Life Degrades to Whatever Level of Chaos a Country Accepts

It’s time for America to raise its standards.

Have you ever seen two little kids deliberately trying to annoy each other without getting in trouble? My favorite game I’ve seen is a little boy acting like he’s going to touch his little sister, but he stops like an inch away from her cheek. Why did he stop there? So that she can yell, “Mom, he won’t leave me alone” and he can go, “I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you! I’m not touching you!”

Why does he do that? Because he’s bored or annoyed with his sister or wants a little entertainment.

We human beings are all like that, at least to a degree. We’re natural-born button pushers and boundary testers. Granted, most of us are less obvious about it than 5-year-old boys, but some people? They take it to an extreme.

That’s where this quotation from Tony Robbins starts to come into play:

Tony Robbins meant this quote to be for individuals, but whether you are talking about a person, a culture, or a country, you will find this to be just as true.

Certainly, we’ve seen this play out in America over and over again in recent years.

For example, I went to Manhattan last month. Why does it have graffiti like this, even in places that aren’t “bad areas?”

Why are there homeless people all over cities like San Francisco that crap in the streets? Why are there actual homeless encampments in the middle of cities like Denver? Why do we see mass shoplifting rings in parts of California? Why do we have teachers actively engaged in political activism in our public schools? Why do we have men pretending to be women now sharing women’s locker rooms and playing women’s sports?

Simple. It’s tolerated.

That’s not to say that you can stop all bad behavior because there will always be bad people who do bad things if they think they can get away with it. However, that doesn’t necessarily change the culture. What can change the culture, over time, is the human tendency to test boundaries. We’re all different. We want to try different things. We all have different levels of risk tolerance and we’re going to push the limits of what we can get away with, especially if we feel it benefits us. This is part of human nature. Even animals do it. That’s why Cesar Millan, perhaps the world’s best-known dog trainer, continuously says that dogs need:

Incidentally – and he’s right – he says the exact same thing about children:

So, people test the boundaries of what they can get away with.

BLM or ANTIFA throws rocks through windows. Looters smash into stores and grab what they can. Activists deliberately block traffic to get attention. What happens if that only leads to a slap on the wrist or worse yet, no punishment at all? It spreads. Why did the riots, looting, and violence of 2020 go on and on in some places and either never happen at all or happen for a night and then end in others? Because some places tolerated it, and some places didn’t.

You’re not SUPPOSED to use this example but look at Kenosha, Wisconsin. After dirtbag Jacob Blake was shot by the police, the cops didn’t do much of anything to restore order. On day 3, “vigilantes” started protecting local businesses and helping the community. One of them was Kyle Rittenhouse and when some of the rioters tried to kill him, he shot them instead. Guess what happened on day 4? Peace. Guess what happened after Kyle Rittenhouse was ultimately – and correctly – acquitted for defending himself against those rioters? Peace. I’m sure Kyle Rittenhouse regrets having to take human lives, but the flip side of that is that he did more to protect the people of Kenosha, Wisconsin from the rioters than their mayor, governor, police force, and National Guard because the rioters learned their bad behavior had real consequences from Kyle Rittenhouse, not those other people and groups.

There was some talk during that violent summer about rioters heading for rural neighborhoods, but to the best of my knowledge, it never happened. Why? Because “Try That in a Small Town,” isn’t just a song, it’s a mentality:

The sort of people who live in rural areas are much more likely to be armed and are much less likely to accept being threatened than say, New Yorkers, who have gotten used to crazy, homeless people screaming lunacy at everyone in their general vicinity with no repercussions.

By the way, this doesn’t necessarily mean we need more violence, but it does mean we need a lot more consequences for genuinely bad behavior. We’re not talking about someone who makes a bad joke or holds a political opinion that you disagree with, but there is no question that locking criminals up is much more effective than bail reform and giving criminals a pass for breaking the law. There’s no question that regularly giving politicians a pass for bad behavior, dumb comments, and lying to us has produced a much worse crop of politicians than we used to have in this country.

Do you want to know why both the mainstream and conservative media have mostly turned to crap? A big part of it is that so many consumers no longer care about getting the most important news of the day or even being told the truth, we just want to be entertained and told what we want to hear. If there are no consequences for getting it wrong, the media will continue to get it wrong.

It’s okay to say, “No, it’s not okay for a teacher to be a weirdo, for the military to celebrate damaged trans weirdos, or for people to spit at, attack, or otherwise abuse the police.” It’s okay to have standards and say, “Live up to them or don’t, but that’s on you and we’re not going feel bad or make excuses for you if you don’t cut it.” It’s just fine to say, “If you’re offended by something very few other people are, that sounds like a ‘you problem,’ not a problem for everyone else. We’re not calling you by your personalized pronouns, we don’t care if you don’t like ‘cultural appropriation,’ and if you want special treatment, you’re not going to be getting it.”

Not only is it all right, but it’s also impossible to have a healthy society unless people on “your side” or that you have sympathy for are held to the same standards as everyone else. As a society, we need to stop making excuses for bad actors, raise our standards for what we consider acceptable almost across the board, and chase excellence. The more excellent people we have, the better it will be for our country. On the other hand, the more bad behavior and mediocrity we tolerate, the worse off this country will be.

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