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That's the part of it that is hard to communicate. At no part in my story was I the direct victim in any of this, beyond getting beat up by the illegals many years older than me who were placed in a middle school classroom likely based on education level, the county not yet having an ESL program. A mistake that was relatively quickly corrected. This might have been 1996? According to some census data I found the county was only 7% Hispanic then, compared to it's 25% now. Whites declined from 75% to 35%.
The problem isn't personally having illegals hit and run you personally on the road (that was several friends of mine), or murder your family (that was my coworker's brother), or take hostages and burn your house down (that was a row of houses or two behind mine). It's how it feels to see civilization fraying at the edges all around you, chaos growing stronger every day, and the high trust society you grew up in collapsing into a low trust hell hole of all against all. You came from a world where things like this didn't happen, period. A 40 point swing in demographics later, and suddenly it's normal. It's like that "First they came for the..." poem, only instead of methodical Nazi's eliminating problematic groups, it's just raw 3rd world barbarism and high time preference imposing it's consequences all around you, and occasionally picking off someone around you. And for whatever reason, people just keep their head in the sand. They roll to disbelieve, or they pretend this is fine. To notice at all places you on the fringe.
As the other commentor pointed out even the nearby tragedy doesn't have any kind of particular flavor. The bully that committed suicide is something I already mentioned.
The other nearby tragedies don't have a flavor other than "random".
A classmate killed on her way to SATs by a truck driver running a red light.
An older swim team friend dying in a car accident.
A swim team coach dying of a sudden heart attack on deck at a swim meet.
A student a few years older burned himself alive outside the school due to bullying.
A friend in his mid thirties dying of a sudden heart attack.
A cousin losing their boyfriend to cancer.
Tragedy has been around, but it's not very violent. And it's definitely not anyone's fault.
I have heard of the civilizational fraying, but I haven't really personally seen it. I don't even disbelieve you or anything. It's just accepting some of your conclusions or policy advice would run heavily counter to my own personal experiences. I don't even have a good way of resolving this dissonance. 5 years ago pre COVID I might have suggested trusting expert opinion and statistics on the topic. Now I'm pretty doubtful on the usefulness of that approach.
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I think this still counts as things happening to you "personally". A series of mishaps and disasters affected your friends and family and coworkers and neighbors, and this gave you a subjective sense that civilization was falling apart blah blah blah. @cjet79 can correct me if I'm wrong, but I parsed "Overall my life has been awesome and not filled with much tragedy" as very much including "my friends and relatives and neighbors have rarely if ever suffered life-ruining events of the kind you described as having affected your family, neighbors, etc.".
Yeah that's a good description. Tragedy hasn't impacted me or the people around me.
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