{"id":5105,"date":"2016-06-28T09:55:31","date_gmt":"2016-06-28T15:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/?p=5105"},"modified":"2016-06-28T09:55:31","modified_gmt":"2016-06-28T15:55:31","slug":"envy-and-murder-in-baltimore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/envy-and-murder-in-baltimore-5105.htm","title":{"rendered":"Envy and Murder in Baltimore"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThrough the envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The Wisdom of Solomon<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Lor<\/a><\/p>\n

He was a rapper trying to stop violence in Baltimore.\u00a0Tyriece Travon Watson, better known as Lor Scoota, had just finished hosting a charity basketball game.\u00a0The fliers\u00a0advertising the event\u00a0had said,\u00a0\u201cPray for peace in these streets.\u201d Music artists and important faces from around the city had come together to prove they could get along.<\/p>\n

Lor Scoota\u00a0got in his car and left the arena. Bringing peace to Baltimore was a message he had been trying to spread \u2014\u00a0on panels, in classrooms and in his music.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow I\u2019m supposed to live with all this death in my sight?\u201d the 23-year-old had once sung.<\/p>\n

Lor Scoota was about a mile away from the arena when he was shot and killed.<\/p>\n

Baltimore police said the rapper\u00a0was driving east at 6:56 p.m. Saturday when an unknown black male wearing a white bandanna stepped into the street and opened fire into Lor Scoota\u2019s\u00a0car. He was transported to an area hospital, but was pronounced dead shortly after. Homicide detectives are investigating the shooting as a targeted attack.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Why did someone kill Lor Scoota? A friend suspected why:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Baltimore city, once you\u2019re doing good, you\u2019re a target. Nobody wants to see you doing better than they are doing,\u201d he said. \u201cYou try to make it to the top, they\u2019re pulling you down so you still here. That\u2019s why they say once you do your thing, leave.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Much of the violence in Baltimore is fueled by a cult of honor. Young black men will not tolerate being dissed. Their reputation for violence is all that protects them. \u00a0They follow this version of the psalm: \u201cYea, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for I am the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the valley.\u201d<\/p>\n

But apparently something else is at work too: envy. People do not want to see other people succeed. They are sad and resentful at another\u2019s good. Peasant communities are afflicted with it, and so apparently is the ghetto.<\/p>\n

Baltimore has been climbing back out of its decline. The Inner Harbor is being edged with luxury housing and some older neighborhoods are being spiffed up. All this provides new jobs and new revenue for the city to use in providing better education and social services. But several residents I spoke to thought that the contrast of prosperity with the decay and failure of poor neighborhoods had provoked envy and a desire to destroy the successful, and was one of the causes of the riot. Envy too may have been the motive for the murder of Lor Scoota.<\/p>\n

\"envy\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Certain politicians try to appeal to envy by denouncing income inequality and cultivating a resentment against the successful. It is an unwise strategy, according to the Wisdom of Solomon.<\/p>\n

\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThrough the envy of the devil came death into the world: and they that do hold of his side do find it.\u201d The Wisdom of Solomon He was a rapper trying to stop violence in Baltimore.\u00a0Tyriece Travon Watson, better known as Lor Scoota, had just finished hosting a charity basketball game.\u00a0The fliers\u00a0advertising the event\u00a0had said,\u00a0\u201cPray […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1354,1353,1142],"class_list":["post-5105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-masculinity","tag-envy","tag-lor-scoota","tag-murder","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5108,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105\/revisions\/5108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.podles.org\/dialogue\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}