Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Saying It Is One Thing, Doing It Is Another

I posted an article today on my Facebook page about a 10-year-old boy who was arrested while at school, put in handcuffs, shoved into the back of a police car, and taken away as his mother recorded the incident. Throughout the whole thing, the boy kept saying he was confused and didn't understand what was going on. The mother kept asking the police to tell her why they were taking her son away, and the police never responded.

A little later in the article, it explains that the boy was arrested for an incident that took place in October that involved the boy striking his teacher at school. The school name had the word "academy" in it, so I am assuming it is a specialty or exclusive kind of school. Apparently, the boy would not stop being disruptive in class so the teacher told the boy to go to time out. When the boy would not go, the teacher grabbed the boy to move him and the boy struck him. Now, you could say that the teacher was guilty of assault as well, but that is not how this played out.

In this instance, the boy did not threaten his teacher with a knife or attack the teacher with a bat. The boy fought back when the teacher grabbed him, which can be expected. Handcuffing a 10-year-old and hauling him off to jail is bad enough, but this boy has autism and every adult involved in this situation knew that. Some children with autism do not liked to be touched and react violently when they are grabbed in any way. The "adults" in this situation did everything wrong to the extreme in this situation, and the boy is the one who suffered the consequences.

Instead of handling the situation the right way with experts in autism stepping in, the country got to read about a 10-year-old boy with autism being handcuffed and taken away for something that happened six months ago. Obviously, all of the big talk about how awesome this country treats people with autism is nothing but a smoke screen.

There is a lot of disappointment to be found in the way the American public says one thing and does another. The NFL made lots of powerful commercials about the issue of domestic violence, yet the league still gives domestic violence criminals the lightest kinds of fines and suspensions. Saying one thing, and doing another.

President Trump told all of America during his campaign that he was going to build a wall and Mexico would pay for it. Now that it is time to put funding together for that wall, it is the American people who are being asked to pay for it. Saying one thing, and doing another.

It is getting hard to find people to trust anymore. Whenever a group or public figure makes a promise, I kind of wait for the other shoe to drop before developing an opinion. Lately, I just know that the group or public figure will go back on their word in some way, and everyone is going to be disappointed.

Hypocrisy is all around us and it is getting worse. I think the most distressing part of all of this is that people keep falling for it. Someone makes a promise to do something good, and then the end result is everyone gets disappointed.

I wonder why people never break promises to do something terrible? I think I could restore my faith in humanity if more evil people broke their promises, and more good people kept theirs. But that does not seem to be the case.

If you make a promise, then keep it. If you develop a history of saying one thing and then doing another, then don't be surprised when people stop listening to what you have to say completely.

George N Root III is a Lockport resident who tries to keep his word. Follow him on Twitter @georgenroot3, or send him a message at georgenroot3@gmail.com.