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I am such a yuppie. (And yes, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
night__watch, I knew this)
A Canadian Yuppie, even.
I have now had the sad experience of buying an appliance for my car, from Crappy Tire, based on the the smug, self-satisfied advice of Canadian Tire Guy. And been EXCITED about it. The elation I felt at having (and installing!) new wiper blades myself was far outweighed by the realisation of what had just occurred.
In other news, I got to make an extra trip across the city (and back again) when I found out that I had inadvertently ended up with someone else's expensive blue headlight bulbs. I'm not sure if taking them back to the store was the right thing to do - the person who bought them might now get ahold of them, and install them. And I'll be responsible.
In a more newsy side of things: Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair blames the middle class for the recent gun crime spree. The logic here is that if the middle class wasn't buying and using drugs, the criminals wouldn't be shooting each other and innocent by-standers in the streets. Read that very carefully. By that logic, would politicians be responsible for not legalizing those drugs, and therefore bringing down the entire drug trade? Or maybe we blame the social conservatives who oppose legalization? (look! I dodge blame for societal ills like a white, middle-class privileged male, too!)
night__watch, I knew this)A Canadian Yuppie, even.
I have now had the sad experience of buying an appliance for my car, from Crappy Tire, based on the the smug, self-satisfied advice of Canadian Tire Guy. And been EXCITED about it. The elation I felt at having (and installing!) new wiper blades myself was far outweighed by the realisation of what had just occurred.
In other news, I got to make an extra trip across the city (and back again) when I found out that I had inadvertently ended up with someone else's expensive blue headlight bulbs. I'm not sure if taking them back to the store was the right thing to do - the person who bought them might now get ahold of them, and install them. And I'll be responsible.
In a more newsy side of things: Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair blames the middle class for the recent gun crime spree. The logic here is that if the middle class wasn't buying and using drugs, the criminals wouldn't be shooting each other and innocent by-standers in the streets. Read that very carefully. By that logic, would politicians be responsible for not legalizing those drugs, and therefore bringing down the entire drug trade? Or maybe we blame the social conservatives who oppose legalization? (look! I dodge blame for societal ills like a white, middle-class privileged male, too!)
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* Taking joy in consumerism
* Taking joy in an expensive toy (i.e., my car)
* Being led by advertising (death to Canadian Tire Guy - he does for CT what Bob Vila did for Sears for a number of years, but more annoyingly)
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As was expressed by a friend over my pain at the possible loss of our aztek...and feeling somewhat silly about that pain:
"That car is a tool, and nobody likes losing their tools"
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And for comments on part 2:
I blame the Toronto Star for picking on the cops all the time and taking away some of their investigative tools.
I'll probably get flammed for this but...
If crime was being committed by overweight 30 something white guys I'd hope the cops would be pulling me over once a day at least to make sure I wasn't up to something. I'd probably get a bit annoyed at it but I'd understand it was necessary.
On the other hand people like to blame the Torrie's Zero Tolerance School initiative, which is also a pretty good thing to point at.
But mostly I think news media is the biggest factor in prommiting the gun culture, they're already shitting on this guy from Boston saying stuff like this is Canada, an American solution wan't work here or similar things like that.
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I mean, there's a good point to be made there: drugs are still illegal, and if one of the key activities of gangs, and therefore the precursor to territory wars/gun violence is drug trade (and I'm assuming here that this is an actual fact and not just the media scapegoat du joeur), then consumers of drugs (who are also committing a crime), are part of the chain of criminal events that leads to gun violence.
Doesn't make the people who pull the trigger are any less guilty of committing that specific crime, but it is an important piece of the "how the hell did things get so bad in this city?" puzzle. This kind of violent crime seems to be, among other things, a symptom of a growing societal chasm between the haves and the have-nots, particularly in urban areas. And if the drug trade facilitates a stream of cash flowing from the haves, to the have nots, creating an economy in which the have-nots take the bulk of the risk of violent and/or legal reprecussion... then maybe we need to look a bit more closely at the way we deal with the "drug problem" in general.
If nothing else, it seems a bit more useful than just saying "society must take some responsibility" (without noting any way that we might do this, or reason why).