No, Lorrie Goldstein And Other Wingnut Columnists, This Ain’t 1962 or The ‘Good Ol’ Days’ Dumb-Asses!

What is with that magic year 1962 when it comes to comparing crime statistics in Canada? Better still, what is with this longing for the so-called ‘good ol’ days’?  I mean, with anything; be it crime rates; be it women’s issues; gay rights; immigration; etc.

Oh someone is sucking up to his new boss these days.  And Goldstein ain’t alone.  Apparently, it is now in vogue, among other things for wingnut columnists to write about how Canada is a dangerous place to be and how Canadians are just very bad people.  And they are all a comin’ out a swingin’ for Master Steve’s very expensive tough on Crime bills. And they all like to play amateur statistician to boot.  The rancid Dr jabba the Roy has so proudly compiled a few of them today. However, Lorrie Goldstein had to have come up with THE dumbest conclusion and comparison at the end of his already abysmal column. Besides, he’s long overdue for one of my bitch slapping rants.

Well, lowering crime rates are probably one aspect as to why Sweater vest Steve has zero respect for Statistics Canada. And these wingnut columnists playing amateur statistician with their confusing math as to raise the blood pressure of any math teacher must be oh so pleasing to the master.  Yet, they seem to enjoy harping on one common thread; our crime rates are still oh so much higher than they were in 1962. Ok, let’s look at this, shall we?

Since 1962, unwed women and girls, and only them were blamed for unwanted pregnancies no matter the circumstances; whether the sex that resulted in these pregnancies was consensual or not. The man/boy never ever shouldered the blame or very little of it.  Especially in the case of girls and young college aged women, they were whisked off to special homes for unwed mothers, generally convents, where they were forced to have their babies and put them up for adoption in a hush hush manner, while their families back home can pretend all was right in their world; that their daughters were simply away at college or visiting relatives across the country while they still kept up with the Jones’s. We have evolved since then. Pre-marital sex is no longer the taboo it once was.

Many of those pregnancies were also the result of rape and/or incest. Again, the victims were blamed; a very high stigma attached. No one, but no one reported those crimes. It didn’t mean they didn’t happen more or less. In fact, we hear more of adult survivors reporting their suffering either at the hands of their family members, clergy, teachers, aboriginals who had survived the horrors of  residential schools, etc.

I really don’t have to bring up abortion in 1962. Back alley flop houses done by non-medically trained crooks with unsanitary tools in filthy conditions.  Or old wives abortion methods such as knitting needles and wire hangers.

What about the men? Boys were raised at that time (many still are) that they didn’t cry and that they were to be tough; to be a man and fight back. Reporting a crime such as a mugging would certainly have gone against their male pride.

What about other crimes?  Surely being the victim of other crimes prior to 1962 must have had a stigma attached to them, thus preventing them from reporting them.

So, when I read the dumb argument from idiots like Goldstein saying the reason for the crime rates in Canada going down is that fewer people are reporting them, wouldn’t it stand to reason that perhaps many didn’t report crimes prior to 1962?

And what is the deal with these cons longing for the good ol’ days? And I’m not talking only about crime rates neither.

Our new Governor General is someone who stepped out of the era of “The Man in The Grey Flannel Suit”

We have columnists like Babs Kay who devotes her columns to lamenting the invention of  Birth Control and the sexual revolution and in an effort to spread her own misery, tries to force down the throats that not only was the sexual revolution and legalized abortions are immoral, but continues to try in vain to continue to convince readers that they too should be unhappy about this and feebly attempt her readers into longing for the good ol’ days’.

Back in the ‘good ol’ days, women weren’t on the work force as much and the fields of work women took on were more limited as were their post secondary education opportunities.  I remember Diane Finley making some offensive statement awhile back basically saying that two income households were not a necessity but a choice. I remember thinking that she was hinting at wishing for more to stay home.

Those are just some major differences between prior to 1962 and 2010. I didn’t touch on evolving technology.

My point is that in comparing crime statistics or anything else to 1962 or prior to that against today is comparing apples and oranges. The results would be flawed, no matter how hard they try as they might to skew it in their favour.

Back to Goldstein’s idiotic argument in favour of Master Steve’s tax payer paid big-assed prisons. It is a goody, indeed:

…the knee-jerk argument from the hug-a-thug crowd that a (slightly) lower annual crime rate automatically means we don’t need as many police or prisons, is akin to arguing a lower mortality rate automatically means we don’t need as many doctors or hospitals.

In other words, it’s painfully simplistic and dumb.

No, Lorrie, you’re painfully simplistic and dumb-assed. I have one word to respond to that idiotic quote: Huh?

Of course we need more doctors and hospitals because they are needed to heal the sick so people could live longer.  Doctors (in principle, anyway) not only treat the illness and the patient, but they do much research in an effort to find out what causes these illnesses as to be better able to prevent them in the future in addition to finding cures for them. If doctors can successfully prevent more illnesses, then maybe eventually, they would need fewer hospitals.

The same goes for crime.  Look at crime as a sickness. Try to find the causes so as to better prevent them to begin with.  We know of some of the obvious culprits; poverty and unemployment.  Why don’t we try to find the causes of poverty and unemployment (well, I think most of us know that too, but you get the idea) and try to fix that? Create jobs. Create better training programs. Find ways of getting to those who are most vulnerable to slipping through the cracks and offer programs to help them get on their feet like vocational training.  Educational programs for children at risk.  And yes, better community relations between law enforcement and its’ inhabitants because right now, especially in more impoverished neighbourhoods, distrust is strong.  These ideas are just crazy enough to actually work! If we were to implement just half of these ideas, then I think we would see crime rates slide even faster and there really wouldn’t be any need for those big-assed prisons; not that there was any need to begin with.

But of course, this is Stevie Spiteful, Vic Toews, the Colonel Sanders look-a-like and their wingnutty columnists like Lorrie Goldstein who for whatever reason, seem to get their kicks from watching people suffer, while their fat cat ‘friends’ continue to get fatter.

Also, let’s not forget, these are people that, if they had their way, we would go far back in time, using Maurice Duplessis’s Periode Noirceur as a model for their utopic Canada.  No, never mind that,  Duplessis was probably too liberal for them.