English: A Grand Theft Auto IV advertisement painted on a wall in the Chinatown District of New York City. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Mary Mallon (foreground) in a hospital bed during her first quarantine (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Steve Mensing, Editor
♦You’ve no doubt run into a few persons who deny the Knock Out Game is real–some claim its a media fiction even though CNN and CBS–middle of the road networks tout the game’s reality . Such is the power of denial whether it comes from psychological defenses or from protecting special interests–like claiming a town is perfectly safe to shield real estate values or to protect minorities from being stereotyped. Street beatings, no matter what they’re called, are uncomfortable facts of life in many urban areas. Similar to not talking about cancer, some people want to side-step harsh reality. “Oh that doesn’t happen here. We don’t have gangs–that’s just talk.”
Most of us in our lifetimes have witnessed denial in its outermost extremes such as “We’ve never landed on the Moon–we faked it to appear like we won the space race.” “There was never an attack on the Pentagon during 9/11.” “The Holocaust never happened–it’s a figment of the Zionist Media.” Thankfully most of us come to terms with what’s real and what’s not.
It’s a fact–seniors, homeless people, teenagers, and women and children are randomly victimized by the Knock Out Game in countless cities besides Salisbury and Charlotte. It’s game with many names that’s existed since I was a kid and it’s played by bored and hostile teens. In the last year or so it’s mushroomed in popularity due to the internet, street videos on the net, and violent video games like Grand Theft Auto that romanticize violence. Talk with urban law enforcement officers and they’ll tell you the Knockout Game exists. Maybe you heard about a neighbor’s kid who got jumped or saw an elderly person, his face battered and his shirt soaked with blood, sitting on a curb trying to gather his senses. Further up the street a small group of teens are laughing and turning once more to look back at the their handiwork before disappearing into the darkness beyond the streetlights.
“Sucker punching” or “sneaking” someone in a random street attack has existed in tough neighborhoods since at least the 60′s and possibly even decades earlier. I witnessed it in G-town (a Philly neighborhood) where I grew up. Some kid would be walking down the street past a group of hardheads, then abruptly a sucker right wiped out his field of vision. In an instant the sidewalk would come crashing up at him, his face impacting the concrete with a sickening thud. The sucker punch artist and his pals would fade around the corner. Today with the internet and one-mommy-seldom home parenting there’s just more ”sucker punching” and it has a name: the “Knockout Game”.
It Can’t Be Happening Here: Why the Knockout Game is Often Denied
First lets consider the common psychological mechanism of denial. Denial is basically not accepting a situation exists when clear evidence tells us it does. An example might be someone having major alcohol challenges who insists they don’t, yet goes to a bar daily and chugs multiple shots and brews. They are late for work and show up hungover. Their spouse complains about them arriving home in the early morning hours and being awarded two DUI’s in the last year. Yet this person, despite top heavy evidence, denies any problem and says drinking is merely a way to relax and hang out with buddies.
Often denial is kept alive by someone’s ability to minimize the negative parts of a situation and maximize a situation’s more positive aspects. Quite frequently, the individual using denial uses it to ward off a negative self-image or to block out a painful reality: my neighborhood has dangerous thugs drifting through it and people are getting punched out. Denial is employed with little awareness to fend off the real. Persons with poor self-acceptance are most likely to utilize denial for coping.
Examples of denial in action:
*The substance abuser often denies having a problem with drugs. They might tell you they like to chill–its not hurting anyone.
*Mary “Typhoid Mary” Mallon, a turn of the century cook, was a lethal typhoid carrier who infected hundreds as a kitchen worker and was responsible for deaths of three persons in New York City. When confronted with her typhoid carrier status by public health officials, Typhoid Mary denied it – even though everywhere she worked people began to suffer from Typhoid after her employment. When shown evidence of the disease being carried by her body, she failed to believe it. Twice she was quarantined. When she got out the first time, she went back to cooking, which she was ordered not to do, making several families sick and killing another person. She spent the last 29 years of her life in quarantine. And she still denied being a typhoid carrier.
Denial generally comes into play when:
*We don’t want to feel like we are bad, worthless, or wrong. *An organization or area, we derive importance from, comes under scrutiny. *Our world view is held up to the light. *We have a serious and life threatening disease. *We suffer the loss of an important loved one. *We lose a key part of our lives.
To overcome denial, a person needs to be able to directly look at circumstances without trying to avoid them, block them out, or argue against their possibility. It helps to be self-accepting and not knock yourself for mistakes or poor actions.
Denial often shows up in these behaviors:
*Kneejerk arguments at the mention of a problem. *Changing the subject quickly when something painful appears. *Minimizing what you hear, see, or read. *Deflecting what another says by attacking them or name calling. *Seeking out like-minded people who support your view.
The other form of denial is “practical denial”. This style of denial is employed by individuals desiring to cover up an undesirable situation that might hurt them financially. For example they might be a relator involved in promoting an area for their own profit. They are practicing ”practical denial” where they claim no air pollution or violent crime exists in an area. They are protecting their “skin in the game” when they claim an area is safe and people are just making up stuff to scare people.
