"Jits, bitch!"

I understand that some celebrities and other well-known personalities are often portrayed as targets for public aggression, but sometimes all that static is justified. I didn't need to see the entire video of a rapper trying to game some neighborhood kids to know that it's not right for a grown man to sucker punch a teenager, no matter how much a youngin' sasses back at you. Anyway, what the heck is he doin' trying to run a soccer game in their 'hood? He ain't from Atlanta. He's from Ohio (I checked), so why does he step up to manning their game? Is he a soccer pro? What's with the one-glove action?! 

What makes him qualified to step in and boss some kids around, kids who look like they're having a local game on their block, not some group team practice? Chill, mutha! And if you got grown-ass men actin' like children in your game, then do what this smart kid does: drop him in a tackle, take the back by holding your mount, then finish him with a reliable hold like the "rear naked choke". That's how you win without ever having to throw one single punch (might hurt your hand, yo!), and that is the magic of Jiu Jitsu, friends. Stay safe out there, kids. Urban jungles can be rough with the wrong crowd!  And have fun :)

http://www.afterschoolalliance.org/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_jiu-jitsu

'Licious

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pop_Rocks

Urban legends play havoc with an American kids' sugar-addled brain, already heightened by the potently charged atmosphere inherent in our wildly free mix of humans. You never know on any given day what you're gonna get, because the New York City area is the capital of our whole Empire, with a new set of immigrants (refugees from your next civil war or natural disaster) streaming daily into our harbor seeking a respite from their woes. What can we do? It's messed up that your parents don't speak English to you, but that's nothing compared to the horrors we scared each other with on the playground, most of which centered around candy, a crucially important part of any kids' school day. Candy gave us something to look forward to, you know?

Myths abounded in our Gothic towns, like the pet alligator some kid flushed down the toilet that grew to epic horror-movie proportion in the city sewers, or the boa constrictor that bit a kid in the ass, because it crawled up through the sewer pipes to bite him while he sat on the toilet. Like, really scary stuff. If that didn't happen to you in the morning, you might get beat up for your lunch money, forget your homework, then get spanked for that, or you could die from a toxic candy combo that we dared each other to do on days when we were feeling a little braver, because nothing really bad had happened to us.

"Life" cereal was a huge brand back in the day, and in a brilliant counter-espionage move, some company wonk circulated this fake rumor that the child actor who played "Mikey" in the commercial had died from a lethal combination of Pop Rocks and soda, which naturally drove us to dare each other to try it for money. No problem! My mom and her scary sistas were bad enough witches with or without the soda they're all addicted to, anyway. Gimme that! And so me, my middle bro, and the Katt sisters stood at the end of our lane daring each other to try it. We each did it after no one died, taking turns feeling that weird popping sensation of mini candies mixed with fizzy soda. It was odd, like spearmint-flavored Lifesavers sparking in the darkness of a closet while you watched your friend eat one (my mom told me about that particularly fun food fact growing up), but that was about it.

Nonetheless, the madmen who created those classic ad campaigns pushed product over what was basically a childhood dare for many years, by firmly implanting it within each and every American kids' memory. It was sheer marketing genius. After that, the rumor mill cranked into overtime, when Madison Avenue spreadsheets reflected the buying power attached to false rumors. Kentucky Fried Chicken had rat meat in it, so that's bad. Don't eat it! 

Spider eggs were found in Bubbalicious gum, probably because some crazy redneck working in a factory hated city kids, like that fat lazy bitch behind the KFC counter who hates us, too, or the weirdo who injected shit into Tylenol bottles, just like that crazy psycho who put razor blades into kids' Halloween apples one year: it was crazy enough to be true, just like the psychotic people we meet everyday who want to kill us for no good reason other than the fact that they're fuckin' nuts and we felt vulnerable as kids, because that's what our neighborhoods feel like on any random day. You just might die, yo.

Mental Illness: Now Appearing Near You

I've touched on the subjects of sociology and psychology before but not at length, though it's greatly affected me through exposure to individuals not in full possession of their faculties. When I watch the news, it occurs to me that I'm not alone in this experience throughout the world, as behavior that starts in the home and ends in a disastrous collision of the private with the public. Like many people, I struggled with whistle-blowing on sick people versus my safety, resulting in the loss of home, health, and income; choices many of us face at home and at work every single day. I've worked with people so sick, they rocked back-and-forth in their chairs all day while at work, muttering curse words over and over again, or whispering threats at employees without any consequences at all. True: the world is unsafe, life is hard, and I accept that. Nothing new to this working class girl.

A cursory list of the latest headlines speaks to the major health care crisis in our country, as a plague that tells its tale in psychosis and gun violence. The "Virgin Killer" in California, who legally bought three separate handguns, posted sick rants detailing his future crimes on YouTube before he committed them. He manifested such extremely violent tendencies that his aunt called the police to alert them about his obvious status as a walking time bomb (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/california-killings-elliot-rodger-was-described-as-polite-and-courteous-during-welfare-check-by-police-9432530.html), but nothing happened. Unfortunately, someone has to break the law before legal action takes place, and an intelligent criminal knows exactly where the dividing lines are, much better than you and l. That's their big advantage in the world: shock and awe, for the dual purposes of hurt and destruction. Ask anyone who's been harassed, stalked, or threatened, and they'll tell you a similar story, to the ongoing frustration of law enforcement officers and psychiatric health care workers, and that's just the beginning.

There's a recent spate of murders in NYC, again, perpetrated by an individual so unfit for a place in our society, that his parole officer told anyone who would listen in authority that he would murder someone soon, and then he did (http://nypost.com/2014/06/06/parole-officer-warned-cops-brooklyn-ripper-was-dangerous/). Need more examples? No problem. I got that: the school shooting in Oregon (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/11/justice/oregon-high-school-shooting/), the psychologist with security clearance who calmly let himself onto an army base to commit what he felt was a "revenge" murder (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/03/us/fort-hood-shooting/), not to mention the massacres in Colorado, now infamous.

What is it? Where does it come from? Just like conversations about global warming and starving children in Africa, the answer is as old as slavery and murder: because it's a part of human nature. But, how did it get this bad? I have a theory that I'm road-testing, which is quickly gaining support. The answer is this: a greater dissolution between public and private in "The Age of Transparency", because there's less room to hide, and for healthy people like myself, that is a very good thing indeed. What was once hidden at home, like a body surreptitiously buried in the backyard at midnight, way out in the country, with no proof of wrongdoing, has now gone public. Ed Gein lived in a place so rural, he could get away with it. Jeffrey Dahmer preyed on homosexual men, a group that traditionally had very little public support or empathy. "Jack the Ripper" likewise preyed on another famously disenfranchised group, the street-walking prostitute, often a societal target for psychotic rage and murderous intent.

Now that today's individual is much more savvy about the early signs of illness (thanks to the widespread access of such information), those of us who grew up in homes of the sick are often forced into the roles of psychiatrist and law enforcer unwillingly, and that is extremely threatening to someone who seeks to hide their paranoid psychosis with violent tendencies. Children and teens who witness this behavior routinely are groomed to accept abuse as acceptable, as they're gradually conditioned to it (along with the rationale for it) through complicity, similar in method to a pedophile or addict. Who are we to give voice to a major worldwide health crisis? We're nobodies, and that's exactly what someone who is desperate to exploit us counts on, though those rules are changing, too. The kids who are artists, thinkers, and makers are no longer the "kooky" black sheep in their respective families, as "The Digital Age" and the "Design Intelligence" movement now lead the world. 

Hmm...who then to disenfranchise, isolate, and victimize? It's become harder to do so, and so the disordered responded by setting up their family members through constant vicious attacks in secret, sabotaging them until they appear to be the opposite of what's true in public, because that's what bad parents do. I saw a story in that vein just yesterday: a girl was raped, then her crazy parents pushed her into the media spotlight to get attention for themselves, and then they forced her to take to "the low road" through deliberately enforced impoverishment to survive, after they cut her off financially. The result? 

A teenage pregnancy and a convict "baby-daddy", gaining plenty of evidence to do her in and discredit her point of view. In order to survive adverse conditions, it's not uncommon among whistle-blowers in the home to be singled out as a primary target for family scapegoating. After all, what can a dependent teenager really do in retaliation? They held all the cards, along with the money and their seemingly suburban perfection, except the facts didn't exactly pan out. Their daughter tested "positive" for drugs while living in their home, and now, safely on her own as a working single mother, she's clean, even with random drug tests, which she volunteered to do: http://www.drphil.com/shows/show/2136.

I saw an episode of "Judge Judy" that was so bad, the bailiff had to warn the defendant by looming over him physically until he was subdued enough to speak somewhat coherently, bringing no defense to the table or excuse for his poor behavior whatsoever, in a brazen show of delusional cockiness that grows worse and worse every day. Another man on the show, in a separate case, lashed out at the judge in a way I'd never seen before. When she pointed out that his crazy behavior was the result of his mental state and medication, he shot back at her (in full view of the public, on t.v.): "You, too! You need medication, too!", and I actually gasped. Another woman was so unmanageable, her entire case was dismissed, because the judge repeatedly told her to be quiet and, red-eyed with rage, she declared defiantly "I will not!". The mentally ill no longer respond to authority figures, public shaming, financial consequences, or the law.

It's become harder for sick people to find targets for their aggression, easy as it is for us to openly view their sick behavior and then testify about it; witness any reality t.v. show nowadays about dating, drinking, and mental illness. They've been forced into the public arena to act out their rage, because our private spaces have become safer from a growing movement of support and education, thanks to the brave people who are willing to speak out, even to their detriment. And therein the problem also lies—because even obvious outward manifestations are not enough to get someone help anymore, like I observed at any one of my office gigs. A sick guy I worked nearby had ranted all day long to himslef at his computer (OCD), within clear earshot of the entire office space, visibly twitching, talking, cursing, and starting from his chair compulsively, something I often see in other public places like subways and libraries. 

Where once a family could exert financial and social pressure upon a disordered person, forcing them to conform, the economy changed to our detriment. Now, the sick have power and money, which is more easily done with a damaged morality (http://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/donald-sterlings-mental-health-figures-clippers-sale-report-n118176). What do you do when those in power are mentally unfit to serve our best interests? My generation, Generation X, was painted as "slacker" because as a population group, we were blocked from implementing change by those same corrupt Baby Boomers who have/had numbers on their side, but just like in life, our time has finally come. In the process we became leaders, as we waited until a new population could respond to our ways of thinking, like Gen Y and Millennials have shown through their abilities to adapt to technology and respond to change, embracing a world vision that's greener, safer, saner, and healthier, not because it benefits them immediately, but because it's the right thing to do.

The answer is dual-fold, combined with better healthcare laws and stricter gun laws. There's absolutely no good reason that a college student like "The Virgin Killer" should legally possess three guns for his "self defense". It's absurdly irrational, these old laws made to please unsafe extremists, and it will change. Healthcare must follow suit. Without better mental healthcare reforms in place, all we can do is cry out yet another warning at our own expense, bankrupting our lives in the process, because self-sacrifice is what a honorable person does while actively seeking change, waiting for the tides to turn. And the tides, ushered along by global warming, are turning. 

Welcome to "The New World Order". We've had enough. No longer will the sane cower in fear at the hands of tyranny, because this world operates on one very powerful principle that was previously hidden in the dark, nursed in secret, now reaching its final, unhealthy conclusion as an end to it all, and that is this: transparency.  
What a beautiful world it will be.