I know, it's been years since I've been on the outside looking in. Years since I've actually paged through my latest issue of Awake!, poring over the "Watching the World" section, taking the pulse on how bad the world is getting. That way, when I got to my next door in field service I could give the poor uninformed householder a good heads-up, full of the latest facts on how close the end really is.
This morning I checked out my WT CD Library and was not disappointed. More discouraging news, exactly what I had counted on. Exactly what I had learned to rely on for my 19 years of being a JW.
*** Awake!, 2003, 7/8 p. 5 Why So Many Violent Crimes Now? ***
Why So Many Violent Crimes Now?
ALL crimes are evil. But mindless or purposeless crimes are harder to understand. The fact that they are often without an obvious motive baffles investigators. With mass communication becoming much more effective in recent years, such appalling crimes are known to millions, or even billions, within hours. A report published by the World Health Organization states that "violence leaves no continent, no country and few communities untouched."
But, wait! Secular news sources are obviously trying to muddy the waters of AWAKE! with reports that things are actually getting better as respects certain crimes and horrific events. First, this next report from the Boston Globe tells us (shudder) how crime has been going down. That, and my latest issue of TIME confirmed that this obvious hogwash is true.
In 2009, crime went down. In fact it's been going down for a decade. But more and more Americans believe it's getting worse. Why do we refuse to believe the good news? ...
Across the country, FBI data show that crime last year fell to lows unseen since the 1960s - part of a long trend that has seen crime fall steeply in the United States since the mid-1990s. ...
Take murder. The murder rate rose and fell over the 20th century, climbing to an early peak in 1933, then dropping sharply and staying low through the Depression, World War II, and into the 1960s. It rose to a record level in 1974, broke that record in 1980, and stayed prodigiously bloody through the early ’90s. This is when Bill Clinton boosted funding for local police forces, and police began experimenting with radical new approaches to policing, such as those employed in the so-called Boston Miracle. In 1994, the murder rate started to fall, and it’s been falling ever since. Rape, robbery, and aggravated assault have dropped along with it. Last year was no exception. According to preliminary FBI data, the murder rate dropped 10 percent from 2008 to 2009, robbery fell 6.5 percent, aggravated assault fell 3.2 percent, auto theft was down a whopping 18.7 percent.
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/02/14/imaginary_fiends/
To shake my foundations even further, yesterday it was announced that highway deaths have gone down again, The U.S. Department of Transportation reported Thursday that the number of traffic fatalities in 2009 fell to the lowest level since 1954, declining for the 15th straight quarter. ...
The department put the year's death count at just under 34,000, a drop of about 9 percent from the 37,000-plus deaths in 2008. ..
The fatality rate for 2009 also fell to the lowest on record -- 1.16 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
http://www.omaha.com/article/20100312/NEWS01/703129893
Does that mean I can't trust AWAKE!, that bastion of christian vigilance, any longer? If a fellow can't trust AWAKE!, what can he trust?
Len