In the whirlwind of today’s news, one cannot help but notice the glaring problems festering in the underbelly of American society. The contentious talk shows and socially-conscious bile ooze through the cracks in our justice system like an unchecked tributary—threatening to flood the land with chaos. Take, for example, the tragic saga of Iryna Zarutska, a Ukrainian refugee whose life was brutally ended on a North Carolina light rail train by a man with a rap sheet longer than a CVS receipt. This story provides the perfect display of how policies on restorative justice have gone awry.
Now, it might be convenient to blame the number of police officers on the streets for such atrocities, but that’s as useful as blaming your spoon for making you gain weight. It’s not the cops, folks—it’s the so-called “woke” judges who wouldn’t know justice if it hit them square between the eyes. Their sympathetic leanings towards repeat offenders like Decarlos Brown Jr., who graces society with innumerable police encounters, contribute to a toxic cycle of freedom and filth on our city streets.
And oh, what a sight it would be if roles were reversed! If this kind of violence were inflicted by a white guy on any community of color, there would be media hysteria unparalleled in recent history. News anchors would have a field day, resulting in candlelight vigils and hashtags galore. Yet here we are, a scenario brushed under the rug, left to fringe media to report the horrors mainstream platforms ignore. Heaven forbid they jeopardize their narrative by highlighting it.
What leaves a particularly sour taste, perhaps the aftertaste of society’s moral decline, is the audacity of narratives that suggest society may be inadvertently supporting these crimes. It’s almost as if, instead of condemning crime, society rewards it—tying virtue and victimhood in a perverse Gordian knot. Thankfully, when conscience finally kicks in, efforts that glorify perpetrators are met with resistance. Yet, this highlights an uncomfortable truth about online activism’s underbelly: it sometimes supports the very injustice it claims to fight.
In a frustratingly familiar twist of fate, we return to what fuels so much of this madness: fatherlessness and broken homes. With staggering figures revealing an absence of fathers in so many lives, particularly in minority communities, it’s no wonder the spirals of poverty and crime intertwine. Far from being a coincidence, the welfare state inadvertently incentivizes family dissolution. It’s become a tragic cycle where the potential for criminal behavior is cultivated long before any actual crime takes root.
All the talk of injustice and reform boils down to one thing: the need for accountability and common sense in our justice system. It means locking up those with utter disregard for life and tackling societal problems at their roots. Whether it be through President Trump’s pledged crackdown on crime or communities reestablishing family values, it’s clear that the time for mere conversation has passed. Action is overdue, and America’s well-being hangs in the balance, teetering over the abyss for far too long.
