Technology wasted on the young; or, Hey you punk kids, get offa my lawn!!!

There’s one aspect of the incident that has Facebook users going bonkers these days – the one in which four young black people (two male, two female, most barely qualifying to be considered adults) beat up a white boy while taunting him because of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The beating of a young white man by four young black people for apparent racial motives goes beyond the legal issues that will be addressed at the Criminal Courts building in coming months.

Some are bothered because it is a white person being harassed by those scary black punks. Others that the level of anger we in our society feel due to the results of our most recent presidential election could be so intense.

BUT FOR ME, it is the fact that I am capable of watching this incident occur because the young people (three of them are 18, which means just a year ago it would have been a case for Juvenile Court) felt compelled to shoot video, then post it on Facebook for the world to see.

These particular half-wits, three of whom are from Chicago proper and the other from the suburbs, have been arrested, and are likely to have their first appearance at the Criminal Courts Building on Friday.

Meaning that they will have a pseudo-celebrity status while being held in Cook County Jail (although that could mean they’d be exposed to extra harassment). But it also means the court system ultimately will deal with them – particularly with the “hate crime” charges that are being sought that could ensure they wind up doing real prison time.

Yet on a certain level, they took pictures of themselves in action as they beat up on a white boy, whom I’m told suffers from a degree of mental retardation and may not have had a clue as to why he was singled out for such abuse.

ALL OF THE horrid actions are preserved on video. These four young people wanted it known (at least within their circles) that they smacked about some white punk as payback for the ugly mood that caused so many people to actually cast their ballots for Trump to be president.

They probably just never envisioned that anybody outside of their friends would actually watch the video – which as it turns out became one of those items of stupidity that catches public attention because it is so stupid.

The sad thing is that whenever I watch young people use computers or video or other technology and actually pay attention to what it is they are doing, it strikes me that this technology is totally wasted on the young.

Cops wish all people video'd selves when they misbehave

If that makes me the equivalent of that cranky old guy yelling at snotty punks to get off my lawn and particularly thinks people who let their pets poop on other peoples’ property deserve a flogging, then so be it!

THESE YOUNG PEOPLE on a certain level want to be thought of as “heroes” who stood up to the levels of bigotry that they and many other black people are forced to endure in their lives. Which I’m sure that so many white people are now paying attention will not occur.

We’ll probably hear a lot of trash talk about this being “reverse racism” turning white people into victims. Although that term of “reverse” racist always strikes me as being merely a 21^st Century equivalent of when black people who asserted themselves were dismissed as “uppity.”

For anybody who wants to think of this particular incident as a new trend or an outrage has probably forgotten about the upsurge of incidents against non-white people back in 2008 right after Barack Obama was elected president. From beatings to cross-burnings, there were many incidents in those months committed by white people whose racial hang-ups were put out on display. For what it's worth, Obama himself said Thursday that the latest attacks are "terrible" and "despicable."

My point being that we have people of many differing racial or ethnic origins who are capable of behaving stupidly. I’m not about to think of these four young people (whose names I don’t want to get into because I don’t want to dignify them any further) as being anything special.

EXCEPT THAT THEY’RE like many other stupid kids who think that putting their trivialities onto the Internet in some form somehow legitimizes them.

Seriously, you’d be amazed at how many video snippets you can find by a search of “teenagers fighting” (some 13.1 million, according to Bing.com). What is the point, to show how “manly” one was in ganging up on some person?

Or was it meant more to shame the person who got attacked? All in all, it seems like an incredible waste of time, and makes me question the intelligence level of the people who care enough to look this stuff up.

I can’t help but think this most recent incident is purely stupid – and likely wouldn’t be known about at all if not for the fact that someone felt compelled to record their moment of idiocy!

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