Desperate for success

Hugh Muir writes in the Guardian of crime and criminals in Britain:

The polarisation of our society into the haves and have-nots, the connected and the disconnected, is such that those of us at one end of the scale can barely begin to think in the same way as those at the other.

Hugh's right, I can't think like them but I can understand how they think:

"People are trying to make as much money as they can to live a better life. They see a lot of things happen on TV, famous people, rap stars, gold, big cars, houses; they all want it but everyone ain't got the same means of getting it, so they are going about getting it in other ways."

These criminal scum-bags think they are just like us:

"Most of the criminals out there, they're not stupid, they're smart people, they just ain't had opportunities ... it's just, they do the easiest, like, the easiest thing that's there. Like me, for example, it was robberies and that. Robberies are easy, easy stuff. I could have done much, I could have maybe been a doctor, I could have been a lawyer, but it's just the way I grew up."

Hugh's conclusion is as expected:

An excluded schoolboy with no education and few prospects will nevertheless try to have the things and the life that we all aspire to. It is just that he might buy a gun, sell drugs or shoot someone on the way.

We are required to show personal responsibility, but desperate people do desperate things. If we don't like the way these young men play with cards they have been handed, perhaps we need to think harder about how we shuffle the deck.

Hugh, these people are criminals because liberals have tried to convince a whole generation they are not responsible for their behaviour; they are the powerless victims of capitalism. They are unable to associate success with work – they tell you as much – because they have never had to work – really work – for anything they have achieved in life. In effect, they cannot succeed because they have never been allowed to fail.

Rather than trying to stack the deck, we should teach everyone from a very young age they must follow the rules of the game. Break the rules; face the consequences.