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About 20 years ago, I took a trip to Mexico. I arrived as scheduled and took a cab to the house where I would be staying. The house was located in a very upscale neighbour-hood of Mexico City -- the sort of place where there is no commercial hustle and bustle and where stately houses sit behind gates and walls. No one answered the door.
WTF? After ringing and waiting, I began to think that perhaps we had gotten my time of arrival mixed up. For some reason, I had packed my watch, and so I sat on my suitcase wondering what to do and what time it was. Yes... there was a time before cell phones.
As I sat, a young man in his early thirties came out of an adjacent residence and headed toward a parked car. He had a watch. So I got up, walked over toward him and in correct and flawless Spanish said, “Excuse me, señor, but you wouldn't happen to...”
He immediately snapped to. A look of fear and dread came over him and he quite literally ran to his car, open and slammed the door and drove away in an evident panic.
WTF? Mexico had always been a friendly and, most of all, a courteous place and in many ways it still is. This sort of reaction was inconceivable to me.
My hosts eventually arrived and I told them about this encounter ending with, “...and as you can see, I was dressed neatly” in loafers, slacks and Brooks Brothers shirt.... “Ah well,” my host replied, “that was probably what set him off...”
WTF? As it turns out, Mexico was experiencing a “epidemic” of kidnappings. The standard modus operandi was for a neatly dressed gentleman to politely approach and take you off-guard, at which point accomplices would emerge from nowhere and hustle you into a waiting car. Then the call...
Kidnappings have gotten so ubiquitous that there are now professional “kidnap brokers,” sitting behind shiny desks in fancy offices, whose job (for a fee) is to negotiate the ransom with or without the interference of the police as the case may be. Sometimes the negotiations work; sometimes the don't.
Mexico has strict gun control. You can possess certain firearms in your home or designated places, but they must be registered and licensed. As many American tourists have discovered to their grief, failure to comply can lead to a five year prison sentence. “As with much of the rest of Mexican law enforcement, corruption is a major element of the gun licensing system.”
I have always laughed at how gringos misconceive of Mexico and how they confuse politeness and reserve with lack of ingenuity or initiative. The difficulty to legitimately acquire firearms has led to a gun-rental business through which criminals can rent the guns they need for the occasion.
Of course, the bigger criminals are themselves the gun cartels...
Gun control, clearly works, right?
But! But! But! the gun control fetishists will reply, look at Denmark, Norway and Sweden. They have gun controls and they are perfect societies! Precisely. They are perfect societies but not because they have gun control.
As usual American liberals got it inside out and upside down. If gun control works in European countries, it is only because those societies have already achieved a certain level of social justice and economic security which are the cornerstones of a sense of community which in turn is the actual precondition for law and order. American Republicans likewise got it backwards in thinking that “law and order” gives rise to a sense of community. Nope.
All one has to do is compare Mexico to Sweden. Mexico far outpaces Sweden in cultural and economic vitality and in gross-domestic product. It is currently the 15th strongest economy in the world, at least 15 places ahead of Sweden. But for all that, Mexico suffers a very high level of economic disparity. Per capita GDP in Sweden is 60K a year; in Mexico, 10K. In other words, Mexico suffers from acute income disparity; Sweden does not.
Income disparity is not the only indicator of everything. But one has to be an idiot not to know, at this point, that crime and poverty are handmaidens. It's really very simple. The word “community” derives from “com” + muneris, meaning mutual service or obligation. In other words, a society in which all look out for each, and each owes a responsibility to the whole. When community is lacking, “self-help” of necessity prevails.
Mexico has a crime problem because it has an economic disparity problem. The same is true in the United States, despite the fact that it is still the wealthiest country in the world. In fact its tremendous wealth actually distorts the significance of the figures. Per capita income of GDP in the United States in 70K a year, but for 50% of the country it is under 50K. The individualized median income is 30K. In other words, in terms of income distribution, the United States is more like Mexico than Sweden.
There was a time, back in the Fifties and Sixties, when the United States was more like Sweden; but our political and financial elites, Demorat and Republoscum alike, intentionally decided to Mexicanize the country back in the late 70's and 80's. To put it simply: the gig economy (scrambling for scraps) is the diametric opposite of community; and, as I have said, without community there is no cohesion and hence more crime.
I have little patience with Republicans and their inane and outdated Smithian yap about free markets, rising tides and trickle-down. Trust me; it is dead on arrival. All economics has always been the result of intervention. The issue is the kind of intervention we want. When I listen to Republicans blabbering about “too many dollars chasing too few goods” I have to wonder if they are really that stupid or if they are just whores to the corporations unilaterally raising prices because they can get away with it.
But I have even less patience with liberals, who have avoided underlying issues in their own inimitable and equally inane way. Has anyone ever noticed how liberals are always chasing after some issue -- the race issue, the women issue, the disability issue, the gay issue, the trans issue, the gun-safety issue... ANYTHING but the 401(k) issue...
Liberals are culled from the upper middle class; the “Ten Percent”. They instinctively know (that is, they know without knowing it) who and what butters their bread. Oh yes! Housing affordability is a crisis! Something must be done! And what might that be? Building more houses, so as to increase supply and hence lower prices? And then? What happens to your little “nest egg” of ever-appeciating real estate value? Some 30 something can't afford a house and your 60-something “nest egg” just doubled in value and you don't see the connection? Are you as stupid as Republicans?
This has been going on for decades. Back in the 60's Phil Ochs, composed a song, Love me! I'm a Liberal, which is as timely now as it was then. And so, ever in avoidance of the economic elephant in the room, the liberals are chasing after the next Issue-in-Avoidance. ... Gun control. If only we get rid of a symptom (“gun violence”) the cause will go away...
Well...politics is nothing if not rampant stupidities. One might as well demand that birds not chirp. But when the chirping starts to chip away and subvert the Bill of Rights, at that point I draw the line.
The right to keep and bear arms, is the second foundational principle of our society. It is at the essence of “what we are about” as a people. If liberals don't get it, they should go to an ashram, cross their legs and meditate on the Bill of Rights until they achieve Foundational Enlightenment.
The Mexican Constitution (1917) also guarantees the right to possess arms:
"The inhabitants of the United Mexican States have the right to possess arms in their homes for their security and legitimate defense with the exception of those prohibited by federal law and of those reserved for the exclusive use of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and National Guard. Federal law shall determine the cases, conditions and place in which the inhabitants may be authorized to bear arms."
Therein lies a fundamental difference. One that leaves you defenceless when a stranger approaches you to ask for the time....
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