You go out to a club and it's only logical to go prepared, to protect yourself against the possibility of violence from other drunken patrons. So carrying a knife for protection just makes sense.
How do we develop such ideas. How do we end up with the perception that a knife is OK but a gun is serious business. After all we don't want to kill somebody so a knife is a good way of defending ourselves.
Watched any movies lately? See how the actors never die even though they've been shot or stabbed or in a car crash? I can't recall how many scenes I've watched where somebody that's been shot just continues running, driving, or chasing somebody else. After all it's just a flesh wound...in the shoulder or in the leg, a bit of inconvenient pain but what the hell, keep on keeping on.
As for knife wounds, just a scratch really, nothing to worry about. Nobody dies from stabbings in the movies.
And so we develop a culture, a perception that knives aren't really that fatal. No wonder that every second day there's another news story of a fatal stabbing.
I can just hear the plea in the court room, "I didn't mean to kill him, I was just defending myself".
6 comments:
If people base their real world views on what they see in the movies...hmm I guess they already do.
Stabbings are twice as likely to be fatal than gunshot wounds..according to the emergency room statistics.
The thing about knives is that they are more up close and personal
I'd rather keep my opponent at a distance.
Knives are the weapon of choice around here. One of my husband's men was stabbed to death a year ago. The stabbings happen frequently enough at some of the tougher bars now that they don't even make the news. Young kids mostly.
Stabbing is wrong. Speaking of perceptions of violence . . .
Chavez just seized some American owned companies at military gunpoint. What says his good friend Obama? Dare we use violence against violence? Will Obama pull out a daisy or a knife or . . .
Is a "pay for the company or we bomb you" policy wrong? They just stole our stuff. Would you use a knife on a mugger if you had it? Or do you just let him have it and be his karma? Does non-action invite copycats? Who?
What does history teach us? Walk softly and carry a bit stick? He kept us out of war? Munich? What would the Greeks do? I can tell you what the Roman's would do!
CJ, you've stirred up a hornet's nest in my mind.
First, I think that individuals cannot behave in the same manner as a state when it comes to threats. A state may carry weapons and kill enemies without regard for any laws and is accountable only to its own citizens. An individual must leave protection of the self to the state. An individual cannot take the law into their own hands and dispense justice as they see fit. A state can and does. In fact the reason there is a state is that individuals are weak but collectively they are strong - as a state.
Really, so the state can kill in protecting the individual with impunity? Hmmn. Then the other state has that right and we're in full scale war. This over individual lives or an oil facility. This does not seem sane.
I am not sure what to do.
There must be precedent in law. When Guatemala seized the UFC plants in 1954, they paid them the value based on their tax returns from the year prior. This supposedly punished them for cheating on taxes while being robbed. But there was compensation.
We watched with weapons off shore as Arbenz did a military coup friendlier to us, (if I'm not mistaken). But I cannot imagine us doing that in this climate.
I would hope that Obama at least condemns it. I do not think going to war over "two US-owned facilities" would be justified. KIlling for such assets would be immoral. Do we go to the UN? Someone should do something as to avoid the precedent of stealing US assets. This is a lot like piracy. Is the world devolving into gangster states?
Anyhow, the market will punish Venezuela. I would not invest there. Perhaps financial concerns will bring him in line.
This is the sort of tough call that Presidents get the big bucks for. Perhaps his Chief of Staff will give him a good idea.
CJ, history is full of examples of nations acting like "gangster states". It's not a case of it happening now, it's always been that way.
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