That was in the context of something not too far from the old practice of Blockbusting in which fear of "outsiders" (in the historical context, black home-buyers) was used to try to either drive "outsiders" out of the neighborhood as fast as they could move in -- allowing the same property to be "churned" or resold multiple times in succession by the same realtor for repeated commissions -- or to convince residents fearful of "outsiders" to move out, generally selling in a hurry for far less than the property was actually worth.
But sometimes this sort of thing happens because of long-standing feuds, where groups such as church groups, civic associations, or even Cults such as Midtown Alcoholics Anonymous, etc., have decided that some individual, individuals, group, or "type" must be ousted.
The really sad part about this sort of thing is that it goes on, and on, and on, and on, and every time you track down one aspect of it and drag it out from under its rock to bleach in the light of day, another aspect of it pops up. It's like playing whack-a-mole. This is the sort of crap that police see year after year; you shut down an open-air drug market on one corner, and it starts up again down the block and two streets over.
One thing never changes. Someone with the motivation -- a feuding neighbor, a church group, greedy realtors, we've all seen this movie -- gets some gullible newcomer and feeds them lies to make them into a patsy. The goal is for the target to have no idea what the patsy has against them, and to waste time dealing with the patsy, rather than tracking back the cat to the ultimate original actor. If the aggressor plays it right, they can involve the patsy in a crime against the target, which means that the patsy can't disengage themselves or rat out the perpetrator without themselves risking legal (or other) repercussions.
There are a lot of manipulative people out there for whom recruitment of a "cat's paw" is either inherent second nature or the result of long practice, or merely of observing other people play this sort of game. Look, don't anyone try to tell me that there's no such phenomenon as skulduggery, black-balling, snitching, scamming or vicious group operations in the suburbs. This is as old as time, we don't even have to talk about the KKK or the Black Panthers or even the so-called "Shower Nuts".
So, today, after an afternoon trying to help one of my neighbors get her overgrown boxwood hedge back into a passable condition, I'm sitting around on the porch cooling off and having a smoke, watching the birds at the bird-feeder, watching traffic, etc.
A truckload of Latinas drives past, and this isn't unusual. What's unusual is that one of them is doing the hand-waving thing and pointing at me, and the whole truckload -- a deep red or purplish 4x4 thing, huge, almost a "Suburban" -- are all staring at me. And someone in the car is yelling something like, "he crazy, I tell you, he's seriously crazy".
I have, sadly, become accustomed to this over the years. However, that I have become accustomed to such outright slander and abusiveness by drive-by pointers-out-of-weirdoes makes it no less scandalous, reprehensible, nor legally actionable... if I can ever find out who they were.
At least some sanity and decency remains in the world, as one of the passengers had to yell over the hysterical harping of the other, "okay, so he's crazy, but is he dangerous? Tell me how he's dangerous".
What, me, dangerous?
And as in recent postings here, I must once again ask, "how did we, as a society, get so fucking crazy?"
Look, try to have some sanity rather than utter hysteria, lady? Or, you know, is it not hysteria, but histrionics? The art of the actor rather than the heartfelt abhorrence of the so-called "normal" people for "weirdos", "freaks", and "outsiders"?
I'd easily chalk it up to politics.
But even for Aspen Hill, for District 4, even for the freakin' ghetto, this is outside the pale of politics. I can't imagine even some of the wackier staffers that hang out around commenting on the blog Maryland Politics Watch carrying on like this in the Real World, but then again, you never know.
We live in a day when (allegedly) groups of a Mexican prison gang -- 18th Street Gang -- noted for being composed mostly of illegal alien violent felons from Mexico have declared war on their long-time rival, MS-13, and (allegedly) assemble a posse from three States and the District and then abduct a 15-year-old boy at a bus-stop and then stab him 72 times.
Six men and three women, all affiliated with or members of the 18th Street gang, have been arrested in connection with the abduction and stabbing death of a Langley Park teen whose body was found four months ago near a stream in Gaithersburg.
Montgomery County Police are continuing their investigation into the slaying of Dennys Guzman-Saenz, 15, of 14th Avenue, who was abducted from a bus stop Jan. 18, driven to a Gaithersburg park and stabbed 72 times by a group that included a convicted murderer who had escaped from an El Salvadorian prison, according to prosecutors and court records.
[ ... ] ("Nine arrested so far in teen's grisly death", Montes, Sebastian, Montgomery Gazette, May 13, 2009 downloaded 2009 May 14)
Hey, I have a bus-stop in my front yard, and supposedly someone got robbed at knife point there over the summer.
Maybe that's why she thinks I'm crazy, for sitting on my porch ready to call the police if someone else gets robbed there?
If that's the case, to whom could I be "dangerous", to the robber, maybe?
How, as a society, did we get so fucking crazy that some hysterical -- or histrionic -- woman in a very nice late-model deep-red SUV drives by my house this evening at about 5:35PM screaming "he's crazy he's crazy" and pointing at me?
How did we, as a society, get so crazy that she can do that and her friends don't call an Intervention for her?
More to come?
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