A nation of ninnies....

American Spectator
Melissa MacKenzie

We are a nation of meddlesome Americans. It was not always thus. There was a time when Americans did not nark on their neighbors. They didn’t inform on their coworkers. They have not, historically, been the comrades in a communist regime whispering, seeking favor from the authorities, and sending hated enemies to the gulag for minor infractions just for spite. Something in the last generation has changed. Americans have turned into a nation of busybodies, harassing strangers on the web, calling the police or their places of business, and generally feeling entitled to destroy someone with whom they disagree.

Who needs Big Brother when anonymous strangers will seek to silence, defame, shame, and ruin innocent people when their target violates their personal moral code, not the law and not good sense?

There are a couple forms of this destruction. Over the weekend, I read two articles, both detailing the menacing behavior of people who should have just minded their own damn business. It is a lost American art, and it needs to come back now as innocent people are having their lives unnecessarily upended.

Exhibit A: A mom who left her 4 year old playing a game in the car while she ran in to the store for a couple minutes was ratted out to the police by an anonymous lady, via the New York Times:

What happened began over a year before on a cool March day in 2011, at the end of a visit with my parents in Virginia. I needed to run an errand before our flight home to Chicago, and my son, then 4, didn’t want to get out of the car.

“Come on,” I said.

“No, no, no! I wait here.”

I took a deep breath. I knew what I was supposed to do. But I was tired. I was late. I didn’t want, at that moment, to deal with a meltdown. And there was something else: a small, quiet voice I’d been hearing more and more lately. “Why?” the voice asked.

Why did I have to fight this battle? He wasn’t asking to Rollerblade in traffic. He just wanted to sit in the car. Why couldn’t I leave him, just this once?

If it had been warm out, I would have said no. I knew about how quickly a closed car can overheat, even on a 60-degree day. But it was cool and cloudy. I’d grown up in that same town in the 1980s and had spent hours waiting in the back seat of my parents’ station wagon, windows open, reading or daydreaming, while they ran errands. Had so much really changed since then

So I told him I’d be right back. I cracked the windows and child-locked the doors and set the alarm. When I got back five minutes later, he was still playing his game, smiling. We picked up his sister and our suitcases back at my parents’ house and caught our flight home.

It took me a while to figure out what had taken place in the parking lot — that a stranger had watched me go into the store, recorded my son, recorded the license plate on my mother’s car and called 911. [Editor’s note: The woman could have offered to watch the child just as easily, or quietly done so.]
Exhibit B: A woman left a comment about the dumb kids taking selfies at Auschwitz and saying that kids are dumb and shouldn’t pay the price for the rest of their lives, via Gizmodo:

But in September 2015, [Monika Glennon] she was suddenly plunged into an American nightmare. She got a call at 6 a.m. one morning from a colleague at Re/Max telling her something terrible had been posted about her on the Re/Max Facebook page. Glennon thought at first she meant that a client had left her a bad review, but it turned out to be much worse than that.

It was a link to a story about Glennon on She’s A Homewrecker, a site that exists for the sole purpose of shaming the alleged “other woman.” The author of the Homewrecker post claimed that she and her husband had used Glennon as their realtor and that everything was going great until one evening when she walked in on Glennon having sex with her husband on the floor of a home the couple had been scheduled to see. The unnamed woman went into graphic detail about the sex act and claimed she’d taken photos that she used to get everything from her husband in a divorce. The only photo she posted though was Glennon’s professional headshot, taken from her bio page on Re/Max’s site.

….

She was mystified as to the post’s author. She thought it could be a rival realtor, or an acquaintance who was angry at her.

“I was looking at every person in my life and every stranger and wondering who did it to me and why,” Glennon told me by phone. “It makes you rethink every relationship in your life.”

Eventually, after $100,000 in attorney’s bills, Glennon was able to unmask the culprit. It turned out to be a complete stranger who had been offended by a comment Glennon had made about a news article on Facebook.

Notice the similarity? In both cases, complete strangers distorted innocent activities by their fellow Americans and decided to invade someone else’s life. Destroy someone’s life.

What happened to minding one’s own business? When did American life so completely change?

A few things have happened. In a small town, everyone knows the Town Gossip, the Church Biddy, the loose-lipped Guttersnipe, the Babbling Drunk. These folks were the exceptions to the rule of minding your own business. Either through overt meanness or carelessness, a gossip passed along their stories at the knitting circle or at the bar. And while these people were often disliked, they were a known quantity and could be avoided. Or, the person who heard a tall tale from these folks could filter the contents through the lens of knowing the character assassin’s tendencies. With the flat interaction online, filtering for character of a person on a Facebook page or fact-checking the veracity of a character assassin is impossible. An anonymous tip to a cop? Well, he’s gotta respond to nosy nellie… even though the evidence is a happy kid in a car.

Another change happened, too: More mothers are in the workforce, so fewer parents are at home. Even suburban neighborhoods are sometimes empty, save for one or two houses. People don’t know their neighbors and they don’t know the kids and they don’t interact with anyone. It’s easy to call the cops on people one doesn’t know. It’s less effort to be tattletale than a good neighbor.

Public shaming is now high art to be praised. People go onto the internet, take a picture, and write a post about some heinous sin that must be stopped: Like the crime of the peanut butter sandwich. Remember the mother who decided that the world needs to stop for her allergic kid? She wrote a Letter to the Mother at Target who fed her kid the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The offended mom of the bubble boy had to express her very important rebuke? Oh yes, she had to. Here’s her ridiculousness:

As the mom of a 7-year-old with a life-threatening peanut allergy, I couldn’t help but wonder what I would say if I ever had the opportunity to speak with you directly. I read that you weren’t too thrilled about being “lectured” by another shopper about why the sandwich was such an issue. While you may never even read this, there are things I really want you to know and understand. I don’t want to “lecture” you, too; I just want to talk — mom to mom — because we’ve all made mistakes.
Really? The mom who fed her kid a PB&J made a mistake? Not you, the sanctimonious scold?

If the kid is too sensitive to go to Target and breath peanut dust, maybe he shouldn’t go anywhere. The world doesn’t need to change for him. He needs to prepare for a harsh, cold world. And his mother needs to tend to her business.

Americans need to go back to minding their own damn business. It’s not your business if someone wears a MAGA hat. It’s not your business if someone wears a Che shirt (though they do reveal themselves as morons and it’s okay to giggle). It’s not your business if a parent lets her kid play in the park across the street or take a walk or plays in his own yard. It’s not your business if a kid is in a car playing a video game on a mild fall day. It’s not your business to be judge and jury to a commenter on Facebook or Twitter. Keyboard commando vigilantes might well expend some effort to better their own lives rather than seek some benign social media user to destroy.

It is none of your damn business. Mind your own business. Tend your own little catastrophe that’s called life. Fix your problems, your family’s problems, and if you’re so damn concerned about the world, volunteer and serve someone.

What a narcissistic, overly sensitive, bitchy culture America has become. That is not what America used to be. Americans prized their independence, and the independence of their friends and neighbors. They might not agree with them, but it was none of their business.

Just mind your business. It’s the American way.

Link

I think that some people would like to bring back Puritan punishment. Social media is simply the current medium. Tattle tales used to be punished in days gone by.

People have always done this, getting even or getting something over on someone aka revenge is a strong motivator.

Now the tools exist to DOX someone with truth or fake reports easily, theres probably you tube videos on how to do it and not get caught.

Like all the news stories we see this stuff has gone on from the beginning of time, the innerweb has just made access to the stuff easier.

Again, bring back the smallsword. If you want to call me out on something, claim offense, or slander my name, publicly or privately, have at it. 7:00 AM, under the oaks. Bring a friend.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I think that some people would like to bring back Puritan punishment. Social media is simply the current medium. Tattle tales used to be punished in days gone by.

I would challenge it something akin to North Korea where it is "look what I did for our government and supreme leader, do I get my cookie now?"

Many years ago, when my children were young, I had a very good friend who had some young kids as well.
One day his ornery son went across the street in town and picked up a rock and threw it threw a window of a house.

My friend heard the glass break and ran out into the street. He took his son by the hand and asked if he threw the rock. When the boy, aged 7 said yes, he smacked him on the bottom once with his had.

Within the hour Child Services was there to warn him against Ever doing that again. Some "neighbor" turned him in.

Sigh. Twice yesterday I saw people on the freeway driving like complete and utter dangerous morons. Inside six feet from the bumper in front of them at 75 miles an hour, trying to push the person in front of them out of the way because apparently 10mph over on the freeway isn’t enough and simply flashing from a respectable distance and giving the person ahead a chance to move over might take too long. Of course the person in front got offended and appeared to decide to take their sweet time. The first time, my 16 year old son was driving, we were in the slow lane watching this. The thought ran through my mind that these idiots are going to cause an accident and get someone hurt. I’ll admit I was tempted to call the plates into CHP and give them a heads up. Instead, the little voice in the back of my head said, “Mind your own business.”, so I left the phone alone, pointed out the stupidity and danger to my son, and was pleased to note that he was already on it and making space. I told him he was right on to do so, and he pointed out that they were both morons. It is well drilled into him that the fast lane is for passing and once by (absent other factors) you should get back over.

You don’t know why the guy in back is in such a hurry - probably he is just an entitled ass, but maybe his child or parent is sick or injured, maybe his wife is in labor, maybe whatever. None of that excuses his behavior, but there’s no reason to hold him up and participate in his drama. Just stay out of the way and mind your own bidness...

Few weeks back my Wifes Family had our annual reunion at Lk Tahoe. We rented a few houses and had our own dock. I owuld go out on the dock at sunset and smoke a cigar. The beach front is semi private I guess, as others in that area walk up and down the beach.

One evening a woman walks the 50 yds out to the end of the dock to notify me; "You can't smoke out here".

I saw it coming an immediately told her; "You need to mind Your own business".

She ruined my quiet time that afternoon. I had the same thoughts as are posed by this thread. WHEN did we become a Nation of petty squealers and fun Police?

But, what about “if you see something, say something?”

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's fine if the person doesn't like what I'm doing and "says something" directly to me. Then I can decide whether or not to tell them to "f*** off".



I wanted to pull up Jackie Gleason's infamous scene in "Smokey and the Bandit", but this is the best I could find...

I'd just like to note, that I've been promoting the olde timey New England Tradition of "Mind Your Business" for some years.

I don't mean the leftist fuckstick new england. I mean New England. Where, actually, I grew up and learned to leave people alone and expect same.

I don't care about your ideas or beliefs. I'll be polite to you, you be polite to me. We'll both mind our business.

Both the Left and the Right need to GET THE FUCK OUT of other peoples shit. We'll all be better for it.

Link to original video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RZH2bmbUTl4

Divide and conquer.

quote:

But, what about “if you see something, say something?”

This is good advice for those who enjoy being busybodies. I recall hearing keep your own nose clean, and snitches get stitches throughout my teenage years. Still good advice today.