So, What would you do?

Let's imagine you have a little girl. She's five years old and a little lady in every way. Sometimes she gets bossy like little girls do, but she loves her dollies, her kitties, her mommy and daddy, insists on wearing dresses, and never goes out without a "pretty" in her hair.
You've got yourself a piece of the American Dream. A nice neighborhood and a friendly place to raise your kids.
Down the street you have another little girl. She's eight or ten years old, but she roughly fits the same description as your daughter.
But then one day you see the neighbor girl walk up to a cat and beat the living hell out of it.
What do you do? Certainly you stop the little girl, but then what? Do you tell her parents? The little girl will deny it, and you'll end up looking like a crank and a troublemaker. Better to just keep an eye on the situation.
Then one day, your daughter is playing when the neighbor girl walks up with a quantity of red ants and spills them all over her.
Your daughter comes home covered with bite marks and a rash, and she's screaming from the burning itch everywhere on her skin that the red ants touched her. If she's allergic, you rush her to an emergency medical center to save her life.
But then what do you do?
Okay, maybe now for sure you go and talk to the parents. No surprise that you're met with a skeptical attitude, even though their little girl ran and hid at the very sight of you. But, think about it: who would ever think to throw a shovel full of red ants at somebody? The likely response you'll receive will be, "Not my little girl. She'd never do something like that."
Now you've got to face your own little girl and give her some answers.

Do you say, "Stay away from that little girl. She's trouble."?
Do you go out and buy an ant farm and start cross-breeding army ants with Mexican killer bees so you're prepared the next time you see this little sadist on the street corner?
Or do you write it off as another one of life's unfortunate little lessons?
Either way, you're sending the wrong message.
You see, telling your little girl to stay away is telling her to run and hide while the person that did the bad thing still walks around and does whatever they want, just as long as they don't do it to her.

Why don't you just say that the bad people rule the world?

It's that attitude that gives street gangs their strength.

Exact a little revenge and you're teaching your child the old eye for an eye concept. That's usually how misunderstandings escalate into body counts. "You push me; I push you. You shoot at me; I shoot at you. You detonate your nuclear weapon; I detonate mine."

Next thing you know, you've got a full scale gang war.

Sitting back and accepting this as one of life's little lessons puts her in the school of hard knocks. Do you want to be there? Sitting back and accepting the inevitability of bad things happening in life is tantamount to despair. It's like saying, "Oh, what's the use?"

 

Listen: here's a lesson that applies to all walks of life. If people are going to act like vermin, they should be treated like vermin.

Would you let your home be overrun by cockroaches or rats and accept it as inevitability? Would you run and hide and let them take over your world? Or would you arm yourself with pesticides, traps and poisons and give them only one option: vacate or die?
Why would you let an individual or a group of individuals run your life and make you run and hide or accept their will as being your own lot in life?
Whether it's the neighborhood bully, the abusive spouse, the street gang from your part of town, the factory that's polluting your rivers and air, or the politicos who shrug their shoulders and say, "What can I do?"; you should get out your pesticides, traps and poisons and fight!
You know how rats and cockroaches run and hide when you turn on the lights? So should the vermin in life run and hide when they see you coming.
Keep thinking about Peter Finch as Howard Beal in the movie NETWORK.


Don't accept the unacceptable as fate.
Don't whine!
Stand up and rage, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
And say it proud.