SURVENT

So back in July Andrea Yates was found not guilty by reason of insanity for the drowning deaths of her five children five years ago. Here is one of the many artices written on her verdict. The verdict I thought they should have reached was guilty. She should have been committed to a state mental hospital for the rest of her life. From what I have read about this case, she knew what she was doing was wrong, she planned it and she feels guilty about having done it. She was not insane. The jury was insane for reaching a not guilty verdict. Where is the justice for the five dead children? There is none. Yates will most likely be out and about in society in the near future and will not be watched all the time by the corrections system once she is released to society. This is scary to me.

It was at that time that I concluded that this world is getting too crazy and unsafe, for children and everyone else in general. It was at this point that I decided I needed to take a break from writing about this stuff. While I have not been writing this blog for all that long, I have come to the conclusion that we as a global people are getting more and more desensitized to crimes in general as we see them in the news all the time, especially related to chidren. People are focused on fighting for things just to fight for things. People are suing people because they can and they want to get rich quick. There is a sense of everyone having an entitlement complex where they are entitled to everything they want whether they have earned it or not. People seem to think that they are better than everyone else and deserve special treatment. We are becoming ever so much more a self indulgent society, especially here in the USA, and failing to focus on what matters - children, family, humanity, enjoyment of life, etc.

Do not get me wrong, I know that all of the people in the world are like this. There are still many more good people than bad I am sure of that. The bad people seem to be gaining in numbers, though. The crimes are more blatant and seemingly more violent. Perhaps it is because the news focuses on crime and does not highlight the good in the world and that is why things seems to be getting worse. Crime has always been here, but this much? I am more likely to believe that the constant coverage of crime and its glorification so to speak is actually breeding more crime. People see this stuff in the news and begin to become desensitized by it. People who may not have ever committed a crime may see an Andrea Yates and think, "Hey, if she got away with her crime I could too," and then you have more people killing their children. The fact that the economy is having some hard times now does not help crime. And even if an area is not feeling the slowdown of the economy, the separation of social classes will only add fuel to the fire as people feel slighted by not having what the others have.

My goal of this blog was to watch things going on in the world with main focus on the USA or things related to it. I hate crimes against children more than anything and wanted to point them out so people could see how many crimes happen against children and get people thinking about the situation. I needed to see it for myself to try to understand what can be done to help children. I would love to find a way to reduce these crimes and get people paying more attention to the children of this world.

People are hurting, killing, abusing, and mistreating kids all the time. While this goes on, people don't seem to punish these perpetraitors harshly enough to deter others from doing the same acts. And the media continues to use children to tug at the hearts of people when they want to create a stir about an issue. Children are being used as pawns by the media to gain support for or against things such as war and terrorism, i.e this article. Instead of getting to the bottom of issues or bolstering support against a war (not just the US being in the Middle East but even Lebanon's fighting with Jerusalem, etc.) or even trying to understand why a war is going on, people use children to build anti-war support. No one likes war and there will be casualties in war - including children. Constant coverage of children's shoes and backpacks near bombed buildings or showing dead chidlren on television does not help the situation. This causes people to get emotional and emotions never solve issues - rational thinking solves issues.

I am going to move on to Phase 2 of my project and will be covering more of the issues about things going on in the world mainly related to security - personal, national and global. I will still be covering some cases of crimes against children but there are so many and it is so depressing that I need to reduce my coverage of them. Not to mention that my coverage is not reaching enough people to do anything get people talking nor is it solving the underlying issues. What I do realize is two things: 1) there may well be no way to stop people from committing these acts as the problem truly lies in the minds of the people who commit these crimes against children - there is no way to regulate or manage this; 2) that the best way to reduce these crimes is to provide people with ways to protect themselves and their children and keep people informed about things going on that have an impact on them that can be controlled.

Let's see how this next phase goes. I hope that people will begin to think more rationally about things going on in the world. It would be great to see the media stop pulling on people's emotions to get things to happen as it does not help in the long run. While emotional reactions are easy to provoke and probably more intense than reactions to rational thought, like I said before, acting on emotions does not usually solve things but only makes things more difficult.

Please help me think things through rationally as I cover topics. Add your comments and suggestions. Also, let's not forget about the children of the world and the help they need. I am still pondering the best way to help them. I know there are many charities and other institutions in place to help them, but we need to do more. Let's put our heads together and see what else we can do.

Thanks for reading and please come again.