Rant #3,184: Hope and Deliverance

The completely despicable episode that happened in New York City’s sacred Union Square Park firmly demonstrated what is wrong with this country and what is wrong with the world right now.

If you didn’t see the ruckus that happened there his past Friday afternoon, then the best way I can describe it is by using the word “mayhem,” because that’s what it was.

Some YouTube influencer proclaimed to his flock that he would be handing out 300 PlayStations, gift cards and other such useless prizes at the location at about 3 p.m. on that date, and not hundreds, but thousands of kids—most of them around 14 to 18 years of age—gravitated to Union Square, expecting to snag one of these prizes.

When few did, a riot ensued, with kids beating up kids, attacking police, and generally behaving so badly that a Code 4 situation was put in place by the cops, which is the highest level of riot security that the NYPD has—which means that the police were mobilized from across the five boroughs to quell the situation.

They were attacked with thrown bottles, construction objects like paint cans that came from a nearby contraction site, and not only were they attacked, but many in the crowd took out their frustrations on their fellow crowd members, pummeling them because they did not get what they wanted to get.

Kids climbed onto public structures, others destroyed local businesses and businessmen—one pushcart operator not only saw his business destroyed but he was physically attacked too—and if not for the work of the police, it all could have been much worse.

This co-called YouTube influencer did not have a permit for the assembly of a crowd, and the police were kind of taken by surprise by the sheer mass of people who showed up with anticipation of getting something that really wasn’t that important in the grand scheme of things.

This imbecile did show up at the site, but he—along with a few dozen other rioters—were arrested, and the YouTuber eventually was charged with incitement to riot.

The police handled this perfectly, even though they were being hit left and right with the same force that they were hit left and right with a few years ago during the George Floyd riot … err … protests.

At least way back when, the participants in that lawlessness were supposedly fighting for a cause—yes, looting and destruction and attacks to police were characterized as fighting for a “cause” by the media—

But this time, there was clearly no cause, unless you characterize personal greed and lack of responsibility a “cause,” which the media didn’t do this time, and it was so obvious why they didn’t take that low road—because it would lessen the “dynamic” of what happened during the George Floyd situation, linking the Union Square riot with a situation that the media considered “justified.”

Anyway, Mayor Adams—who in his cockiness, has been so overwhelmed by being mayor of New York City, but he cloaks it with an attitude—was, for once, so right in his appraisal of the situation.

He stated that (paraphrase) “you cannot let the Internet and social media parent your kids” and that he, himself, called his son to make sure exactly where he was at the time of the riot to make sure that his son was not part of the melee--it was not made clear if he was there or not, of course--and said that parents should regularly call and text their children to find out where they are at any given time.

Although I am not a religious person by any stretch of the imagination, the Bible warns us against false prophets and false gods, and with the Internet and social media sculpting our lives, the young are most vulnerable, because they know no other way of life than with a phone in their hands.

They do not know how to socialize in a normal pattern, they do not know how to literally do anything without a phone in their hands, and we, as parents, have used the phone as an electronic babysitter for our own kids, in particular this generation of young parents, who also know no other life without the phone.

Kids have no common sense, they cannot discern right from wrong, and they are ultra-sensitive to any pushback from anyone about their sensibilities.

Parents must seriously examine who they are to their children—parents and role models—and they must also be held responsible if their underage children get into situations like what happened on Friday afternoon in Union Squire Park.

This ”hear no evil, see no evil” attitude has got to stop, if for nothing else than for the sake of this younger generation, which right now I find to be the dumbest, weakest generation of people we have ever developed, because they have absolutely no common sense, no regard for authori8ty, and live in some netherworld where they dimply don’t know right from wrong.

And for a generation that is supposedly so in tune with their planet, so in force in slowing climate change, if you saw the aftermath of this riot, you saw more garbage strewn around the area, more than you would have if a ticker-tape parade was held there.

This helps our planet?

Ultimately I hope this YouTuber—a false prophet if there ever was one—gets the book thrown at him and that these kids somehow develop a moral compass that has nothing to do with the Internet or social media, so something like this never happens again.

And we can also hope that the media gets off their righteous plane and calls a riot a riot when it is one, no matter what the supposed “cause” is.

We can only hope.