Woke up last week to find out my car window was smashed overnight. The passenger side window, nearest the sidewalk. Shattered glass littered the curb and filled every nook and cranny of the car. The contents of my glove box were scattered across the dashboard. Nothing was stolen; there wasn’t anything valuable to take. Just an immense, bothersome headache that took a week to fix, and tiny shards of glass embedded in every seat, impossible to get rid of without a pricey detailing bill.
Don’t pity me—pity my poor old Honda, if anything. She’s never been brutalized like this before. Poor girl is traumatized now, no doubt.
Pity especially the folks who respond to such incivility with acquiescence. Just leave your car unlocked, with a window rolled down, someone told me. That way, any ruffian who wishes to raid your car can do so unencumbered, without needing to smash a window. No matter that it snows in the winter, or rains, or that we live in a society with laws and standards of behavior. Just leave your car unlocked, bigot.
Sure, great, I’ll leave my front door unlocked while I’m at it. Come on in, house thieves, rifle through my things while I sleep, take anything you like. Just don’t interrupt my slumber, a man really needs his eight hours or he isn’t quite himself. I’ll make sure to keep nothing valuable at home as well; if there’s nothing to steal, nothing bad will happen. I’ll keep my phone in a safe deposit box at the bank, stopping by to check it once a day. Maybe that’ll curb my Twitter addiction, too.
Anyone permanently online, or remotely engaged in the culture war, is used to hearing about window smashing in the urban, liberal centers. San Francisco in particular is known for its epidemic of car thievery and broken windows (along with human feces littering the streets, the end is nigh). I’ll give the San Francisco thieves some credit, at least. With so many feckless nerds in one city, they’re bound to actually find a laptop or two from time to time. The juice out there might be worth the squeeze for the morally vacuous.
In Michigan though? In Detroit? The window smashing often takes on another characteristic. Several sprees over the last few years strike more as rampant vandalism than outright thievery. Whole blocks with windows smashed, nothing stolen. Just pure rejection of society and order, destruction for the sake of destruction. Destruction as a perverse form of creation, the vandals simply making themselves known. Modern performance art at its finest; honestly, far more profound than anything you’ll find in a museum.
Roll your windows down, keep nothing in your car, keep it unlocked, and these hellions might still smash your windshield, just for the hell of it. That’s life, ain’t it. None of us get out alive!
Look, in the Old West, they used to hang horse thieves for one simple reason—so no more horses were stolen. I’m not advocating for capital punishment for window smashers, but maybe a decade in federal prison would do. Some sort of felonious punishment far beyond the deed itself, compensatory with the absolute rejection of society it signifies. Maybe even no jail time; some sort of public humiliation ritual instead. Bring back the stockade, bring back the tomatoes. Tar and feathers, return to American tradition.
Moral equivalency will be the death of us. We don’t need to hear both sides to understand the suffering of the poor decrepit window smashers. We need anger, righteous indignation, and outrage. The kind of fury that will give any window smasher pause. That’s how we restore order, in the end. Not with the carrot, but the stick.
Bobby Mars is an artist, alter ego, and former art professor. Follow him on X @bobby_on_mars.
