The Rise of the Parochialist.

June 1, 2020 Baltimore, The Confounder. Violent Protests in other major cities but somehow Baltimore protests remained (for the most part) non-violent. Yet the murder rate just keeps on chugging. We’re at 125 on the year (124 at the same point last year.). This is such a strange place.

On the one hand, there aren’t mass shootings, not in the city. No one going postal at schools, church, or…at the post office. But we have shootings and murders every day, or every other day, or sometimes we double and triple or quadruple up on a day to make up for the few days where nothing happens. A little bit, every day, and pretty soon, more people die here in the daily shootings than in the mass shootings that get all the publicity.

It is so gradual and it doesn’t get the press (except for local press--The Baltimore Sun is good about logging every one of these killings) but it is more of a steady grind that just becomes part of the background noise of the city, along with jury duty, trash, and parking tickets…. Yet…sometimes we keep it together. Our team wins the Super Bowl and 200,000 people hit the streets and there is only one murder and it’s a “good day.” We have a protest that doesn’t turn deadly while other cities burn, and suddenly we feel a little better about ourselves…

But then we balance it all out with a violent weekend outside of the protests and then everything is back to normal. Hell, even Covid-19 doesn’t slow this down.

Hell, years ago the late City Paper did a piece about how a guy got murdered in a blizzard when the whole city was locked down. That took a commitment that I can’t fathom.

I don’t get it.

Baltimore. Sometimes I hate it with every fiber of my being, sometimes I can’t imagine being anywhere else…

I am the Parochialist. I took a break but now I’m back.