I really am scared. Our country is not stable. I am afraid we are going to have “race wars”. I tell myself I live in the middle of no where and no one would go out of their way to harm anyone here, but then I know that people aren’t rational.
Of course the news makers always show the worse. It is all very sad. Most of us live and work in peace. We have relatives and friends of different races and skin colors. As we pray, speak the truth and love and hold onto the joy of the Lord, we need to remember that truth.
How we need to pray for leaders that will also stop promoting division!
I have a Facebook friend whom I have a lot of respect for, whose education is in statistics. He has pointed out several times, with the studies to back him up, that violent crime, including murder, is at a 51-year low. Even with the latest attacks on those officers in Dallas, “cop killings” are also at a low. (Being a police officer is not even the most dangerous occupation, but is down the list a bit.)
BUT we have 24-hour news & internet to shine a light on every little incidence of violence & murder, so we think things are worse now than they used to be.
Although I “know” that intellectually, it still hurts my heart & worries me to hear about these shootings & killings. And I agree with Kim that we seem to be on the verge of some awful race riots. I hope they do not come to fruition. (There was a famous preacher who had a prophecy years ago that there would be violent race riots in New York & other major cities. I hope he was not right, but I can see how it could happen.)
I have said this before but it is still true. I have been raising a biracial child in the south for 13 years and can honestly say I have never experienced any racism from black, white or other in all that time. However, he is in a public school that is 50% white, 30% black and 18% Hispanic. He may have seen some that he hasn’t mentioned to me. He has used some words (“cracker” and the N word) that I get the feeling the kids use way too causally.
We live in interesting times. Although it’s true that social media & 24-hour news can make life seem more dangerous, I think there is an uptick in division that doesn’t bode well for us. In LA, we’ve had an increase in crime in the past year, some of it possibly related to a state measure that purported to send less serious offenders off to drug treatment (but the treatment end of the deal fell short, apparently). It put many folks, esp those using drugs, back on the streets and also has been linked to the increasing numbers of homeless and tent encampments.
No easy answers, but I’d say life in the U.S. is significantly more tense (and could easily turn into higher crime rates) now than in the recent past.
On race relations, we are not the same country we were in the 1950s or ’60s. We’ve come a long way. There will always be racial tension and discrimination, most likely, due to our own sin natures.
I still find it perplexing that the election (and re-election) of our first black president has resulted in seemingly more racial tension and resentment. Still trying to figure that one out, but I also realize that the black experience is much different than the white experience in our culture.
It wasn’t all that long ago that we had legalized segregation. Some of those long-standing cultural wounds just don’t go away very quickly or easily.
A ‘slow catastrophe’ unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end
… In a steady march, disease-causing microbes have evolved ways to evade the bulwark of medications used to treat bacterial infections. …
Hospitals are improving their infection control, and public health experts are getting better at tracking new threats. But in a race against nature, he said, the humans are losing ground.
“We’re seeing more drug-resistant infections,” Hanage said. “And people will die.” …
____________________________
Donna – I was thinking about how even though statistics show crime to be down, there is the possibility of it going up again in the unrest we see in our nation. But I also think at least some of that unrest is also due to the news & social media stirring the pot.
The Internet in general has changed a lot of things in our culture — that’s why I wish I could read the books that’ll come out in 50 years or so that will have enough distance from the phenomenon (which is wonderful and horrible in so many ways, right?) to assess how it impacted, well, just about everything.
I think it’s simply the nature of the medium that has both made us more aware of issues (the good) but also sometimes can blow things out of proportion (the bad).
Wandering Views 
I really am scared. Our country is not stable. I am afraid we are going to have “race wars”. I tell myself I live in the middle of no where and no one would go out of their way to harm anyone here, but then I know that people aren’t rational.
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Of course the news makers always show the worse. It is all very sad. Most of us live and work in peace. We have relatives and friends of different races and skin colors. As we pray, speak the truth and love and hold onto the joy of the Lord, we need to remember that truth.
How we need to pray for leaders that will also stop promoting division!
LikeLiked by 1 person
rw: A very sad day – Timmy is hangin’ ’em up…
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have a Facebook friend whom I have a lot of respect for, whose education is in statistics. He has pointed out several times, with the studies to back him up, that violent crime, including murder, is at a 51-year low. Even with the latest attacks on those officers in Dallas, “cop killings” are also at a low. (Being a police officer is not even the most dangerous occupation, but is down the list a bit.)
BUT we have 24-hour news & internet to shine a light on every little incidence of violence & murder, so we think things are worse now than they used to be.
Although I “know” that intellectually, it still hurts my heart & worries me to hear about these shootings & killings. And I agree with Kim that we seem to be on the verge of some awful race riots. I hope they do not come to fruition. (There was a famous preacher who had a prophecy years ago that there would be violent race riots in New York & other major cities. I hope he was not right, but I can see how it could happen.)
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I have said this before but it is still true. I have been raising a biracial child in the south for 13 years and can honestly say I have never experienced any racism from black, white or other in all that time. However, he is in a public school that is 50% white, 30% black and 18% Hispanic. He may have seen some that he hasn’t mentioned to me. He has used some words (“cracker” and the N word) that I get the feeling the kids use way too causally.
LikeLiked by 3 people
Kbells – My guess is that if there are riots, they are stirred up by the disaffected, the angry, & the criminal, not the average minority person.
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We live in interesting times. Although it’s true that social media & 24-hour news can make life seem more dangerous, I think there is an uptick in division that doesn’t bode well for us. In LA, we’ve had an increase in crime in the past year, some of it possibly related to a state measure that purported to send less serious offenders off to drug treatment (but the treatment end of the deal fell short, apparently). It put many folks, esp those using drugs, back on the streets and also has been linked to the increasing numbers of homeless and tent encampments.
No easy answers, but I’d say life in the U.S. is significantly more tense (and could easily turn into higher crime rates) now than in the recent past.
LikeLike
On race relations, we are not the same country we were in the 1950s or ’60s. We’ve come a long way. There will always be racial tension and discrimination, most likely, due to our own sin natures.
I still find it perplexing that the election (and re-election) of our first black president has resulted in seemingly more racial tension and resentment. Still trying to figure that one out, but I also realize that the black experience is much different than the white experience in our culture.
It wasn’t all that long ago that we had legalized segregation. Some of those long-standing cultural wounds just don’t go away very quickly or easily.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ominous on another front:
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-antibiotic-resistance-20160711-snap-story.html
__________________________
A ‘slow catastrophe’ unfolds as the golden age of antibiotics comes to an end
… In a steady march, disease-causing microbes have evolved ways to evade the bulwark of medications used to treat bacterial infections. …
Hospitals are improving their infection control, and public health experts are getting better at tracking new threats. But in a race against nature, he said, the humans are losing ground.
“We’re seeing more drug-resistant infections,” Hanage said. “And people will die.” …
____________________________
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Donna – I was thinking about how even though statistics show crime to be down, there is the possibility of it going up again in the unrest we see in our nation. But I also think at least some of that unrest is also due to the news & social media stirring the pot.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The Internet in general has changed a lot of things in our culture — that’s why I wish I could read the books that’ll come out in 50 years or so that will have enough distance from the phenomenon (which is wonderful and horrible in so many ways, right?) to assess how it impacted, well, just about everything.
LikeLiked by 2 people
I think it’s simply the nature of the medium that has both made us more aware of issues (the good) but also sometimes can blow things out of proportion (the bad).
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And has dulled our brains a bit? 🙂
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