talked about the John Adams quote a while back and I am sure you remember this one.
“Poverty is the Worst Form of Violence” Ghandi.
As John Adams claimed, out of poverty grows a sense of shame and a lack of meaning to the world around one’s self.
Thanks for being here Bell
Bell,
You are exactly correct regarding the Founding Father’s perspective on taxation. Both Washington and especially Hamilton recognized the need to establish a reliable stream of revenue which would allow the government to carry out its responsibilities to the people.
The motivation to strike ot at others is often fostered by the sense of a loss of control over the most important aspects of our every day lives. If we live stable middle class lives it is difficult to empathize with people who have lost that sense of personal control. All too often there is a significant financial aspect to that sense of turmoil and frustration. When the pressure mounts due to the particular circumstances of one’s life and the perceived cause of such circumstances seem beyond our control there may seem to be no options left. That is the point at which some break with their personal control mechanisms and strike out wildly at the first apparent target of their frustrations. That is true for both terrorists and the unfortunate individuals like Stack who become deranged by that loss of control.
TheBell,
The author seemed to want to link the tax party with a muderer to denegrate the former. I don’t buy it and I’m inclined to them him to go to hell.
I’m about as left wing as them come, but I hate this conflation of “violent acts” with terrorism.
The key is that the agent’s goal is to “intimidate or coerce.”
Causing lots of damage because you are pissed off does not make you a terrorist. There is no “terror.”
You have to be using fear (the terror bit) to try to change other peoples’ behavior. That’s what terrorism is.
I went through 10 years of IRA actions and got walk through the 9/11 dust cloud. Don’t tell me a meth lab is terrorism cos it hurts lots of people.
See any similarities here?
Frustrated Strivers in Pakistan Turn to Jihad
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/world/asia/28youth.html
The Economic Elite Have Engineered an Extraordinary Coup, Threatening the Very Existence of the Middle Class
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/145667
Tea party
Terrorism is undefinable. We’ve pretended that it means something for so long that it will now be used against us if we fight back.
Bell
can’t say the letters here, perhaps including mine, lead me to expect anything very rational.
what seems to be happening is that the pathetic organ we call our brains “sees” a phenomenon with some elements of similarity to another Very Emotional Event and treats the latter as an incidence of the former. Or, what is very similar: a man under stress who happens to have access to an airplane carries out an act of irrationality in a form that is modeled by his perception of that Very Emotional Event. We are not dealing with anything remotely connected to reason here, except as reason itself is usually just another exercise in confusing one thing with another due to a similarity of names.
Is it worthwhile trying to point out that the two people whose cases you cite were by no means “poor” “victims of the status quo”?
us poor people can function quite fine as long as we get enough to eat and a place to sleep. unless we are taught to view our poverty as an injustice. it may in fact be an injustice, but there is usually no need to see it that way. certainly my own poverty is a consequence of my own behavior, or capacity for behavior, and it does not bother me that other people have more “wealth.”
further, most of the “poor” people in America have more “wealth” than rich people in any other time or place. further, the people in America doing the most yelling about “injustice” are rich people who can’t stand the idea that it takes some taxes for the government to maintain the conditions that make their wealth possible.
so while you may feel that “poverty IS injustice” I suggest you are fooling yourself with a political agenda to which it is all too easy and dangerous to give the kind of moral sanctimony that your political enemies give to their agenda.
Jeff,
Thank you for making sense. I would add that these two guys are two guys. Out of 310 mln in the US, 2 guys don’t add up to much of anything but a happy moment for “if it bleeds it leads” headline writers.
One can always find a connection, imply a connection, make up a connection between some bad even and something one doesn’t like. Just ask George Will. For him, there is an unwashed, peace-loving, tie-dye wearin’, dope-smokin’ hippie behind every bad thing that has happened in the US since Wavy Gravy started giving cooking lessons. Newt Gingrich insisted permissive liberals paved the way for that mom who drove her children into a lake so that she could fun off with her boyfriend. To bad her untra-conservative pastor had been raping her for years – sort of spoiled the story for the Newtster.
Why should we be as loopy as Will or Newt? Why should we believe that a couple of people who did odd things, no matter how grim the consequences, have anything to do with great national issues or tea-baggers or – well – anything but their own anger and irrationality?
I tried in my post to explain why I thought both Stack and Hoskins were relevant to my thesis, even though they do not meet the definition of impoverished. While I agree that equal opportunity should NOT imply equal realization of everyone’s dreams, by the same token it should not be used as an excuse to write off very poor realization that are as much or more the result of systemic unfairness as individual poor choices. I don’t disagree that poor people in this country probably have far more on the whole than impoverished people in Third World nations but I am uninterested in that as some sort of moral equivalence.
Hi Jack,
We agree completely that economic pressures can leave a person feeling out of control and can lead to extreme reactions. Thanks for replying with your support.
Hi, gorobei. While I still agree with Robert Wright that there IS at least an implied intention in both Stack’s and Hoskins’s actions to “intimidate or coerce” others (i.e. tax authorities and banks, respectively), I agree the anger they represent lacks the same organization and formal purpose of known terrorist groups/cells. That said, I also see a bright line between what each of them did versus someone operating a meth lab for personal profit.
Hi TJFXH,
I strongly agree that we continue to let the usually stable middle class continue to fall into an economic underclass in this country at our peril. At present, I see no remedy but the government for this, given the past actions of those in positions of affluence and power. Thank you for contributing these links.
Hi Jeff65,
We agree completely, I think, that our own hyperbole regarding the “threat of terrorism” over the past decade is now begining to interfere with our ability to contain it effectively.
Hi kharris,
You are correct, of course, about the media’s desire to sensationalize. However, consider that what also made both Stack and Hoskins newsworthy is that these are two guys who would not normally be expected to lash out in this way. If an unemployed, impoverished inner-city man acts out in the extreme by, say, robbing a liquor store to pay his bills, we write him off as nothing but a common thug, it is so cliche. What would make Stack and Hoskins lose their middle-class respect for property and lives? I would argue it was their loss of economic security and control.
I made it clear in my post that I thought neither man was inspired by the Tea Parties. I only see a growing number of formerly stable, middle class being driven to acts of common thuggery by an economy that is providing less and less real opportunity.
TheBell
The Oklahoma bombing took place well after the economy was in recovery; the Columbine Hish School massacre occured at the hight of the economic boom times in the late 1990s; and Virginia Tech massacre took place early in 2007 when the economy was still strong with very low unemployment. So I don’t see the link between poor economic times and domestic terrorism.
Had Mr. Stack become deeply involved in the tea party movement he probably would have channeled his anger into constructive political discourse rather then futile violence.
On defining terrorism here goes:
Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion.[1] At present, the International community has been unable to formulate a universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition of terrorism.[2][3] Common definitions of terrorism refer only to those violent acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants (civilians).
I don’t see anything systematic in what Mr. Stack did and what he did seemed more a suicide where he decided to take some other people out with him.
I think the purpose of the original column was to use terrorism and tea party on the same page to create an implied correspondence between the two. Its not working on me, how about you?
Bell
first, i agree with you that we need to “create employment” and in general address poverty and injustice as issues in America.
But you are wrong that the “muslim clerics don’t create the anger…” In fact they do. the average poor person just knows that he is poor. doesn’t feel much anger about it until someone tells him he is the victim of injustice. it seems to me you are preparing yourself for that role.
on the other hand, the poor do encounter injustice every day… not the systematic injustice that creates their poverty, just the ordinary sorts of abuses that come from differences in power.
when you say you are uninterested in moral equivalence at the same time you are claiming moral equivalence it tends to weaken your argument.
finally, you need to take care that the argument you put forth does distinguish between giving everyone who thinks his relative poverty is an injustice an excuse to commit violence, and just exactly how you are going to draw the line between what you consider just inequality and what someone else might consider unjust inequality.
sure,
the folks you cite are just crazies overreacting to losing the game they played for high stakes. the meth guy is just trying to make money without working for someone else. if he didn’t make such a mess and in general cause such misery i’d have some sympathy for him. the muslim terrorists… their handlers… are polilticians using the means they have to attain what power they can in the world. no different from Obama but without the F-14’s or whatever the hell they are using nowadays. (kind of strange to write Obama in for Bush after all these years).
bell
the peril is not that the former middle class may blow up a building we happen to be standing near, but that without them we all get poorer. rich as well as poor will get poorer. we have turned over our economy to irresponsible whiz kids working for short sighted financiers. dumb dumb dumb. but not because of “terrorism.”
and of course the government is the rememdy. if we can only pry it from the cold dead fingers of the finacial class.
kharris
always nice to agree with you.
bell
you have really accomplished something when you drive me to agree with Cantab.
coberly,
All the F-14s are out of the inventory and have been for awhile. Top Gun now use F/A-18 E/F/Gs made by Boeing.
Currently we are mainly using Predators, helicopters, and few fixed wing.
Just an FYI so you can update that along with saying Obama!
Did you really beleive anything would change? Other than…
Islam will change
Kharris,
In another step toward freezing over a very warm place, I agree with you and coberly. Not sure how you get these one-offs to a coordinated campaign like Hamas, Taliban or Al Queda.
And these guys didn’t have anything to do with the Tea Party. Heck that would have at least been a more productive way to vent his frustration…
Stack and Hoskins were never going to become terrorist group leaders. Rather, they are the sort of cannon fodder that terrorist leaders use to their ends. However, we call the people who blow themselves up in crowded places “terrorists” every bit as much as the men who send them to do it. Neither McVeigh nor especially Seung-Hui Cho were organized terrorists either. However, much like Stack and Hoskins, they had become highly disconnected from society. What drove them may not have been economic — they were always far more fringe than my examples and their motivations were likely complex and long in the forming. I remain convinced, however, that economic distress is a very powerful force to create this same sense of disconnect and a growing one within this country at present.
I made it clear in my original post that I do NOT believe Tea Parties had anything to do with Stack or Hoskins and I stand by that. I am glad it is not working on you but I can only tell you that you are seeing a conspiratorial connection that I never intended.
coberly:
Above this cantab is suggesting Bell is claiming tea baggers inspired Hoskins and Stack. I read his article somewhat differently:
“I have to agree that neither Stack nor Hoskins were likely inspired to their acts by Tea Party rhetoric, even if it turns out they attended or closely followed the events. While these gatherings attract their share of fringe individuals, they are far too loosely organized to be called an anti-government group. Nor is it fair to characterize Tea Partiers as exclusively Republicans, even if they generally trend toward conservatism.”
As far as violence stemming from poverty? There is a strong tendency to believe poverty has an impact of those to commit acts of violence. In fact there are enough studies to suggest such:
“James Gilligan takes it a step further in his study (“Reflections on A National Epidemic – Violence” Gilligan); quoting H.A. Bulhan’s reference to structural violence. ‘For every 1% increase in unemployment in the United States, there was an increased mortality of 37,000 deaths per year (natural and violent) including ~2,000 more suicides and homicides than might otherwise occur.’ Or explained in simpler terms, for every 1% increase in Unemployment, we can expect to see increases in the mortality rate by 2%, homicides and imprisonments by 6%, and infant mortality by 5%. Since WWII, the unemployment rate for blacks has been twice as high as that of whites. (Frantz Fanon and the Psychology of Oppression; H.A Bulhan; Mental Illness and the Economy, M.H Brenner). Hertz points to a decrease in income mobility and Bulhan points to higher crime, violence, and death rates due to unemployment. “
If you wish to go in this direction coberly, there is enough out there to suggest poverty does create an environment for more violence to occur. The prisons aren’t necessarily full of Stacks and Hoskins and we have gone from 1 in 77 adults in prison or on parole to 1 in 33. From my own experience in visiting level 4 and 2 prisons, they are not filled with the middle or upper classes. They are filled with those who come from the lower income bracketes. 1 in 11 black adults are there, 1 in 27 Hispanic adults are there, and 1 in 45 white adults (Pew , March 2009) Prisons are big business in many states while they are bankrupting them at the same time.
Bell does have a point when he says that given their status, Hoskins and Stack were more newsworthy than if this were done by two men from the inner city. And what drove them to such acts? The very same loss of control, status, and money.
hi buff
to be honest, i did not, or should not have, believed that anything would change.
to be just a tiny bit more honest… i think there are tiny changes. maybe i can keep thinking it’s spring.
thanks for the update on the arsenal. i won’t remember… cause, ya know, at my age they all look just about the same.
run
you read cantab/bell more carefully than i felt the need to. bell is ridiculous in his logic and cantab is calling him on one end of it while i am calling him on the other end.
of course poverty breeds violence. nasty in your face violence different from that long arm of the law violence that wealth breeds but bell was claiming that poverty breeds a particular form of violence and his examples were two rich guys who were suddenly less rich than they thought they had a right to be.
now i can see a future in which madame guillotine reprises her starring role from 1793, but this will be an entirely different phenomenon that what bell is claiming.
coberly:
The only difference is they suddenly found themselves in the same environment and situation as what millions of others have found themselves in . . . shamed, loss of status, income, etc. In turn, they struck out at those who they could. Poverty does breed two types of violence, structural and behavioral. Losing your status in life can cause one to turn violent.
I guess I am calling you both on this. Bell is right and I have seen it.
Hertz points to a decrease in income mobility and Bulhan points to higher crime, violence, and death rates due to unemployment. Both Hertz and Bulhan point out the impact for those of the lowest income brackets and black minorities even more so. The resultant increases in violence, homicides and imprisonments can be attributed more so to poverty relating imprisonments as a result of being tough on crime. Hypertension amongst those living in dangerous urbanized environments is also higher when compared to those of high income environments. Given the last 8 years of poor economy; is it any wonder that death rates are higher due to violence or natural causes, more people are going to prison, more of those going to prison are black minorities, and more are going and staying longer in prison due to stringent sentencing.
“The poor man’s conscience is clear . . . he does not feel guilty and has no reason to . . . yet, he is ashamed. Mankind takes no notice of him. He rambles unheeded. In the midst of a crowd; at a church; in the market . . . he is in as much obscurity as he would be in a garret or a cellar. He is not disapproved, censured, or reproached; he is not seen . . . To be wholly overlooked, and to know it, are intolerable.” John Adams
Well coberly, you have seen quite a bit of a paper I have to finish and post here as I promised Dan. Poverty does breed a different form of violence and the threat of poverty for someone who has not experienced it before can result in what the Bell has described.
TheBell.
I made it clear in my original post that I do NOT believe Tea Parties had anything to do with Stack or Hoskins and I stand by that.
And neither did emily’s list but I don’t see them in your column.
Run,
I see the route cause of inner city crime is that people want things but don’t have the talent to earn them so they substitute ruthlessness and risk taking for talent, commit crimes, and disprortionally end up in jail.
run
thank you. i am back to agreeing more with you than with cantab. but i still have this fetish about making sense. yes, poverty breeds violence and crime. but not “terrorism.” bell uses an argument of the form “sounds like, therefore it must be true.” there is a huge difference between perceived injustice and poverty. i have to guess that you have never experienced either.
cantab would have a hard time explaining why my very rich neighbor felt the need to cut my trees and build his fence on my property, in spite of having a survey which told him quite clearly where he was. rich neighbor will not end up in jail because, darn it, he is a friend of the district attorney, wouldn’t you know.
What ever happened to going to the gym to get that anger removed and relieve the stress and anxiety that is felt.