In every undertaking, there is always the point of no return, a deciding moment after which you can no longer come back to the point of origin. You are committed for better or for worse, and you may not know of such moment until afterwards.
I didn’t know how deep I was getting into the inner bowels of the Barrio, and I didn’t even know I was trespassing into foreign territory or that there was a baptism of fire you were supposed to know about. I still don’t. Part of me is still very naïve. I am writing this today still ignorant of what makes others tick. Who really calls the shots and at what level?
Pancho lived down the street, and we often talked. He liked to work in front of his house on his car, an old 1968 Chevy with a big motor and big wheels. One day he asked me for some copper plates I had hanging around the back yard and I gave them to him. He used them to form an air intake scoop for the hood of his car.
One evening when he and his friends in a low rider stopped by my house and asked if I wanted to go drinking with them, even if I didn’t, I said yes. There were six of them, hairy, bulky, and tattooed. They sat me in the middle of the back seat, two on one side, one on the other, three in the front seat. All were bigger than me, but I thought nothing of it at the time.
I was too relaxed for my own good. They drove around slowly. I wondered why they would ask me to go drinking with them, since I was not part of their group or gang or whatever. I knew Pancho but none of the others, although they all pretended to know me. I assumed Pancho wanted to thank me for the metal plates by offering me a beer. If you think I was naïve, you are right. Maybe that is what saved me.
We talked, joked, drank, and drove. It was all casual, so casual I was not even aware until later that the conversation had shifted. Suddenly, I realized I was answering one question after another, as part of a semi-normal conversation, except that the tone had changed slightly. They asked me what I was doing in the Barrio and with this Barrio. Normal questions but only one question at a time and no one spoke as I answered them. They were just looking at me, not normal for seven men drinking beer. They were digging in their own ways for my motives. Was I intruding on their turf? But which turf? Power, financial, a possible outlet for drugs, gang related, or cultural pride? I thought nothing of it. Others had questioned me before. After several beers, my answers must have flowed effortlessly. Hopefully, I was coherent. I wish to remember what I said. Apparently, I must not have stuck my foot in my mouth.
There were few moments of tension. I was aware I came from a different world but was not concerned with it. I didn’t know what I wanted to do in the Barrio, except to ‘level the playing field’, whatever that means to six hoodlums. Few if any normal people, including myself, understood what I was doing there, so why should I expect my beer-drinking companions to understand? I wasn’t about to dwell on ideology, theology, politics, or justifications, or whatever, to justify my existence. Just as quickly as it started the questioning ended. Five minutes later, I was left in front of my house with an extra beer in my hand. I was never bothered by them or any of their friends ever again. In their own way, they had been there to protect the Barrio, I was sure of that. Or did they want to know if I was undercover? Those five apparent marauders with their agendas found enough elements of agreement with me to let me go in one piece with not even a warning but with an extra beer.
Why? Was there a link between what gangs do and what we at the TBA were doing? Protecting the turf? Could the energy that is bursting at an early age in human growth turn to go down the road of negative deeds, perdition, or up the road of positive involvement, success, because of one-time experience or resulting from many incidents? Could those with criminal history, contain seeds of goodness? The values of their origin? A universal human compass that could have turned their path up rather than down under different circumstances.
I do believe that there are a few incorrigible members in the human race. But if twenty-five percent of our population had taken a better path at that juncture in time, violent crime in our cities would be diminished by the millions, these are not idle questions. In certain cases, it may be as simple as when children get attention only when they behave badly and to them any attention is better than none.
Our present emphasis on social justice and other government programs are going in the wrong direction. They are backwards, totally derailed, an atrocious calamity. We are breeding our own demise. Real social justice, not the fake one so many people like to talk about, starts early in life with parents, not when people reach the courts. And the more drivel people talk about social justice, the more they mess things up. Here is the cue on how to recognize it; look at what elements of the speech the speaker is emphasizing. What is key to the objective of his speech, his final message destination? Is the message negatively hinting at the ‘collective’, and based in controlling the result by others? Or is it a solution including self-determination?
The forces of good and evil percolate equally in all countries, globally. This takes place through homo sapiens’ capacity for; intellect, spirituality, emotion, and physical ability which has remained the same in 10,000 years. We run as fast, jump as high. Entire cultures and civilizations are passed on the moment parents begin rearing their children. That is the moment communist countries, like China, take over and begin their indoctrination, very effectively. For ours to remain a free nation in early childhood children must be educated by family and culture, not by paid political or governmental entities. Here is the crux of a real social justice victory: healthy family. Strong forces are slowly attempting to change American culture to an intolerant and indoctrinated society. Universities should be the educators, and yet, they are becoming the worse to blame. My guess is that the first major step in the perdition of our children’s education will be caused by the public teachers’ unions, since they will promote teachers and union power, not children.
Hunan intelligence remains the same, only memory and symbolism allow us to build our knowledge using our intellect and experience. Our emotions are the same; we have the same capacity for cruelty and compassion today as we did 10,000 years ago. Maybe some cultures have reached a higher level of law and order than others, but maybe not.
How many people were killed by the Aztecs, Mao, or Stalin. Torture culminating in death, crucifixions by the Egyptians, Persians, Romans, and then the Romans under Nero killing all male infants - endlessly. Then and now, we block emotional things to fool ourselves. On the one hand, righteous individuals condemn that the United States used waterboarding on a few terrorist enemy combatants, as if it was a pinnacle of decency, it was just a political farce, since during the same year, in that same land across the fence, thousand political prisoners were tortured and died in jail. Not to mention that here in the United States, human trafficking is the modern day version of slavery and they are brought in across the Southern border from foreign countries by the thousands. On this, the righteous individuals who were bating their chest as the crusaders for truth and justice, do and say nothing. Perverted hypocrites. The butchery leading to the illegally crossing of the border is a humanitarian crisis, ignored by the elected officials who cried wolf with three waterboarding. Those that allow it are guilty candidates for Human Right Abuses.
In the same island where Guantanamo Bay is located, just ninety miles from our shores, closer than Tucson to Phoenix, or Eugene to Portland, or Miami to Orlando, the Castro government - with Che Guevara - had been shooting political dissidents in firing squads - over 10,000 in the first year - splashing their brains on the wall behind, and indulging in beatings, public shaming, and denying employment by the hundred thousand to do away with the middle class. Yet, there is no outrage! There is little attempt to stop such inhuman butchery by the very same people who hypocritically beat their chests with three waterboarding. 10,000 permanent splattered-brains versus 3 temporary water-pain.
What about the flow of illegal drugs from Mexico? Drugs which are often consumed by attorneys, politicians, and even judges. They’re killing and painfully brain-maiming millions, mostly kids. We are concerned about waterboarding of a few derange killers who endorse Sharia Law leaving them with no permanent physical harm? I am not promoting water boarding. I am showing that extreme emphasis is erratic and spiteful. It’s based on emotions and intentionally used with evil intent. Moreover, it’s fueled and supported, even generated by a demented and malicious media.
Our level of good and bad emotions is the same as in years past. We burry our heads in the sand using sublimation of goals. Sharia Law at least openly advocates for their practitioners to kill all others when possible as infidels with impunity, to decapitate the non-believer, no hypocrisy there. I agree it is progress to take a national stand on torture, but when we pick and choose our moral righteousness and beat our chests, while beating up others solely for political or personal gains we create a dangerous global unbalance. It is okay for China to engage in genocide in Uyghur, but not for economically poor American parents to choose the school for their children?
To say that one system is better than another falls into the trap of handpicking the examples to be used. More effective would be to evaluate results and even then, we are subject to select with bias. My bias would be personal liberty. Since none of us has equal capacity in each of our four basics such as emotion, intellect, spirituality, and physical attributes, we need to constantly exercise and strengthen each of them one by one. The mentally strong may be emotionally weak or physically deficient and so on. Cultures may have the same imbalances within, so before comparing cultures, consider what has not been said about each, and consider the broader picture, so conditions for conducive development can be promoted effectively. Strengthen personal weaknesses first. If we evaluate results, the intellectual elite is the worst culprit, they believe they have no personal weakness, and ignore their multiple failures.
