Alex Baer: KISSS: Keep It Simple, Stop Struggling

Print

alex baer editorialTime to add another "S" to that old acronym, about Keeping It Simple, Stupid:  The updated version is Keep It Simple, Stop Struggling.

It's advice that the Brazilian police are handing around to European and American tourists who are in town for the World Cup.  The actual tip is closer to "do not react, scream, or argue," and is meant to help newbies to the country avoid a popular kind of robbery in which being murdered is the farewell thank-you gift from muggers.

The police are being realistic.  Brazil has one of the highest murder rates in the world, so says the United Nations, at more than 25 per 100,000.  (This number, obviously, does not include the hectares of rain forest in Brazil routinely strangled, bulldozed, and cremated, nor does it include the amount of oxygen-producing capacity murdered daily.)

Police are concerned tourists from abroad do not usually experience the joys of robbery, and so, need to be counseled on their manners, in order to avoid latrocinios -- the aforementioned keepsake memento of death following one's souvenir stick-up.

* * * * *

Now, before we start getting cute with this thing, we should first consider the police's motivation here:  They are realists.  They are just trying to save lives.  They know they are outnumbered and outgunned.  They also realize that the crack, militarized throngs of special-weapons assault teams will be at the stadium, protecting grown men playing with a ball, and will not be available for mugger mop-up operations and other trivialities.

All understood.

More...