This is the e-mail I read on the air this morning that so many asked me to post:
I was born in north Omaha.The neighborhood my family lived in was a middle class neighborhood, mostly white families but there was one black family at the end of our block.We kids played together all day and the parents had cookouts and played cards moving from house to house each week.We kids stayed at a different house on card night and the teenage boys across the street would babysit all of us.I wasn't very old but one night, there was definitely something going on.The parents kept running up the street to check on us and the babysitters wouldn't let us play outdoors.The oldest boy went across the street to his house for some reason, and didn't come back.I remember his brother calling the police and calling his parents, and then the next thing I remember is moving to Millard. I was much older when my mom told me that the oldest boy saw someone throw something through the front window of his home and he ran across the street to confront the kids who did it, there was a fight and he knocked out.They strung him up on his front porch using his belt and left him to die.He was sixteen.We moved into a half-finished house in Millard a few days later and we never went back to that neighborhood.It's been almost 60 years, but I can still remember all the kids, their names, their parents, which house they lived in and what their backyards looked like.After we left, the neighborhood disintegrated.The local businesses (a barbershop, a diner, a bookstore and a hair salon) all closed -- 3 of them were burned out in the race riots of 1968.Of the sixteen kids living on that street, nine died at the hands of gang violence within 10 years of us leaving, four moved away and four more - we have no idea where they are.
Fast forward to today.When I got married, my husband insisted that we were not going to live in Omaha.We moved to a sleepy little town nearby.My adult children have been seeing posts on Twitter and Facebook where people are trying to incite violence in our town.Stores that normally are open all night, are closing at 5pm. Police are parked at each of the gas stations in town when they close, to make sure no one fire bombs them.I don't own a firearm but my husband & I are planning on taking a firearm safety class (maybe through Tactical 88??) and learn to shoot.We are going to each buy a firearm.I've talked to 3 of my neighbors - all three have adult sons now - and they all have hunting firearms and their concealed weapon permits; they also carry firearms with them.
So, what's changed?We have raised a generation of kids who don't understand consequences. They've never had to face them.They've been given trophies for participating so they don't believe there should winners or losers.When they become an adult and go out in the world, they find out that participation trophies don't count for jack squat and they don't know how to deal with that frustration.They act out like a toddler going through their terrible twos.They don't look at the facts - they don't care about the facts - they believe that just because they think something is, then it is and facts are just an inconvenience. They've grown up playing violent video games and watching violence in movies their entire lives.They think it's normal. They've deadened themselves to the plight of others.They never learned Civics in school and they don't study history to see how it repeats itself over and over when we don't learn its lessons.They think they are so damned smart because they live in this technological wonderland of computers and automation - they believe themselves to be the smartest generation that ever lived and they should be running the world!Yet they lose their minds and buy out entire toilet paper inventories because they might have to do without in a global pandemic shows you they don't know what it's like to live without.
If they had to live through a world at war like our grandparents did, this generation would turn over and die.They wouldn't be able to live with rationing and blackouts.They believe that our system of government is to blame for all the misery in the world - because the know nothing about how the rest of the world lives.They don't understand that their grandparents, great grandparents, great great grandparents died to ensure they would have the freedoms they do today.These people aren't real to them because family relationships are non-existent in this world of computers.They haven't grown up seeing men missing limbs & eyes, burn scars over most of their bodies or carrying shrapnel around in their bodies and limping because of the pain - the veterans have been dying off at a great rate and now most of them are shuttled into a nursing home and forgotten.We have done this generation a great disservice by not teaching them discipline, teaching them that it's their civic duty to volunteer their time for their community (whether it's painting park playgrounds, reading to children at a local library or just even mowing the lawn for an elderly neighbor who is sick).They see what they perceive to be an injustice and they lash out like a toddler.They don't stop for the facts - they see what they see on social media and make their decisions on who was right and who was wrong - and then they protest.When the facts come out, they claim that the "man" is just covering up the truth.We have never taught them critical thinking skills and the liberal school systems and the media sure the hell don't want them to use that skill set - it's a form of mind control for them.They don't see their hypocrisy.
So what is going to happen?These riots are going to continue happening.Instigators are being paid to whip idiots like our children up in a frenzy so no one can focus on the real issues going on around them.And one of these days, these hellraisers are going to come into a neighborhood and they are going to meet a small army of angry, fed up adults who are armed and there is going to be a massacre.
I am sorry for the diatribe.This is just heavy on my heart as I watch current events unfolding.
I wish you and the rest of the staff at KFAB the very best -- I really enjoy listening to you all.Stay safe.
--Shawn
Read more about the issues here in the late '60s HERE.