So you think the prisons are mostly filled with young minority males, do you? Well, statistics can fool you. What has for so long been a sociological presumption is lately being challenged. By whom? By raging old white geezers.....!
We have an 88-year-old white man shooting up the Washington DC Holocaust Memorial. Earlier a 51-year-old white religious zealot gunning down an abortion doctor. Police records reflect these are hardly exceptions.
Those same sociologists are recently re-considering their images of contented older males "settling" into a life of repose. Indicators show that with more time on their hands, there is more despondency, frustration and repressed rage. And so there has been a pronounced spike in crimes where older white males beat, attack, and shoot the victims of their mental furies.
One of the ironies to this that may hide in the fact that as society seems to achieve its goal of retirement and leisure time, this very time can seed a bitter fruit. The sort of anquish and despondency that triggers acts of violence they would never have thought about in their younger days.
What to do with this unexpected conundrum....?
Given that old white men want to keep living to be even older white men, our time has become a two-edged sword. Slicing our way into longer futures, while at the same time exposing more brooding angers along the journey. Modern medicine has given us this sword, but only we can choose how to weild it.
En garde....!
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I want to believe that the "older males" that you have mentioned, had the proclivity for violence to begin with....and that people that are lucky enough to have leisure time ahead of them (and sanity) will ENJOY it, and what they have, instead of performing terrible acts of violence. Perhaps I'm wishing for too much...but it is my hope!
ReplyDeleteAnd a great and grand hope that is....! Being one of today's old geezers, I too yearn for the sanity and enjoyment you describe (the Bible calls it "the blessings of age")....much to be hoped for, and like you I want to believe the violent geezers are the exception that proves this rule...Excelcior!
ReplyDeleteThank heaven you're the sort that keeps his "brooding angers" (if you have any) at bay with a boffo blog!
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