War in America

As I ran this morning I was thinking about what being safe means.

I mean I keep hearing that American’s are worried about being safe and such.

Why?

When I run I listen to podcasts. I imagine what it is like for a person to be out at 5:30 in the morning and look up and see this 240 pound guy running at them.

Big broad shoulders, angry and sweating.

Granted I am not sprinting, more like doing a pace I am not willing to mention at this point in my recovery for… ummm… tendonitis , or something not connected to laziness.

I do imagine the sound I make is a combination of huffing and puffing mixed with the slap, slap, slap of my basically bare feet hitting the cement.

Unless the people I pass are out doing nefarious things and are bad asses packing lead pipes and fire arms, they don’t seem to give a flying fuck that I am even there.

Maybe 0530 is a safe time.

Maybe everytime in Park Slope is a safe time.

So what are we so afraid of?

We all live in the same society we all pay to have our morality adjusted by important people year after year. I mean I didn’t know a drink size could be made illegal, who’d have thunk it.

How much does it cost to manufacture a conscience? We all have one anyway. You know the inner voice telling one right from wrong, or as Disney drew it the little angel fighting with the little devil.

I am surrounded by sirens. I called 911 for an alarm in my building and within moments the fire department shows up.

In certain neighborhoods we are surrounded by people telling us what to do, that trash goes in this bin this trash goes her and all that other stuff gets tossed over there. Basically I get a lot of information on what’s right and what’s wrong. In some places we don’t even need to decide anymore what the proper decision is it’s made already for us.

But then there are places like East New York, it’s on the outskirts of Brooklyn. I worked with a guy not too long ago who said it’s a warzone. Deaths, not one, not injury, but deaths one after another, each night. Gun fire and stabbings and people hating each other over, I imagine, who has the right to sale drugs where.

I find it strange to think there is a war that close to my door, just miles away.

The conscience my society bought and paid for seems to stop there.

Why do we spend trillions on an urban army of military trained crime fighters when the places that need the most policing aren’t policed.

Supposedly hundred sometimes thousands of men and women are willing to send bullets down range and kill bad guys for the defense of the tax payer.

Why does it seem like some areas are cordoned off and little wars are allowed to be fought?

I don’t know.

If this system we have set up really works shouldn’t every community be policed the same? If wars are being fought on American soil should not the ones taking our money to defend us be deeply involved.

Shouldn’t there be a general speaking of expectations and death counts and enemy maneuvers?

I don’t have answers, I got me one of them English degrees, but I see issues, I see lots of money being spent of prolems that matter but don’t matter as much as fixing these wars. Maybe those in power hope the poor people in these war zone just kill each other off.