Who is the Pariah in your Neighborhood?

    Some people live in a block or a part of town, or even out in the country rural parts, where there is a bad guy or two. In my neighborhoods where I have lived, I cannot think of many, if at all. As a kid there were some mean dogs around my house and streets, but they were mostly looking out for the real bad dudes, while sometimes terrorizing, or at least annoying me greatly as they barked across the yards and roads, filling up the air with doggy noise pollution, and running their legs up on my bike, their jaws yapping and threatening. Usually dogs do not bite much, much less maim or kill. But on occasion...

    The real killers and bruisers are usually humans. Some do not mean it, because some get drunk and stupid and deadly, and drive cars and kill, or wander aimlessly and cause serious problems. Or others smoke themselves into a psychotic frenzy and then decide to shoot up little children or, some other unsuspecting group of innocents, those victims possessing no clue that THC levels could drive a brain to do such things, let alone the notion that they are the next bulls eyes on the target of a psychotic mass shooter.

    It is possible that many of us have such random killers in our midst. But, most of us do not, nor in the United States. I have not experienced that phenomenon the three times that I lived in South America, either.  In a given city or region, the deadliest persons are the established drug runners and sellers, and the gang leaders that boss them, fighting the law and moving their illegal products and contraband practices. This is not to forget about white collar thieves and schemers, some of whom are so-called legal experts or financial advisors. Other government employees or bosses figure out their own sordid scams, so there are plenty of wayward crooks that plague us here and all around.

    The difference is most white-collar crooks do not want to assault us physically, only steal from our accounts without our knowledge.

    Then, above the level of crooks who steal and pillage by their nefarious means, are the political and military pariahs. Some blame U.S. presidents, because they wield so much power, and often they take the credit, responsibility, and subsequent derision for the deaths of many, be it in small or big numbers.

    Today there are many world leaders that fit this bill: Vladimir Putin of Russia with his war in Ukraine, Bibi Netanyahu in Gaza, Hassan Nasrallah who fights for Hamas against Israel, and many others across all the continents. Xi Jinping, certainly. Many throughout Africa, Asia, and the rest.

    Pariah here, pariah there. Whack a mole with these killers and oppressors! How can we forget the immortal Kim Jung Un of North Korea? Or the current leadership of Iran, or the Taliban of Afghanistan and other repressive terrorist-type groups, huddled across dozens of countries, like Somalia, Iraq, Syria, Yemen....

    Bashar Al-Assad. Wow.

    There are many others, but not so many to be counted as pound for pound as killing as many.

    Erdogan of Turkey kills his share of Kurds... But is like any other Turkish leader in that regard.

    And, we think of pariahs, big and small.

    Good night to them and us.

    And, perhaps like Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong, murderers of countless millions, one nation's pariah is another people's hero.