19 October 2018

Weaponised wine cellars: How not to solve the US gang problem

Al Jazeera English

A recent New York Post article reports that the ultra-rich of the Hamptons - an elite swathe of territory on New York's Long Island - are converting their properties into luxury fortresses in order "to hide from MS-13", the Mara Salvatrucha gang.
MS-13 have been described by USA Today as the "favourite villain" of President Donald Trump, who has delighted in referring to the gang's members as "animals". 
The Post details the various security options available, for gigantic sums, to guard against the MS-13 "spectre". Fortunately for the Hamptonites, there's still plenty of room for entertainment, with panic rooms"doubling as home theatres, wine cellars or even gun vaults". 
Billionaire John Catsimatidis is quoted endearingly: "I sleep with a gun underneath my pillow: a Walther PPK/S, the same one James Bond carried". 
Never mind that vast socioeconomic inequality is, you know, a driving force behind crime in the first place. But the beauty of capitalism is that there are always loads of profitable non-solutions to exacerbate problems under the guise of fixing them. 
As the president of a company that installs bullet-proof windows and doors tells the Post: "We get business when there is a tremendous amount of fear being generated".
Enter President Trump, whose goal in life is to turn the US itself into one giant fortified gun vault. In May of this year, the White House issued a brief dispatch titled "What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13", in which the word "animals" was utilised no fewer than nine times - lest there be any doubt as to its spontaneous political correctness in official discourse. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA ENGLISH.