Quote:
Originally Posted by WIHS2006
People need to understand why Long Island has evolved into what it is today. People came out to Long Island to avoid the overcrowding, crime and poor quality of life in New York City ... racism was not necessarily part of the equation but there is an undeniable link between increased minority population and increased crime. People came here so that their kids could get a better education, live with a higher quality of life. These beliefs have been passed on down the generations. Again, it's not about race ... it's about their culture and beliefs. Groups arent bad because they are minorities or because they are poor or whatever, they are bad because their culture is messed up and many of these groups have no concept of personal responsibility and well being. White, Black, Hispanic, or Asian - no group is perfect.
Long Island is a country within a nation, complete with it's own history, culture, and way of life. Deal with it and move on. We are not New York City and we don't want to be like and look like New York City. Yes, racism is bad. Everyone is an individual human being. However as I said, this isent a racial issue ... it's a cultural issue.
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If I would differ from your opinion, it'd be only to add the fact that we as Long Islanders are only trying to survive. The bankers have their product, their methods for survival,
and are as unconscionable as the dope dealer. The name of the game is survival. When we see the grim truth that tobacco and alcohol are as deadly a killer as the dope peddlers
are moving, some of us begin to understand that it isn't the substance that detracts from society, as much as the the way that dealing in drugs sets up a competition with our
government, a conflict of revenue that cannot be resolved in a manner which deals with the real societal problem, the will of the people as versus the will of our enlightened rulers.
Racial boundaries are not the issue here, it is more like that great hypocrisy of a government, which seeks to embrace a double standard, telling you, the individual, what you can
and cannot do, while their influence has it's primary benefit in their court.
Our government likes to burn the candle from both ends. They want to decorate the common cigarette package with blackened lungs, rotted teeth and those assorted autopsy
pictures and statistics. Would they persue the eradication of tobacco as vigorously? I think (and see) not. Where once there was a harvest field of opportunity, it is barren in this
world of today. I am a tradesman, gifted and educated in my field, but my field has dried up, blown away with an agenda that served only the biggest fish in the pond. I ache to work
again but my ex-boss can't afford my labor, he's constrained too. I guess that what I really wanted to say is, we do what we feel that we must do when supporting our belief that we
must, at all cost, survive.
50 years ago, we had culture. We came to school modestly dressed, we pledged alliegence to the Flag. We collected butterflies rather than facebook friends. We shared a Coke,
instead of a needle, went to proms rather than raves, we went to see our friends and not just send them an instant message. We've changed in this last twenty years to a point
where we've gone haywire with the concept that WE will (as an individual), survive. Whomever that guy down the block who you believe is selling illicit drugs, try to understand that
he too is only trying to further his life here on earth. You may disqualify his product, a vehicle of misery to some, but you need to recognize the fact that much like every other
prominent reality star, politician or, one-hit-wonder, his product is in demand. Day after day, the stream of cars, whizzing past the bright red stop sign in front of my house, tick me off.
Except for me, no one else cares, I'm the guy living at the intersection, the one who has to deal with it. In many ways, this bears out the fact that life is only what it is, just people who're
trying to live by their own rules.
Groups and cultures are as likely a scapegoat as any, when determining the growing deterioration of Long Island. We were ethnically diverse, while Ellis Island clerks, stamped the millions
of passports that came legally to our shores, clutched in the hands of those who hungered for a land of opportunity. they brought their skills, stonework, manufacturing, tradesmen, merchants
and yes, even common laborers. For the most part, these people have moved on into that darkness of eternity, but there are those like myself who got the chance to see America at its pinnacle,
the zenith of empires which has at last, gone fallow.
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