It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him. — The Hobbit
My Take – I used to hear “But this is a nice neighborhood!” or “Nobody around here would hurt a fly!”. Then homes and cars started getting burglarized. The convenience store up the road got its nickname “Stop-n-Stab” after the third or fourth time it got robbed.
What people are awakening to is that, even though we live in a perfectly nice place, jerks and goblins have cars, and sometimes perfectly nice people just go bonkers and start hurting other people. Planning to stop being aware of what goes on around you because you’re in a “safe area” is nothing more than sticking your head in the ground.
Likewise, the notion that two oceans protect us from the dragons of the world has been invalid for as long as I can remember. Policies that boil down to “If we’re nice to everyone, then they’ll be nice to us” are naive, no matter who we deal with. There are people who just want to watch the world burn, and are more than happy to use us as fuel. The only good policy toward such ilk is to target and eliminate them as messily and publicly as possible.
DaddyBear’s Den 
pediem
/ September 16, 2012I was approached…nay, accosted…by a political solicitor in my own demesnes just a few days ago. Talk about the perfect place for “planning to stop being aware”…
I had opened the big garage door while locking the house door, carrying a full armload of rifle and range bag to the truck. A young man popped into view and approached me, starting to spout off about, “No fracking”, but didn’t back off when I said, “Not interested.” Instead, he stepped into my garage and attempted to press a clipboard into my hands (still full of rifle and range bag).
I repeated a couple of times, “I am NOT interested! You need to LEAVE! NOW!” before he finally did. I’m still considering just why it was that I didn’t drop what was in my arms and remove what was in my belt, other than that all he was offering was a clipboard.
I do live in a nice neighborhood, and apparently all he was, was exactly what he said to be…but what if that wasn’t the case? Maybe I need to load the truck before I open the garage door next time, or not try to carry everything all at once. Certainly something to consider.
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BobG
/ September 16, 2012Of course robberies happen in nice neighborhoods; they’re the ones that have stuff worth stealing. Stealing from people in poor neighborhoods isn’t cost effective.
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