The Pilgrims Crack Coke Death Squads

The Pilgrim Effect 070419
The Pilgrim Effect is a term used in biology where the scientific observer comes upon a new natural habitat and you reasonably assume that it has always been the way in which you see it now. However, in point of fact the habitat has been in flux and has been transformed one or more times, often rapidly and radically.
I remember a world three generations ago where violence between men was a normal thing when words failed or less commonly when organized crime was involved. But people did not immediately resort to firearms, instead they beat the crap out of each other with fists, clubs, occassionally knives. There was a movie in 1980 called The Warriors, about gang violence in New York City where turf wars played out in just such a manner. Today the film looks like a live action role play, or a cosplay costume drama because within two years the crack wars had begun, and people in the hood were suddenly settling disputes with handguns of every caliber. I was 18 at the time and had a problem with authority, and I didn't pay traffic fines on general prinicples. Therefore I was often sitting in the Houston city or county jail over the weekend. It was 1982 and the soul brothers were showing me 3 or 4 gunshot wounds on their bodies, 45's, 38's, 22's. It had suddenly gone to the next level overnight. Today in 2019 no self respecting thug would sport a weapon that small, so the caliber has increased, muzzle velocity, type of bullets, and number of rounds in a magazine have all escalated tremendously. Even your granny has a bigger gat than a 22 or a 38, but it is still the same domestic Vietnam war going on out there almost 40 years later. Looking back, it still seems strange how the rules changed overnight, and how an edgy movie about costumed gang violence become a quaint LARP, and in a few years the real streets became a sea of crack floating in a blood bath. In societal terms the radical change had happened overnight.

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