The Observation Deck

This morning on the Sound of Ideas (WCPN) Regina Brett hosted a show on Thug Culture. It is podcast:

http://www.wcpn.org/podcast/audio/2007/05/0504soi.mp3

Hip Hop is the most American of music. It reflects the present state of American culture, of American economic and foreign policy.

At its most basic the lyrics of hip hop were of the performer proclaiming how great they are at performing hip hop lyrics. It was like a recursive function. In America we worry about everyones self-esteem, rather than if they deserve to have self-esteem.

As it developed, hip hop took on new avenues. Lyrics were about you and your friends being dirt bags and enjoying it, and about your enemies being pretty much the same. Or sometimes about being a dirtbag and lamenting it, but lamenting it doesn't come across in rote.

Hip Hop became more about ostentatious consumerism when money was rolling in. How does the money roll in? Usually some crime or another, or succeeding in hip hop. Here is the secret of the California Gold Rush, and the Yukon Gold Rush 50 years later: Most people who prospered from it were the people who sold supplies, tools, liquore, sex, and transportation to the people who wanted to get rich digging for gold or silver.

Hip Hop is the latest triumph of style as substance. If Bill Clinton was the first black president, then George W.Bush is the first Hip Hop President. He was born in the Northeast, and none of his younger brothers ended up with a Texas Accent. He doesn't even have one of the cool texas accents, its more of a whiny/grating accent. He made his fortune in a series of swindles handled mostly by family connections. He responds to perceived problems with senseless violence and heavy tax dollars.

As a political voice the only legitimacy of hip hop is voicing the alienation young "urban" people sometimes experience. Why do they face that alienation or disenfranchisement? They've spent their lives listening to hip hop, watching hip hoppers on tv, and emulating them and their peers who emulate them. You can't really blame them. Most people talk like the people they grew up with. The average Cleveland High School graduate is less well spoken than their grandparents or great-grandparents with an 8th grade education. This mirrors the reverse-effectiveness progress the middle and upper classes enjoy reading about in "Dilbert".

James Howard Kunstler wrote about how in the industrial past many Americans smoked, almost as it were a cultural expression of all the factory smoke stacks. Globalism is mostly a race to the bottom. Most people will be racing to the bottom. A small percent of them will sell the others entertainment along the way.

An ongoing column in the Plain Dealer explores the recent self-defense shooting of an armed Robber. Arthur Buford and his friend decided it was a good idea to rob someone at gunpoint. The victim had a permit to carry a gun, so he shot at them. Arthur Buford was killed.

The neighborhood rallied to Buford's defense, even though he wasn't killed by a white cop. Thug Culture in America means young people think it is acceptable to commit these types of crimes, then be an accepted member of society worthy of being mourned. The neighborhoods aren't going to improve while it is like this.

There is hope. there are all kinds of programs to get Televisions and computers in schools. Since a great portion of Cleveland schools responsibility is to act as day care centers, they may as well use these televisions and computers to show re-runs of Bonanza. Bonanza explored many ethical questions.

When the post-peak oil slide really gets going the best way for the U.S. will be to re-industrialize. For that reason many industrial blue collar and white collar workers will be moving back to the cities and inner ring suburbs. Thug culture has produced a few million people who aren't really fit for civil society, and there won't be money to give everyone remedial education until they're 21. The best bet is to get programs started now to offer urban teens who aren't thriving in civil society opportunities working as agricultural laborers. Social workers can teach them how to manage a checking account, book passage on trains and greyhound, and pack everything they need to fit in a chest at the end of their cots in rural bunk houses. It will be more fun than working at Cedar Point.

ryan costa wrote:Social workers can teach them how to manage a checking account, book passage on trains and greyhound, and pack everything they need to fit in a chest at the end of their cots in rural bunk houses.

Replace "rural bunk houses" with Section-8 Lakewood apartments.

It would seem to me, that first you have to get them to give a damn about anything period, before any programs will work.

Gangs have been around a long time and are growing not decreasing, much like the drug problem.

For all the money put into fighting drugs by both political party's Presidents since the early 70s, how much good has it done? Drug use continues to climb, the cartels grow, on and on and on.

With the thug culture growing, that growth speaks volumes on what is ahead crime and violence wise. We (the people) need to find some effective answers and effective political leaders that are willing to do something about it fast.

Mark Allan Crnolatas