It’s early December, 2021. A chill that will continue off and on for about five months is descending over the Northeast. In Philadelphia, citizens have already descended into the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Inferno, the frozen center of Hell. Five hundred twenty-three—scratch that. Five hundred twenty-four—the number changed during the writing of this sentence—people died by homicide fo far this year in the City of Brotherly Love: Let it sink in. 524.
Those who occasionally sample news stories have probably heard about the push for socialism, for equity, and for defunding police. The rally cries of idealists who know neither history nor psychology derive from beliefs in a vacuum. They derive from disembodied thoughts. They are ideas without essence like flowers without a fragrance.
Is there, in the words of T. S. Eliot, a “dissociation of sensibility”? In that term, Eliot addressed a poetic trend he found in poets who didn’t “feel” their “rationally constructed” thoughts. Their language might be meaningful, but in a disembodied way. Eliot uses the smell of a rose as an analogy; it cannot be separated from the rose. In “dissociated” poetry, feeling is a separated “fragrance.” The rose lacks a distinctive feature that elicits an emotional response.
Jump to 2021 and Philadelphia’s 524 homicides, a number that exceeds the murders committed during any of the previous 14 years. And now for the dissociation of sensibility: Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner recently said the city is not undergoing a crime crisis. To support his “rational” assessment, he points to a relatively flat line of other crimes, such as rape, wounding, and robbery—as though maintaining a level of or undergoing a slight drop in those crimes is an indication of something positive. I guess in these days of “equity” all crimes weigh the same on the scale of humanity.
That Krasner seems to be unaffected by the plight of victims of any kind of crime shouldn’t be unexpected. The catch words of the day, such as “equity,” “systemic racism,” and “socialism,” have influenced many, including some politicians and many media pundits. The ostensible decrease in personal responsibility in favor of an increase in societal responsibility has been an overriding influence in American society long in development and heightened by current media, politicians, and educators.
What could be more indicative of this push toward societal responsibility over personal responsibility than recent statements from the White House Press Secretary and others in the Biden Administration that crimes like “smash and grab” raids at retail businesses are the product of the pandemic? What could be more telling than the dismissal of such raids as minor? Have these people lost all sensibility for the victims? Have they so dissociated their sensibilities from the realities victims suffer that they cannot associate the fragrance of a rose with the rose, to use Eliot’s analogy, or the stench of crime with the criminal?
We might all profit from reading statements made by Karl Popper, a reformed Marxist turned reformed Socialist, turned advocate for personal freedom, who said, “Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but hell.” Those who push for “unqualified equity,” unlimited bail reform, elimination of penalties for crimes like theft, and unjustifiable release of unrepentant violent offenders are living in a dream world. And they will probably continue to live in and impose on others that same “ideal” world unless they acquire a true empathy for victims.
Philadelphia has experienced 524 homicides as of December 9, 2021. Krasner thinks there is no crime crisis. The 524 victims’ families and the victims and families of other crimes like rape and robbery, however, are living Hell on Earth. For them there is a crisis in lawlessness.
Those who occasionally sample news stories have probably heard about the push for socialism, for equity, and for defunding police. The rally cries of idealists who know neither history nor psychology derive from beliefs in a vacuum. They derive from disembodied thoughts. They are ideas without essence like flowers without a fragrance.
Is there, in the words of T. S. Eliot, a “dissociation of sensibility”? In that term, Eliot addressed a poetic trend he found in poets who didn’t “feel” their “rationally constructed” thoughts. Their language might be meaningful, but in a disembodied way. Eliot uses the smell of a rose as an analogy; it cannot be separated from the rose. In “dissociated” poetry, feeling is a separated “fragrance.” The rose lacks a distinctive feature that elicits an emotional response.
Jump to 2021 and Philadelphia’s 524 homicides, a number that exceeds the murders committed during any of the previous 14 years. And now for the dissociation of sensibility: Philadelphia’s District Attorney Larry Krasner recently said the city is not undergoing a crime crisis. To support his “rational” assessment, he points to a relatively flat line of other crimes, such as rape, wounding, and robbery—as though maintaining a level of or undergoing a slight drop in those crimes is an indication of something positive. I guess in these days of “equity” all crimes weigh the same on the scale of humanity.
That Krasner seems to be unaffected by the plight of victims of any kind of crime shouldn’t be unexpected. The catch words of the day, such as “equity,” “systemic racism,” and “socialism,” have influenced many, including some politicians and many media pundits. The ostensible decrease in personal responsibility in favor of an increase in societal responsibility has been an overriding influence in American society long in development and heightened by current media, politicians, and educators.
What could be more indicative of this push toward societal responsibility over personal responsibility than recent statements from the White House Press Secretary and others in the Biden Administration that crimes like “smash and grab” raids at retail businesses are the product of the pandemic? What could be more telling than the dismissal of such raids as minor? Have these people lost all sensibility for the victims? Have they so dissociated their sensibilities from the realities victims suffer that they cannot associate the fragrance of a rose with the rose, to use Eliot’s analogy, or the stench of crime with the criminal?
We might all profit from reading statements made by Karl Popper, a reformed Marxist turned reformed Socialist, turned advocate for personal freedom, who said, “Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but hell.” Those who push for “unqualified equity,” unlimited bail reform, elimination of penalties for crimes like theft, and unjustifiable release of unrepentant violent offenders are living in a dream world. And they will probably continue to live in and impose on others that same “ideal” world unless they acquire a true empathy for victims.
Philadelphia has experienced 524 homicides as of December 9, 2021. Krasner thinks there is no crime crisis. The 524 victims’ families and the victims and families of other crimes like rape and robbery, however, are living Hell on Earth. For them there is a crisis in lawlessness.
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