Shara Jo, let
an old person assure you the world was worse in the past, and is getting
better. Don't let the news coverage convince you otherwise, which it
tries mightily to do so it can increase its ratings.
In August of 1914, 100 years ago, next year, World
War I started. The British alone lost 3000 men per week, when nothing
was happening. They called it "wastage." When something was happening
like the Battle of the Somme, they lost 60,000 men before breakfast and
400,000 in the next few months.
In
total, an estimated 11-million were lost in the four years of World War
I. In 1918, the Spanish flu broke out and killed an estimated 50- to
100-million in the next year. In the US, 625,000 were lost, exceeding
the number killed in our Civil War over four years. The average age of
death in the US fell to 37.
In
the decades of World War II, an estimated 57-million died worldwide.
Since the nuclear bombing of Japan in 1945, only a million have died
worldwide per year on average because of the horrific constraint of
nuclear war. More people are lost to malaria each year than war.
Because
of hyper-conventional war, war appears to have been reduced to small
incidents. In ten years of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have lost less than
10,000 killed. Compare this to the 58,000 lost in Vietnam over ten
years, or the 52,000 lost in Korea over three years.
In
spite of the news, crimes are actually going down each year, and have
been for years. Two out of three gun deaths in the US are suicide, not
homicide. Most gun homicides occur in cities that have the most
stringent laws against being armed, and happen in big cities. I suspect
most happen in gang warfare, and involve fighting over drugs and turf.
They are easily avoided by staying out of big cities, especially the
impoverished parts.
But
the news would lead you to believe otherwise simply because of their
unofficial motto: "If it bleeds, it leads." Tonight, with the Boston
coverage, we will get 24 hour coverage of 2.4 minutes of news. Don't let
it depress you, because that is the intent. It increases ratings and,
in spite of one channel's BS, they are NOT looking out for you. All
TVs come with an OFF switch. Don't be afraid to use it.
