I like the party pooper analogy. Good one. And it’s intended.

Now go enjoy your party. It’s getting late. If you want to be taken seriously, tell us something about yourself. Why should anyone care about your point of view? Where does it come from?

It’s going to be fun sharing viewpoints as the State declines and people express such shock at how these things can happen to them. As far as my condemning other and being rude… well, we’ll see. As far as you being offended in public discourse – Do you expect that to change anything?? Be offended. Now deal with it. Tell us how to deal with the city losing control of it’s streets. Tell me how I feel about just another dead Oakland School (more or less) Child.

If you can’t stomach my exchanges, keep saying so. Maybe you’ll make your point better than that effort above. Because that didn’t do it.

When people run around saying “Where have I/we/they gone wrong”, somebody just might answer them.

And I don’t think I’m the center of the universe.. I just get to watch what happens to a parade of people who thought they were. And they are nearly all the products of the public schools.

We are moving through historic times. And we are busy as a society taking down all the things that got us where we were. Good public schools was a real important one. Cities that functioned were important also.

The reasons boys like the one above get killed is that likely they were not given the correct mix of judgment and skills to make it. Aly’s approach to the case struck me as exactly the problem that expresses itself in misjudgement in the streets winding up in the ER and the Courts. If you think you are going to get nothing but pats on the back from me in a public forum you are inexperienced also. If you read all this as offensive – well, maybe that is how you start your thinking process. Not my problem at all. Be offended, think about it, and return with your take on what is happening.

I am not here to make other people feel warm and fuzzy. Least of all young people who get too much of that at school. I don’t politely explain things. Try the next door for that. What you call politeness is too often used to avoid getting to the point and stating the case. Especially in dealing with kids or people acting like kids. It’s not my style. You get what I mean?

And as far as Hitler/Stalin comparisons, if the tactics fit then wear them. We do seem to be having a resurgence nowadays.

Brave New World!

Aly: You will eventually learn to control your emotions so you don’t read other people incorrectly. Let’s try this again.

That’s offensive and uncalled for. It also is what makes people stop reading what you write. As far as you know, Aly isn’t an at-risk teen about to join a gang and get killed. And, in fact, I’m not sure that sentence would make anyone listen to you. It would be nice if we could all state our opinions – which may offend, but I am fine with that – without the ad hominem attacks. I’ve worked with tough kids in the inner city. I’ve had to be very harsh with them. But there’s an art to when to be harsh/scare them straight and when to decide not to be offensive. I don’t think this forum is an appropriate place to condemn people as constantly being unhappy, as you did with Aly (from one comment, really, you can tell someone’s gong to constantly be unhappy?) or to call others’ opinions “delusions.”

I am assuming that all commenters are adults and it seems that most (not all) can pull off expressing their opinion without condemning others or just being flat-out rude.

You’re right in saying that “expressions of caution, rebuke, disapproval, or whatever is not condemnation.” If someone says “The Oakland cops suck” and someone else says “No, they work really hard,” that’s disagreement. If you say “You are deluded and you will never be happy because obviously you think you’re the center of the universe,” well, that’s just being mean with no justification.

It hurts to listen. It hurts more to be on the losing in on the Brave New World. I’m thinking about what your are saying. My problem is the daily dose of pain – other people’s pain – I wade through for a living.

I have learned the hard way that talking gently and softly to other people as they recline on the railroad tracks sipping the margarita just doesn’t seem to get them off the tracks. Especially the teens and adolescents – they do not respond to or even remember gentle and kind words.

And I see people go from having some problems to having desperate problems in a matter of months, although some take a year or two.

So over much time I have not cultivated a kindler gentler approach. Neither have the others I hang with.

While I haven’t been to an autopsy I read the reports on occasion. I read a lot of reports of people’s follies. I’ve had people sitting in my office talking about killing themselves so their families would at least have the insurance money. Lately I’m talking to people who’ve been laid off in their 50s too soon to draw retirement, no healthcare, supporting multiple adult kids living in their home. But I supposed that’s balanced by the friends who are doing just great, millionaires and well diversified and educated. I watched a man die once, his head was blown open from a bullet and his brains spattered. In a bar close to a friend’s house (I have told them they need to move for years, they don’t see the need). Nobody was ever caught or arrested on that – supposedly it came through the open door. It’s interesting to me it was just a “random” thing.

So you see, from my point of view, the haves and the have nots are moving to opposite sides of the room pretty quick. So are their kids.

And it’s much later than many people think. I don’t think that most people are as safe as they think they are. I believe that there is work to be done to get people more security. That process starts in grades 8-12. A whole lot of kids are missing the last train out of Berlin. If I was short with Aly it’s because she sounds like a typical victim shaking her fist at the world wondering why these things are happening instead of keeping herself clear of a falling rock because she “gets it” about these rock things. I’m not sure of her age but she should be sharper in this day and age. And I’m sure she goes through her days and her education without hearing anything of the sort that I point out. And that’s my concern about public education – the kids graduate utterly devoid of the things that well educated kids of the same age have been exposed to, including contrary points of view.

You are right about not attacking the person. However the persons on occasions will have to check their own perspectives and I say so. I see Aly walking into beartraps if she doesn’t see the springs and jagged metal. That’s my point. I’m don’t always make it as smoothly as I want in the quick moments I jump in and out of the blog. I’ll try harder.

As far as the condemation issue you raised, I can’t help you with that. I’m not sure you know what real condemnation is. Some of the younger readers here take everything personally even from a stranger who they will never meet. Get over it. Public discourse is not a walk in the park. Expressions of caution, rebuke, disapproval or whatever is not condemnation. If someone posts an entry claiming that something is wonderful they must expect some will say it is not. If someone writes that (in this case) the cops are blue meanies they sould anticipate that someone else might possibly say they did their jobs, you misunderstand their jobs. And all of us go to sleep with our own opinions, possibly tempered by results of trial balloons.

We should not call for people to be censored, but we also should not criticize individuals for their OPINIONS/FEELINGS. That is not dialogue. Attack the idea, not the person.

That type of thinking will get you killed.

You can get hurt in a hospital, in an encounter at a party, in a business transaction, talking with the government, in all aspects of life – if you don’t examine a situation or a proposed course of action from the perspective of everyone else. You (and others you project on) are not the center of other people’s universe.

Once you get over this hump you will be more accurately be able to predict outcomes and consequences as you go through the days. right now you are probably being caught by “surprise” too often and you are getting angry too often, more angry at the outrage of disrespect than the actual issues as bad as they may be.

I am not saying I want the witnesses hurt, I am saying that this situation is no surprise, happens all the time, is going to keep happening, and people really should be more careful in how they live their lives so they don’t have this happen to them. It doesn’t happen to me or my freinds. We arrange our lives so it doesn’t, and when trouble arrives that wasn’t forseen and avoided, we act minute to minute with no illusions about taking care of #1 and no concern about who is hurt in the process.

And it’s not that I’m just older than you. My parents, grandparents and greatgrandparents were the ones that lived. More than a few stories were passed down. Our line has always had very sharp elbows and the Irish/Italian Nuns helped sharpen them here in CA.

None of these stories here about bullets flying and isn’t it a shame can impress people from the old school. Those that lived learned how to stay out of trouble and manage their lives. And we all have guns too. But we don’t live in a war zone.

The generation under me in the extended family is largely interracial and international. The “other” side of these kids families are very tough people also. The hybrid kids are going to be really formidible competitors. We still have to work on the sharing thing – I worry about too much self centeredness. I can’t yet imagine what they will be at my age.

PS and as far as “Protecting the Public” just where was OPD when that Bakery Gang was allowed to exist for decades. As with the Black Panthers and other such criminal gangs, as long as they primarily victimized minorities (beatings, extortion, rapes, etc) they avoided being crushed. Remember this when you wonder why some people aren’t ebing “protected” and some are.

No one is blaming a 13 year old boy for getting himself killed. I don’t blame a 5 year old for wandering behind a SUV that’s backing up and getting run over, either.

But…

MOST children who wind up on the mortality tables dead of unusual causes of death – do so because they were involved in high risk behavior. Too bad, So Sad. While I know nothing of this boy, Aly, we do have a problem with teens indulging in high risk behavior of all kinds and the “parents” or whoever is in charge of them failing to supervise and control the kid or to keep the kid in a reasonably safe and stable environment. And that’s generally why any particular kid winds up on the autopsy slab at 13 while Ken and Barbie in Piedmont are either home in bed, at school or at play minus the flying bullets.

Now if you can’t read my dialog without falling into a frenzy that I have some kind of dislike of this poor dead kid personally, you are going to have a real problem taking higher education in a field where the chips have to fall where they may. And I expect and require you to deal with all this because things are about to get real bad in this Brave New World and you are going to have to toughen up.

Now back to the Cops. I hate to shock you, but they are not your personal bodyguards. It’s nice if they provide service to your satisfaction but that’s optional. If you run your life to involve yourself in Police Affairs I can promise you that you will get hurt. The system is not going to protect you at the slightest cost to their primary goals. Never has, never will.

I recently rebuked a store loss prevention employee for providing his home address to an officer arresting a criminal (gang member, etc) in the store. I reminded him that the police reports are handed over to the defense with all his personal info on it (nobody really sits around redacting all that info). Why did he give it out? Because the cop asked for it. He assumed they won’t “hurt” him or some such nonsense. He’s a good guy. Please… In the future only store address and phone to be used and the cops can pound salt. And no social security number are to be provided either.

Cops do their job which in case you haven’t figured out doesn’t include being your personal bodyguard. That doesn’t mean they don’t like you it’s just that you are not a priority. The city is the priority.