5/31/14 Update: Account #3 below is not to be confused with a pistol whipping of an elder by a lone male of 'undetermined race' that featured a police report that labeled the crime as the act of a 'coward' and has gotten some good local press. Yesterday evening, an hour before darkness fell, I saw 2 police stops in a quarter mile strip of Harford Road [one being a robbery investigation and the other a vagrancy stop] and was told of a second robbery investigation a quarter mile farther down the street.

We are at the end of the fifth week of this long month of May, still seven days from food stamps and EBT cash. When this happens the sons of welfare mothers go on the warpath and start jacking people up, bringing home the bacon for mamma. For the past two months this one Baltimore City neighborhood has been largely quiet, with the exception of the robbery of a local drug wholesaler who has begun paying Harm City cops for the protection of his front business.

If you want a taste for what it’s going to be like in urban areas if the government is ever unable to make welfare payments, then pay attention to what happened over the past two days in my neighborhood. Mind you this is just a bare sketch of the incidents that came to my attention from three area informants.

1. A drug store was robbed, and an arrest was maid.

2. A phone store was robbed, no arrest was made.

3. An elderly white couple was approached by two black youths, one of whom had a pistol. The man and woman were both pistol whipped, robbed, and had their car stolen.

4. A pizza delivery man was approached by two black youths, one armed with a gun, as he left the parlor with an order. He was robbed and carjacked.

5. Melody, a young white woman, was walking to the liquor store when a group of mixed race youths approached, grabbed her, punched her in the face until both of her eyes swelled shut, and robbed her of her cigarette money. She walked home and told her brother Stu what had happened, and that she knew one of the boys that did it. Stu staked out the mugger’s mother’s house and, in a show of moral solidarity with the Commandant of Cairo circa 1201, passed and executed a sentence of primal justice, smashing both of his hands with a mallet! The mugger’s mother called the police, who interviewed him and then came to Stu’s house with a few questions. Stu showed the cops his sister’s battered face. The two cops said, “We don’t know anything” and left; the first heroes in blue to emerge in recent years in these liberal environs.

I don’t know about you, but when the welfare money train stalls, crashes, or burns, you could do worse than to have Stu for a neighbor, or better yet, a brother. When the welfare apocalypse hits—which is about the most likely social breakdown scenario—I’m expecting some vigilante pushback. It might not be a winnable battle; but if you have not forgotten you’re a man—or perhaps need a reminder—than a battle is all you need to make waking up worth it.