Who is, wants to be, a REAL american?

[jyl]

[responding to procon]

So your rate of homicide per person is 4X higher than Los Angeles County?

(LA County: pop 9,519,338, homicides 1,006, homicide/person 0.000106. Your small town: pop 2,398, homicides 1, homicide/person 0.000417. LA County data from Fedstats for year 2000.)

[jyl]

Don't want to be unfair.

LA City: pop 3,864,018, homicides 518, homicide/person 0.000134. Your small town: pop 2,398, homicides 1, homicide/person 0.000417. LA City data from FBI for year 2004

[motion]

Originally posted by jyl
[responding to procon]

So your rate of homicide per person is 4X higher than Los Angeles County?

(LA County: pop 9,519,338, homicides 1,006, homicide/person 0.000106. Your small town: pop 2,398, homicides 1, homicide/person 0.000417. LA County data from Fedstats for year 2000.)

I was thinking the same thing... that rate is 50x higher than here in my town.

[econopa]

I know, lets further divide ourselves by big city vs small town. Like it could matter, somehow.
We have Dems vs Reps: black vs white; have vs have- nots; on and on.
Give it a break.

[jyl]

Originally posted by procon
You've completely shattered my sense of small town security.

You need to buy another gun.

Let's turn this into a gun thread.

All threads should end up as gun threads.

They are the most fun.

Well, also the bikini threads. But I can't post on those (fear of spouse).

[motion]

Somebody from Berkely talking about guns? What HAS the world come to???

[jyl]

[procon]

My God, what is causing the huge spike in your town's homicides this year? Obviously, you need more guns.

[motion]

Hey, I was shooting long before I moved to Berkeley. Anyway, I live in Portland now. Finally got my OR driver's license, so I guess the CCW comes next.

[econopa]

It's a slow day. In fact, I'm going home early. Bye, all!

[motion]

Looks like you need that shotgun. Those numbers are off the chart for such a small town!

[sewell94]

theres a difference, in small town people graduate, theres a ton of dropouts in down here in fl, i would like to see the difference between graduation rates, and then see college figures with the dropouts included. I know where i grew up maybe 2 or 3 outta the whole class would drop out(200 or so in class), in the town i'm in now i know the drop out rate is much larger not sure the exact number but i bet its around 5-10%.

[M.D. Holloway]

Snow makes an interesting yet slightly misguided point. To claim rightful ownership onto the label as an American only means to be born here or become a citizen. A true American? No body can or should define that. However, he does raise an interesting point about small towns.

Maybe we should focus our efforts on our communities and neighborhoods - places where we can actually have a say in the way things are done. I was surprised at how easy it was to get involved in our HOA and town gov. The bottom line is that not many people are interested in trying to help create a great place to live.

Everyone wants certain things and criticizes the way things are done but how many actually work to change it?

Snow? FatScat? Do you guys? What legit action and work have you done to actually influence the course of your burg? Your small town?

Any fool can write a game and talk smack. Pick up your feet and hit the street and find a cause to fight for. Do something for Gawdsake or quit your beefing.

[snowman]

Small towns are inbred. My small town, pop approx 2500 was once an Indian meeting point, one of the oldest small towns in W NY. We have a large number of top PHds living here, they like small towns. We also had an axe murder here 20 years ago. Guy cut up 7 or 8 family members with an ax. But the real downside is that EVERYONE knows what EVERYONE is doing, ALL THE TIME. I am related to almost every other person I meet on the street. Flight 93 went down a couple of hundred miles from where I used to live, I am related to almost every surname mentioned, of the people on the ground and even some on the plane. And shame has no time limits. Some families still avoid mine (1n 2006) for the simple reason that they could not pay their milk bill during the depression (my family owned and operated a dairy farm then). Some people still whisper about my ggg grandfather marring the niece of his first wife back in 1860. They also fault him for paying the $300 not to fight in the civil war. The adjacent city, pop 26,000 was built in 1880 or so. The factory is in the bottom of the valley, the people lived in company houses, in the valley. The hillside, from 1st street to 7th street, going up the hill, represented your status as a manager in the company that owned the town, the owner, lived in a typical mansion, at the highest point on the hill side. His house was guarded with dogs, just like on the Simpson’s. In fact you could replace the nuke plant on the Simpson’s with the plant in this town and it would be identical. The owner of the mansion is a current US Senator. The local queer families are all well know and avoided, ie shunned. The local bank still owes my family money from the downturn of the depression. There is a lot wrong with small towns. Yet the one thing they do well is to continue the true American heritage, both good and bad. Big cities have allowed people to leave their past behind, a good thing, to get a fresh start, but they have also allowed the very foundation of our country to be undermined, by euo-think. Remember most of them risked their lives to escape euro-think and that way of life. For it had all the small town "values' plus a strict, inherited social order.

[nostatic]

you should go back there. Leave the evil city to us heathens...

+1 on neighborhoods being the "small town" equivalents. San Francisco is an excellent example.

For me, the biggest issue is lack of diversity. There ain't none in most small towns.

[snowman]

Not true, We had one token black family in the whole town.

Only token diversity is allowed in a small town. Our police chief busted the heads of any other wanna be diversity types. The deed restrictions of most of the homes also stated that they were NEVER to be sold to diverse types of people. Welcome to small town america (only if your our type of people)

I am making a point here, America was NEVER the open welcome matt for everyone. Diversity was the exception, not he rule. So if you want to understand what is happening in america today you must know how america really operated in the past. Much of it was good, but not all. What parts do we maintain to retain our unique place in the world? What parts do we pitch? Be careful answers are not always obvious