Richey

Richey was never in the club. He never really took that walk on Pont Hafren. He’s alive and well and taking drinks with his only mate, in a little flat above a shop with a green door, just down from the Caernarvon Gateway. He’s doing much better now in his long sleeves and buttoned collar. He never cries, doesn’t have to any more, and he never talks about the things that used to make him. Richey will be forty four this year, and he likes that just fine. He’s taken a job on the High Street, working in a restaurant out in the back. He helps out and cleans up and is generally liked despite being the quiet sort. He’s a hard worker but never one to roll up his sleeves, buttoned down that one, he is. At the end of the night, he upends the chairs and mops the floors. He takes the last dishes back to the kitchen for a wash and smiles to himself when no one says nothing about it when he puts away the knives.

Mob Rule?

This video really gets my hackles up. It is examples like this that cause many of my friends to shout down a self-governing society. This is called lawlessness, and anarchy. A fellow at work the other day told me if it were not for government, “things would be like the wild, wild west.” Well, let the internet be the forum where I get to demonstrate just how stupid I am. What is this thing we call government good for? Is it the cops that show up after the crime has been committed; to take pictures of the broken bits lying on the ground? I read recently that you are safer as an American soldier in Iraq than a young man in Washington D.C., in fact your chances of getting killed by gunfire were twenty times higher in our Nation’s Capital. And what about those folks in the video? What if they had been “civilized” like us? In case you were wondering, by “civilized” I mean “pacificated.”
If this had happened here, the people on the street would have looked on while the woman stood in the street and screamed for help. The thieves would have gotten away, because the cops just can’t be everywhere now can they? The call would eventually come in and whatever hangout (malt shop or local garage) would temporarily loose its near full time protection. The cops would show up and take a report, get a description, maybe even a name. Eventually, when the same two thugs rough up the same passive crowd over and over again, someone finally gets up the nerve to tell the only people around who can do anything about it. Eventually those thugs will get caught. It will only take twenty or thirty victims for this little dance to run its course. When they do, it will be because of the heroism of the hard working folks whose job it is to protect the sheep from the wolves. The thing of it is though, for some reason these dang little sheep keep growing up to be wolves. Well, eventually these thugs will be caught and brought to justice. They will be housed and fed to the tune of fifty thousand dollars a year where they will not be punished, because punishment is cruel. Instead they will be housed with other criminals where they will be trained to be better criminals. Statistically, there is a seventy five percent chance that they will hurt people once released. Oh, and they will be released, right back out into the community that created them. Meanwhile our cities have become steampunk dystopias, with the predators among the prey. With the larger, state funded predators circling the outer edges, culling off enough of the baddies to keep the whole thing from imploding. Or worse yet, EX-ploding and spreading the infection to a nicer part of town. (You can go ahead and read that as if I had written the word “white.”)
Teaching a punk a lesson on the side of the road with an aluminum chair is barbaric. Everyone going back to their lives within the hour is unacceptable. Having only one victim who’s belongings are immediately returned to her is unimaginable. These people are clearly not as enlightened as we in our “great society.” Self-rule is crazy talk. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool or dangerous.

Dear Lord,

Please, if You take my legs, let it be because I have done all the walking You needed me to do. And, if You take my arms, let it be because You have got all the lifting out of me that You care to. Lord, if You take my ears, I pray it is because in my time I have heard the cry of the needy and now there are others to answer the call. If You take my eyes, I hope it is because You are pleased with the change I have made to the hardships I’ve seen. If You take my life, please God, let it be because You feel that I have done enough with the time You have given me.

And, if You have left me with any of these, please let it remind me that there is still work to be done.

Your servant,

Alaniz