Just an Average Weekend in Our Nation's Capital

I'm really going to miss living in a civilized society. We have a couple of stories about last weekend in Washington DC that I tripped over when looking for something completely unrelated.

First up we have the fact that future generations have absolutely no respect for the law. DC police arrest boy, 12, following armed carjacking in broad daylight: 'It's gotten so bad' | Fox News

What were you doing at 12 years of age? I'm guessing it wasn't stealing cars.

The incident took place at about 1 p.m. Sunday at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr Avenue and U Street in Southeast D.C., the Metropolitan Police Department said in a news release.

A woman reported that a suspect approached her and demanded her keys, according to Metro police. She also said he had an object in his waistband that looked like a firearm.

It must not have been too convincing, because when she refused to hand over the keys he ran away. My guess is that he will have a firearm within a month or 3.

And you know things are bad in DC when people from Iraq are calling it a war zone. Uber driver from Iraq survives SUV sprayed with bullets in DC, says city is like a war zone: 'God saved me'

An Uber driver caught in gunfire in Washington D.C. during a drive-by shooting over the weekend said the city feels like a war zone, similar to his native Iraq, which he fled.

The driver, who didn't give his name to FOX DC, said he was near the Cathedral of St. Matthew on Saturday when his Toyota Highlander SUV was hit with a barrage of gunfire.

There is apparently video from inside the Uber SUV, but Fox News provided neither a copy nor a link to where it is. There are photos of nearby vehicles. At least one person, not in the SUV, was injured.

There is more at both links.

As these stories often do, these two stories have reminded me of the poem "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats. The entire text of the poem, it isn't long, can be found below (after the break). The part I always think of is...

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

What kind of life does a 12-year-old have to lead, that he thinks it is a good idea to embark on carjacking as a way of life? How can you live when someone might open-fire on you at any minute, for apparently no reason? Think on those questions and weep for the future of our country.

Civilization was nice while it lasted.

The Second Coming
   — W. B. Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

It was written in 1919, after the First World War.