Charlotte's proposed curfew is a sign of our slide into a low trust society | Hour 2

What's going on. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It is heard live every day from noon to three on WBT Radio in Charlotte. And if you want exclusive content like invitations to events, the weekly live stream, my daily show prep with all the links, become a patron. Go to thepetecleanershow dot com. Make sure you hit the subscribe button. Get every episode for free right to your smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for your support. All Right, so I do have more text massages regarding the proposed curfew in Charlotte. This is coming from the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Estella Patterson, who wants the city's curfew to be nine pm for every child seventeen and younger. And this was discussed last night at the Charlotte City Council meeting. They did not vote on this. It will come back later for a vote. There were a dozen of these quote unquote teen takeovers, which I find to be a sanitized euphemism for what these things are. These these are mob gatherings. They're mobs, and they quickly escalate into vandalism and assault and injuries and such. Guns have been found among people that are there because you know they're showing up at this massive gathering. Now, at the risk of sounding like, you know, the old guy saying back in my day, but back in my day, like you would go to a house party, did you go to somebody's house they were throwing a party? Right? Or where I grew up And I grew up in a suburb. Okay, Long Island is basically one big suburb, right, And so they weren't a lot of these third spaces. We did have a bowling alley though. We did have one of those, but they were closed. So we would go to a shopping center parking lot and everybody would hang out in the King Cullen parking lot, which is not very smart actually because it's on a major road and police would drive by and then they would pull into the lot and everybody would scatter. Then there was also this area we called it bar X and I don't know where the name came from. It's not a bar it's actually like some woods, like a grassy field area, and people would gather there. That's what we did. We didn't have any third spaces gov CO provided to us. We didn't have any of that. And this was when I was, you know, seventeen, eighteen years old, last year or two in high school. Okay, it would never have occurred to us, mainly because there wasn't anything really open at that time of night. Like you're going and hanging out. It's eleven twelve at night, one in the morning, whatever, and you're out there drinking underage, smoking cigarettes, right, that was what we were doing. There wasn't no, wasn't anything to do in my town except that everybody would hang out whatever. I don't recall there ever being any fights. I'm sure there were. I never saw one. I did see one. There was one that erupted, yes, at a house party. So like I'm not like, I'm not ignorant of the desire four teenagers to go out and do these things. That was me. I did those things. However, it would never have occurred to us. And I ran with a bunch of different crews that some of them were a little bit more on the risk taking side of the spectrum than risk averse. It would never occur to us to rampage through a place like Birkdale Village to jump on cars and kick in side view mirrors and stuff like it. Just it would never occur to us to do that. Why would you do that? The fear, first off, the fear of you know, mom or Dad finding out, like the cops brought me back home in a cruiser, Like that's the first fear. And then it's like, I'm gonna pick up criminal charges and that's gonna follow me around for the rest of my life and I don't want that, so I won't engage in that behavior. Right. So, like the fear of the repercussions kept us from doing more egregious things, there was also a shared set of norms that you know, that's a line over there, I'm not going to cross because I don't want to. I'm not going to go, you know, damage somebody's car. I'm not going to go do that because that's just a social norm. And here's the problem when you when you're in a society as we are now versus thirty years ago, as the society loses trust and becomes a low trust society and you don't have shared norms across large groups of diverse peoples, you then have to have more state enforcement of what those norms are. Because the society could self police, individuals could self police through shame and guilt and oh, you don't want to mess with them, they're a bad crowd or whatever you're We are not like that, don't don't don't engage in that behavior, that criminal behavior. But if people don't self regulate, this is because this goes back to like sort of the core issue that the whole country is facing, I think, which is, you know, these uh, these virtues that our society was literally based on are no longer shared across all groups. And so when you don't have those virtues, as I think it was Adams who said it is, you know, our system of government it doesn't work with a non virtuous people. You have to self police. We have to have these virtues individually at the family level, at the neighborhood level, at the city and the state and the national like do you have to have these virtues things like no, you don't just go randomly around punching people little things like that, you know, because those things degrade the trust. So let me get to some of these messages. Due to Oscar says, yeah, malls as a third place, as they call the you know third place. The youth have to have a third place that they got home and they got school. What's the third place? And one of the city council members said, he asked his eighteen year old sister and she said, basically South Park Mall and that's it. And so the mall is a third place. And Oscar says, how did that work out for North Lake Mall? That's a fair question, right, These are the consequences of actions. Tony b says, when did it become Govco's responsibility to provide entertainment for kids? And I think Russ Beth's favorite Russ, I think he hits on it here. What causes the lack of opportunities for the youth? The same thing that causes food deserts, the collapse of Eastland Mall, the Epicenter, and the pending end of North Lake and other places. Yes, changes in shopping habits, but mostly unsafe and unprofitable places due to bad behavior that drives away everyone else. Right, this is why the thing that government is supposed to provide is the umbrella of security. Why so people are free to engage in economic activity without having to be threatened in their person and property. And if government cannot provide that umbrella of security, you will not get the economic activity and that manifests itself in ways like food deserts, with things locked up behind glass in the pharmacy. Everything you got to get a customer service rep to get anything. That's why all right. For over a year now you've heard me talking about create a video. Great local company in mint Hill that has helped more than two million families preserve their memories by turning old photos, VHS tapes, film reels and slides into lasting keepsakes. Now creative videos helping families and groups create brand new memories while they're traveling. Introducing group travel videos perfect for family reunions, church mission trips, group vacations, destination weddings, student trips, senior adult groups, sports teams, I mean really any gathering of people that you care about that's traveling together. 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You can email Katie Katie at group travel videos dot com. Group travel videos from old memories to new adventures, preserving life's moments for a lifetime. More from the text line, Russ says, there's a pretty big gap between I wouldn't do that because my parents would be disappointed. Damaging property is unacceptable, to completely inappropriate behavior that you film and post online, but are then surprised when society and authorities don't accept that behavior. Yes, there is a big gap. The nice Marie. Says, if only they had Eastland Mall well avoided. So now no, no, sorry, that that was JD Councilman j D massueras arias Dana always interested to add some trolling. All fast food restaurants will close at eight so they can clean up for the next day if that curfew is implemented. Yeah, all right, there's. No way in hell you have children. You are so not in touch with the youth and giving them outlets in some facet or another. Dude, Can I say that, Yes, dude, I just ran through the exact thing that you're describing in my own personal life that I engaged in that behavior. I went out to the parking lots, I went out to the woods, to the fields like we did those things. Those things were not given to us. We were trespassing on the parking lot. I don't know who owned the property. It may have been. I think it was just like some field, like abandoned field or something. We all could have got charges absolutely if we were out there, but the cops would show up and everybody would scatter. And that is a different thing than showing up to go rampaging through Birkdale Village's business district. And that is not on government to provide the rampaging mob with some park that they can go tear up or something. Because there's an element there of breaking the rules. That's the that's the titillating part of it here, that the teenagers are acting in a rebellious fashion, and so they're testing boundaries and they're like, hey, let's go out and do this crazy thing, and this is all the rage on TikTok, so let's do that. And that's not acceptable. And I don't have to fund government skating rinks or bowling alleys so kids don't tear up businesses. The leadership in Charlotte is really shining bright. Now they can't control the teenagers yet. Well, it's a problem all over the country. And again it's social media fueled. Mary says, I'm old, but we used to hang out at the Hobo Joe's parking lot. We were just looking for cute boys, not vandalizing. David says, does this mean that the teens are racist because they're not inviting a diverse enough crowd. Oh, that's a good point. That's a very good point. I hadn't even thought of that. Gary says. It seems like the city councilman accidentally highlighted the problem in that this is coming from minority communities. But we can't address the issues in the black community or the shared common denominator in most of these Charlotte takeovers and violent crime like punching or stabbing women, right, I mean, there is obviously an element. The councilman said that. And by the way, there is also the punishment that CMPD is looking to meet out. I suspect is more so for the parents. If you're going to let your kids run wild, then you're going to face a charge as well. And the parent may actually care more about that than the teenager. So if the parent doesn't want to get in trouble, maybe they will parent more. But again, like this is what happens when you have this erosion of a high trust society. Eastland Mall had a skating rink, crime went up, nobody wanted to go there and the mall died. That is correct, seven oh four number. They did have a skating rink. DA says they don't want to do the takeovers in the woods. They want the attention and they want to at least inconvenience and bother people just trying to get around their daily lives or at worse, terrorized people who are scared as hell by this behavior. Right, it is transgressive in nature. The takeovers are transgressive. They are antagonizing their fellow citizens. That's what the behavior is, antagonistic, transgressive. The fact that it's coming from the same cultures that have found similar ways to annoy and terrorized people like the knockout game is no surprise. Yeshua says, why can't they just make a positive law that only permits teen takeovers between nine am and one thirty pm and only the second Thursday and Saturday of every month. This is like the spirit rocks. Don't vandalize the school. Here's a big rock. You can go out there and spray paint that thing up with a permit, of course, and don't say anything nice about Charlie Kirk. All right, a couple more text messages and then I'm going to move on to another topic, but kind of related. Okay, So this message on the text line from Miguel who says the takeovers are criminals, pure and simple. NC officials are too afraid to confront this. Dozens of cars with ghost plates, no insurance, stolen guns, and guess what, a lot of those cars running on stolen parts, very expensive like the Dodge Chargers and challengers. Governor and NC State Trooper theft Unit, in my opinion, too scared to do the job. Need to go to Florida or Texas to see how they dismantle takeover cars and discover stolen cars. Well that's interesting, not surprising though. And yeah, like we've been talking about the teen takeovers or as somebody recommended in an email. I think it was Chris. Yeah, he said, I don't think I've heard teeny bopper takeover because we were trying to rebrand this thing. Easy to adopt. It's alliterative and sufficiently humiliating to the little punks that do it. Yeah, the teeny bopper takeover, I like it. So there are different ways that these these mobs form and what they look like and who participates. Right, Some are probably you know, fifteen sixteen year olds and such, and they're just all on foot and they're just running all around like we saw out of Birkdale Village. But then there are other takeovers that occur where people gather around like an intersection, and you get cars that go into the intersection and are doing you know, doughnuts and peel outs, burnouts, all of this stuff. And so yeah, so they're different non infestations of the way this stuff looks, and it would not surprise me that there's a lot of stolen parts in a lot of those cars. Paul says, I grew up in the seventies, Thank God. When I was a teen, we did productive things. We built stuff, model kits, model trains, model rockets. The critical point here is that we interacted with our parents. When parents were not around. We rode bikes to go fishing. We played street hockey and stickball car we played cards. We made fun of our own fun. We made our own fun. We never hurt anyone or anything. We rode our bikes to the record store and later listened in amazement to the first Boston album and Van Halen Sure we walked down to the woods and creek and pinched beer from dad's fridge. No one was ever around again, and we had fun and hurt no one, and soon enough we all got jobs at the corner grocery. Sometimes I wish it was seventy six, nineteen seventy six. Again, heh. Look, people do tend to look back on all of these things, as you know, I think, probably through overly nostalgic lenses. Everything was great back then. I mean. There were pros and cons. Like everything else in life, right, there are trade offs. And so for example, did you know that the murder rate in America just hit a historic low? Like that's an improvement, So. John says, growing up in rural Maryland, we used to drink beer in the woods or fields until the cops showed up. The mall back then was only for the video arcade before we discovered the beer. Sounds like you and I had a very similar upbringing. Yeah, we used to walk up to the you know, we had the bowling alley and it had a couple of video game the arcade games in the bowling alley, and so we would walk home from school and you'd pass the bowling alley and we'd go in there and pump quarters into double Dragon. You know, allan says Renee Johnson. Sounds as though she isn't concerned about citizens safety first and foremost. Mitch says, how dare you project your whiteness expectation of civility? Yeah, I guess. Imagine a world, Jim says, where there's technology to temporarily block and throttle cell phone signals, where, for example, a limit of fifty youths with phones are congregated in a public or private space, no live streaming or uploading of the flash mobs, no team takeovers. Well, that's an interesting idea geo fence an area. If you start, if you notice that there is a mass congregation, you know, unannounced, not like outside of like a you know, a music venue or like a concert or something or a you know, football game, you end up with, you know, a flash mob gathering and they've all got cell phones, then you're going, I mean, they'll find a way to beat it, I guess, but that that's an interesting concept. I am all about the solutions. I always love when I see the follow up. Sorry for all the spelling errors. That's a good chance you're not going to your text is not going to get read. Kevin says. I know this wasn't common up North where you grew up, but down here in the South, if you disrespected a teacher, police officer, or even just a neighbor, you likely got your butt beat by that neighbor or teacher. Then you'd get your butt beat again by your dabd. Why would you think that didn't occur up north? They were actually teach you to respect authority when you benefit. Okay, I cannot read this now. They post videos to social media vandalism and violence because they know there'll be zero repercussions, right, And so that's the thing. There's no fear of any ramifications. So if there is no fear that this behavior is going to cost you something, then you are more likely to do it if you are, because like, why otherwise would you be afraid of getting caught. If getting caught actually gives you street cred or you know, gives you some sort of elevated status in your social clique, then that's the point. Is to get arrested, to get into trouble, right, And that's always been the case. There's always been the bad boys. There's always been the people out there that are willing to be the rebel and break the law. Oh my gosh, Johnny, so dreamy. This is like literally every movie for like the last eighty years, but not every movie, but a lot of the movies. Right, So yeah, this. The fear was that there would be ramifications first at home, if not immediately as it happens. And yes, I've had my head banged against another student's head by a teacher for disrupting the class. So yeah, that's that's how they meted out the punishment and the corrections when I was growing up. Yeah, maybe they can find them with all the flock cameras, right, See that's what I mean. Like I was on the fence going back and forth on the flock cameras. Now it's like, well, wait a minute, if we can arrest all these people with the street takeovers, then I don't know, maybe some pros there. I have an idea. I have an idea. Remember there are no bad ideas under the Cone of Creativity. Okay, so I am firmly under the cone. But I have an idea for third spaces for the Youth Data Center parking lots. Hm hm hm all right. I mean, like you got these big facilities going in, we can require them to make really big parking lots, or maybe require them to have a park and it'd be the designated gathering place for everybody between the ages of you know what fourteen and eighteen. And you can have like a gate around it so people would have to you know, like you check IDs on the way, in which I know, I know is racist and you know, disenfranchising, but I mean you want to make sure that there aren't any like twenty one year olds going into the data center. But I'm thinking that might be it might be a way to solve two problems at once. I'm just spitballing, but speaking of the data centers, the town of Waxaw gateway to Marvin is having a public meeting for neighbors to weigh in on a possible one year data center moratorium to night six point thirty at the town hall. The purpose of the proposed moratorium is to allow the town time to research, study, develop, and consider amendments to the town's land development code, and also help the Chinese catch up. The process could include closing potential loopholes in the development code that could allow a data center project to be proposed unexpectedly a one year moratory one year. The mayor of wax Saw, Robert Murray, says, quote, I don't want to say never, but I don't think a data center is what wax Saw would want. A lot of folks here are clamoring for a lot more parks, open space. And fields. Okay, so I'm assuming athletic fields rather than just like open fields, because that would be kind of weird to have like the city go around, buy up a bunch of empty fields and then not do anything with them. Just I guess it's preservation, but not improve them. But parks, open space and fields. You know what would really help to pay for more parks, open space and fields tax money from data centers. Yeah. See, because here's the thing. I've been doing a lot of research on the data centers. You're going to hear some of it. I'm going to go into this in depth in the next hour. And so much of the data center opposition is rooted in error, lies, propaganda. It's not to say there aren't problems. They're they're definitely, they're definitely you know, concerns, they're definitely issues. Absolutely. As with all new technologies and all new booms, it is the equivalent like this is infrastructure. This is the equivalent of the railroad boom. Right, this is and this is a technological revolution, and the United States is leading the. Way on it. And in the communities where. The data centers go, they actually see more tax revenue and to new studies have come out showing it actually reduces your electricity costs. Yeah, because the electricity market, the industry, it's not like a straight up like, well, it is supplied demand, but they create a certain amount of energy, and so when you have more consistency on for the for the load, then it actually then reduces the costs because you have these bigger entities that are paying more into it to pay for the upkeep of the of the grid. So they've actually seen their prices come down a little bit. Yeah, who'd have thought. Statesville? Last night they did a first reading at their city council on a one hundred and eighty day moratorium on these things as well. I saw Charlotte, where is it? Here? Here it is? We are in day like sixty two of the one hundred and fifty day moratorium that the Charlotte City Council did over at the Charlotte Ledger report by Ashley Fahe. Already some council members and members of the public have asked whether the moratorium can or will be extended beyond its expected expiration on November fifth, So they're already looking to extend it beyond one hundred and fifty days. So like we are, break checking our own revolution. All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I could not do the show without your support and the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast, so if you'd like, please support them too and tell them you heard it here. You can also become a patron at my Patreon page or go to dpetecallanershow dot com. Again, thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything while I'm gone.