I have noticed a growing phenomenon in our culture, but I am not sure where it comes from — people calling the authorities to report or “tattle” on others.
For example, I live in a rural are where it is OK to burn tree limbs and such as long as there isn’t a burn ban and you have a permit from the fire department. Despite this, and my having a permit, hose, and shovel all right there as required, almost without fail every time I light my burn pile, it seems some “do gooder” driving by picks up their cell phone and reports it to 911.
This triggers a visit from the local fire department, who then see that I have the permit, shovel, and hose and that everything is in order.
Really? What a waste of time and resources!
If these people are really so concerned, why don’t they stop and check in with me themselves? Why do they feel the need to call the authorities, or even get involved at all? I could understand if my house was on fire, and of course then I would appreciate the call. But when I am clearly just burning a pile of brush?
I could list many other examples, almost all cases where neighbors talking to neighbors rather than neighbors calling the authorities on neighbors would be the best solution.
For example, not long ago another commenter (Liz, I think?) shared a story of a neighbor who called the police when they noticed the neighbor’s tween-age boy (12, if I recall correctly) was home from school but his parents were not. The boy was calmly playing basketball IN HIS OWN DRIVEWAY waiting patiently for his parents, who were minutes away. Instead of the neighbor just asking the kid if he was OK, or if he needed to use the phone to call his parents, they called 911. And the family lost custody of their son, and spent months caught up in the CPS system trying to get him back. Really? Because they were stuck in traffic and 15 minutes late?
When and how did America become this? What are the implications to the concepts of freedom and liberty that we supposedly hold so dear?
Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Notes From a Red Pill Girl 
I AM surprised that your rural neighbors act this way. The main problem in my mother’s (rural) home area is that everyone drops in all the time without calling first (well, that’s rude in my opinion, anyway, but she doesn’t mind as much). If any of her neighbors saw something that concerned them, they’d come up the driveway immediately to see if any help was needed. Bu then, the police and fire departments are more than a few minutes away…
I AM surprised that your rural neighbors act this way.
Perhaps city people moved to the country they did.
Always want to be busy-bodies city people do
A 12 year old alone in his driveway shooting hoops without his parents home would not result in a CPS removal. There is much more to this scenario that we do not know.
Regarding the topic of your post, to me it appears that people, generally speaking, are full of hostility in our country and it manifests in passive aggressive behavior such as tattling on others for nonsense. I fear this trend downward will continue. We see this mostly in gender relations and race relations. Also young vs. old is playing out demographically in the election polling.
Let’s all get along by retuning to patriarchy. This can begin by my neighbors making me sammiches………
Or you, Bloom, send the male readers each a dozen sammiches tailor made to each of our specifications. (I called you “Bloom”)
Wouldn’t the sandwiches be a little dry by the time they got to Jellystone Park?
I think that Yoda is on top of it. It’s the new arrivals that use law enforcement to impose their values on the community.
RPG,
It may help if you provide the fire department with you cell phone number. That way, they can call ahead and save themselves an expensive trip.
Speaking of which, there is a story from my old community. There was a theater located right in the middle of a residential area. One summer, they had a tibute to Buddy Holly as their long running show. It was loud. One neighbor called them every night and they came by with their decibelmeter. They were always in legal limits. That next winter, they did the show again. She called and the police said they weren’t coming.
That theater has been there as long as I can remember. It was a new resident that called to complain. Perhaps she was looking to improve her property value by Harrassing the theater out of business.
This is a factual case as far as I can tell. These things happen more often than you think: http://reason.com/blog/2015/06/11/11-year-old-boy-played-in-his-yard-cps-t
“A 12 year old alone in his driveway shooting hoops without his parents home would not result in a CPS removal. There is much more to this scenario that we do not know.”
Poseidon, how can you possibly make such an assertion without having conducted detailed research into the policies and practices of every CPS organization in the United States?
See Free Range Kids for a lot of posts relevant to this topic:
http://www.freerangekids.com/
…including quite a few horror stories
Did I miss something? Is it bad to call her “Bloom” now 😉 Sorry if it is!
David, it’s generally very hard to get CPS to get involved enough to remove a child from the family, granted maybe it was easier in this state in the example. But in our state, it’s almost like the child has to come close to death (or be dead) to have them taken away. It’s horrible how often the parents get them back.
Dragonfly,
I have been careful to address out hostess as Redpillgirlnotes or RPG here because her ex-fiance might be monitoring. I don’t think that is a concern now.
About CPS, I wish that I could remember where I read it but, somewhere, a greater family and CPS got into it like the Hatfields and McCoys.
I think that how hard CPS comes down on parents is determined by how much “victimhood” the parents can claim. The more victimhood, the more lenient they are.
So if you are white and middle class in the suburbs, then CPS will come down hard as with the parents of the boy playing basketball
You would think Shark! But I live in a rural area largely populated by recent transplants, mostly city folk who commute to the nearby metro area to work, but want to “live in the country.” Prior to 1990ish, it was the way you describe. But now true “country folk w a pot of coffe always on” are the minority around here… It’s a strange dynamic.
Lol Poseidon, it’s ok to call me Bloom. That was the moniker I posted under initially, then started my blog here under rpg, so either works!
I would hope there was more to it than the parents were 15 min late, bc if kids did get taken and put in CPS custody for that, that is disturbing!
Overall the message is — talk to your neighbor! Don’t call the authorities instead!
@fuzzie this is happening in my area too. City people move in and then complain about things there long before they were (that rooster crows at dawn! That farmer runs his hay equipment dawn to dusk! Those cows stink!) etc
Sadly zero, it CAN happen. 😦
It’s good Dragonfly, I am ok with either 🙂
That’s true Dragonfly, it is again that all or nothing thing – there has to be some middle ground. Kids in danger get help, kids not in danger are left be. Seems the opposite often happens instead?
@ farm boy, sadly that does seem to be the case. A kid playing basketball is NOT an emergency, folks!!!! The fact that anyone thinks it is enough of one to call 911, is disturbing!
RPG,
These new people want to change things to suit themselves and enhance property value. There is only one problem, they don’t live in the suburbs any more.
I heard that, back in my old community, someone called to complain that their neighbor was actually burning wood in their fireplace. The only community that I know of that did that was Reno-Sparks because of the local temperature inversion layer in the winter. Some days were prohibited.
This just showed up, from the woman who runs Free Range Kids: ‘Our Unfounded Obsession with Safety is Costing Us Our Freedom:
http://nypost.com/2016/03/09/our-unfounded-obsession-with-safety-is-costing-us-our-freedom/
Truer words never said than your link, David.
I carry a Swiss Army knife. I don’t like the idea of having it confiscated.
Lol Liz! South Park has always has a gift for saying the obvious, when nobody else will!
Liz,
I have only flown once since 9/11.
Thanks for the South Park clip but, it’s not funny. They would pull that tomorrow.
It’s no mystery why people are far more interested in what their neighbors are up to than was once the case. It’s 9/11 syndrome.
Everyone is told constantly to be afraid that the local hayseed ISIL group is about to commit some infraction of the law and cause massive casualties in doing so. There have been just enough real incidents involving Muslim perpetrators (Ft. Hood, San Bernardino) to get people to believe that the threat exists, no matter how small it really is. My own real-world employer is holding classes for the employees to understand what counts as reportable.
The reality of the situation is that this nation has no defense whatsoever from some goofball deciding that his religion (or social biases) requires that he (usually) do something to attack those he sees as his enemy. This nation is awash in weaponry, with approximately one gun available per citizen. If for some ridiculous reason the real ISIL decided to invade the US, they might last about a day before they are exterminated, and we won’t need to call out the National Guard to take them down.
But people are sheep. They think and do whatever television tells them to, without a single thought about it. Why else do the Kardashians live in mansions at a time when working people can’t afford to rent apartments in many larger US cities?
No tyrant ever gained power by being honest about any threat to the society which spawns him. It is always about to conquer and pillage as the Russians did to Nazi Germany at the end of WWII unless the national citizens remain vigilant and reports on anything which escapes their rational understanding. Fear is the mind killer, and the body count in this nation is massive. It makes certain bank registers ring incessantly.
CPS will take a child away on the basis of a single person’s hearsay (provided that person is not the father). Anyone who doesn’t believe this is extremely naive and shouldn’t have children.
***
In respect to Snitch Nation, classes of people consider themselves arbiters of virtue. So we have people being swatted (political opponents call the cops and say someone is being tortured in a home, the SWATs knock the door down and destroy the house), we have people deciding that they’re “empowered” to “make a difference.”
I was necking with a woman in a county park last fall. Some dyke pulled up in her Subaru and then knocked on our window. “I’m just checking to see if everything’s all right here.”
“Other than your interrupting us?”
My girlfriend knew the drill, “Oh, no, everything is great, really.” Big smile.
Dyke waddles away. Drives away. We go back to mashing.
Seven minutes later the deputy shows up.
“We received a call that there may be a problem here.”
Sorta killed the buzz. At least it wasn’t her husband.
***
Remember, Bloom, to only burn the only tires on a foggy day.
True Blurkel, where I live now there are lots of armed folks who I guarantee would not be letting anybody take over anything! And yes, they won’t wait for the govt. to do what needs done. They will just do it. And I will make sammiches and provide provisions! 🙂
Indeed BV, people who believe it can’t or doesn’t happen are still asleep. It, unfortunately, happens all the time… We are each one rabid finger pointing away from life as we know it being a fond memory….
Think I mentioned a friend of mine from France who was very surprised to get a visit from CPS after explaining to her son’s teacher that when he threw himself on the ground and started shrieking and flailing, she put him in the closet to he wouldn’t hurt himself or anything else until he calmed down. The teacher asked (since the kid threw huge tantrums in the class and she didn’t know what to do). She got periodic CPS surprise inspections after that. I’m not sure if she was forced to take a class or not.
THink I mentioned how things are for military. A friend with several children was forced to take an all-day class on childcare because she was deemed to be a bad parent. Her offense? She had to cancel a mandatory prenatal instruction class twice, because her husband couldn’t watch the kids for various reasons. Obviously she couldn’t leave them alone and it was her fourth or fifth pregnancy. Alternately, if she’d left the kids at home by themselves she would have been a bad parent too…actually far worse by CPS standards. Very catch 22.
I also remember taking my wee ones to the base pediatrician and watching him or her questioning. “When you go to the beach, what’s the first thing your mother does?”
“When you get into a car, what’s the first thing your mother does?”
“When you get onto a bike…” and so forth. I always wondered what would happen if they hadn’t given the proper answers. Probably some mandatory parenting class.
What is the first thing a mother does at the beach? Sunscreen or ? I don’t know the “right” answer!!! Lol
Wow, Liz, mandatory prenatal classes when it’s her 4th or 5th child?
Our oldest son had tantrums like your French friend’s when he was very little (like 9 months to probably 20 months). He would actually try to bang his head on the floor or anything hard 😦 it was so scary and difficult, and the doctors acted like it was fine, but we were really afraid he’d hurt himself. And he would get really big bruises on his forehead when I followed the pediatricians’ advice to just ignore his tantrums, so I had to start wrapping him up in a blanket and holding him when he’d tantrum. It was my first ever experience with babies, so it kind of traumatized me, and I thought I was a horrible mother or that it must have been my fault in some way… but he’s fine now! Thank goodness we didn’t have any brushes with CPS even though he had bruises on his face every week 😦
Our second baby is easy – almost no tantrums at all, and definitely no harming himself. And he’s the happiest baby I’ve ever seen, wakes up happy.
“Wow, Liz, mandatory prenatal classes when it’s her 4th or 5th child?”
Oh, yeah. OR ELSE. Her husband had something written on his permanent record about it, too. Even if it was their eighth she would have had to go (it has been a while, now that I think about it I think she was on her sixth or something…it was a lot, irony is she could teach the class. More ironic still, the instructor had probably never had children).
I think those types of head-banging temper tantrums are pretty common (especially with boys), Dragonfly. People who’ve never had a child go through that don’t understand what it’s like. I’ve known people with eight kids who’ve never seen it, and one kid who had the worst case. It’s kind of like colic I think.
Judgybitch once explained that she dealt with her son’s one tantrum by “just telling” him (she only has one boy) “he needed to learn self control” or some such, when he was two, and that’s all he needed to calm down. I told her that trying to reason with a toddler is like trying to reason with a drunk, but I was glad that worked for her (no, I don’t believe it).
Her child was about three and he would throw things, bang his head, and everything else. She’d had a daughter and had never seen this sort of thing before. To make sure he didn’t hurt himself she padded the closet floor and walls and let him go until he calmed down. I thought that was pretty wise. Eventually he outgrew it of course. They all do. 🙂
“Her child” in the last paragraph above, I meant the French lady’s, not JB.
I don’t know the right answers to those questions either but, it sounds like a trap.
Liz…”More ironic still, the instructor had probably never had children”
And there are people teaching business at respected American universities who have never run a business or worked at a high level in one. It’s all about the Credentialz.
In their book How the Business Schools lost their way, Bennis & O’Toole observed that once, many years ago, the course in production management at MIT was taught by the manager of a nearby General Motors assembly plant. That probably wouldn’t be allowed today. “Virtually none of today’s top-ranked business schools would hire, let alone promote, a tenure track professor whose primary qualification is managing an assembly plant, no matter how distinguished his or her performance.”
The philosophy of the credentialists is that:
–you can’t do anything without being formally “trained” in it
–the training must be done by someone who has spent many years in a formal education setting
David,
It has been that way for quite a while. There is a story about how this student turned in a paper on a business model. It outlined overnight delivery of documents within the continental United States. He got a “D”. “Who could compete with the Post Office?” was the response. The student was so offended that he put it to work as Federal Express.
FWB,
It has gotten worse in general, though there are significant differences between industries. I think excessive credentialism is one of the primary inhibitors to class mobility in America. There is an interesting passage by Peter Drucker, from 1969, in which he celebrates the fact (as he saw it at the time) that America did not separate “schools for leaders” and “schools for followers” in the way he’d observed in Europe.
“The Harvard Law School might like to be a Grande Ecole and claim for its graduates a privileged position. But American society has never been willing to accept this claim.”
A lot has changed since then.
(This may seem far-afield from the original topic, but I actually think the points are quite connected)
RedPillGirl,
UPDATE: Will you hold off on publishing the guest article from Ladies Again for a few days? Our website has suddenly been hacked and we’re working to correct the issue now. Thanks!
No problem lilac, keep me posted!
That’s an interesting story about the history of Fed Ex, Fuzzie!
I wonder what they would have thought of the idea for Southwest. Or Hooters.
They’d have probably given Henry Ford an F.
” I think excessive credentialism is one of the primary inhibitors to class mobility in America.”
I think so too, but not just in America.
Europe is worse, from what I’ve heard. I’m sure Asia is probably worse too considering one test in highschool will determine the course of their life (high suicide rates cooresponding, uncoincidentally).
It’s only getting worse because education is such a racket now.
Liz,
I think you and David are right on that point. They have made themselves gatekeepers to employment.
RedPillGirl,
We’re back and better than ever! Let us know when you’re ready to publish. Thanks for waiting.
-LilacBlue
Sounds good lilac, will do!