Who put me on this soap box? With a tinfoil hat?!

Is Oak Ridge getting rougher? My reply to Atomic Tumor:

I often wonder if its not that things are getting rougher but that things are getting smaller. Years ago living in a small down with 3 television stations, the focus was on local news with bits of highlights of nation and world the half hour before local. I am sure school shootings happened but if you were in Wilmington North Carolina and the shooting was in Denver Colorado, it didn’t really impact you.

Now as the shooting is happening its beeping across cell phones around the globe like a stock ticker. We know everything about everyone as it happens. That’s good! But we must maintain a sense of perspective which is hard to do under the current fear mongering administration. The government, the media, and the preachers have people scared into giving up their rights! These people aren’t thinking; baaaa baaaa. Re-read 1984. Look at the what’s happening in the UK and how it could easily happen here. Watch Wag the Dog. I’m not saying go totally tinfoil hat on us, but if we don’t shock some common sense into some people, we are going to speed down a bad path. GW Bush 2008!

As an example, the Rocky Elementary School Principal is adamant that the children’s safety at the school relies on enclosing the entire property in a horrifically ugly hurricane fence. Will it have barbed wire? This will destroy a community school. No one will be able to use the playground on the weekends. Home values will fall. Is there really a threat to the children? I haven’t seen it and I’m not stupid or blind. But the principal is so caught up in the security assessment by some for profit firm (that’s what the firm is supposed to do!) that he doesn’t even want people talking about the fence.

In summary, we are now inundated with information that makes the world smaller but also stresses us with somebody else’s problem. Fear mongers react instead of respond thinking “this will happen to us” and in an oddly self-fulfilling prophecy, their lives get scarier because of the increased security due to "the threat."

[Source, AtomicTumor]

Update: Suzanne point out that the crime figures reflect that Oak Ridge is just getting rougher. From City-data.com crime index (higher means more crime, U.S. average = 323.2):

• 2000 = 361.1
• 2001 = 368.8
• 2002 = 462.5
• 2003 = 478.4
• 2004 = 506.7
• 2005 = 507.1
• 2006 = 450.3