Safety Off
(This was supposed to be) Rural Hours & Hours May 5, 2025
I’ve had a block when it comes to Rural Hours & Hours updates. It might have something to do with being in proximity to people that are comforted, one could even say thrilled, by footage of humans being shackled and imprisoned. I doubt there are many readers of this newsletter that agree with the current US immigration and deportation (non)policies, but in case you didn’t know, there’s a group of people that see it as cleaning up the dirty, dangerous streets of failing liberal cities.
I intellectually understand why people equate force and violence with safety, but I don’t get it. Ya know what I mean? I’ve been the victim of violent crimes and I still don’t get it. I despise the use of victim stories to justify more violence. In my experience, crime victim violent revenge fantasies against perpetrators1 is not nearly as common as the entertainment industry would like you to believe. It doesn’t help that the reality wouldn’t exactly sell a bunch of movie tickets.
But the guys in charge don’t want you to think about real reality, they want you in their reality where you need their big strong daddy beat-down arms for protection. Maybe that’s why nothing is being done about mass shootings, they can’t pinpoint who their recipient of violence would be. Or maybe it’s because everything points to young white men and that just doesn’t work in the US safety-through-force equation. There’s a hierarchy to the application of force.
Violence, force, and humiliation can seem like solutions to crime because they align with the one area of superiority men generally2 have over women: physical strength. It’s pitifully basic, but living under patriarchal rule, we’ve been made to believe it’s a natural solution to a crimey flaw in human nature. When really it’s just shuffling the same problem around over and over while keeping the rest of the population submissive and fearful.
It’s great for politics though because it’s quite a showy solution. It’s like the tv show Cops. Temporary visual results. Just like how the war on drugs gave law enforcement huge arrest numbers that everyone could oooh and ahhh over. And we all know how much safer that made us.
I know people like to talk common sense so just looking at common sense numbers, millionaires and billionaires are more harmful345 than gang members. White collar crimes and greedy misdeeds harm millions of people. Not only are we not safe from these criminals, we are in currently under active threat from them. We live in a system that protects “white collar criminals” by categorizing their crimes differently and downplaying their immense damage.
And just looking at common sense crime numbers, men are exponentially more violent than women. And if you think “well that’s how men are” I say oh my gosh you’re right, common sense; If that’s how they naturally are, we should get them all out of the streets, away from children, and far from decision-making roles.
But that’s just it - it’s not how men are, it’s what this place demands of them. Violence against other humans doesn’t belong to a gender, it belongs to a system.
Even if we all make it through these times, there isn’t going to be a new way of living until we break down many concepts we’ve held as fact or nature or just the way things are. For starters, we won’t evolve until we redefine safety. Even though it’s a simple word, redefining it seems hard right? That’s because for it to mean the same thing to everyone we have to consider how race, class, and gender have been used to divide and control people in this country.
If you’re curious, look into the prison abolition movement. I know it seems like there are so many fronts to fight on, but there’s some reason my words, that started with me intending to focus on my small rural town, have led me to sharing that with you. I think it’s because it’s a movement that has presented solutions. An idea for the future that is rooted in compassion, inclusion, and community. Something that can be hard to imagine if you’re paying attention to the news a lot. So even if it’s just reading a bit to consider a truly different way of living together, it’ll be good for the ol’ brain.
The answers to the questions of why people turn to crime, what is considered a crime, and how we punish criminals and treat victims in this country are all part of a lynchpin issue in America. We pull that pin from the machine and who knows what could happen.
Feel like I should note I’m talking about the actual victims of the crime - it’s probably a different story for the parents, partners, friends, etc of the victim because that situation can make them feel uncomfortably helpless so maybe they have revenge fantasies. And furthermore I’m not saying victims don’t have them either, it’s just not a default reaction. And on that note, victims have a wide range of reactions and none of them should ever be judged, categorized, or dismissed even if you think you’d react differently.
And I do mean generally. Like in a general sense.
“… one year of white-collar crime is equal to two decades of street crime. That’s one of the statistics he points out, which is to say, when you commit a white-collar crime, you are committing millions and millions and millions of dollars of social harm.” Pitchfork Economics The Gilded Age of White Collar Crime (with Michael Hobbes) https://pitchforkeconomics.com/episode/the-gilded-age-of-white-collar-crime-with-michael-hobbes
White-Collar Crime: A Costly Epidemic https://www.deepsentinel.com/blogs/white-collar-crime-a-costly-epidemic/
Tracking the Harm of DOGE Cuts https://www.clasp.org/doge-tracker/
Not sure why it took me so long to read this! Love it all, especially the prison abolition part. ❤️