I’ll go back to the beginning. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, I was working part time for the Disneyland Resort Security & Emergency Services in Anaheim, California. As a cast member, I received some good discounts on Disney merchandise. For $1 each, I bought a few foam bird heads wearing Mickey Mouse ears hats, which can be placed on top of old-fashioned car-radio antennas.

When my stepfather could no longer drive due to health problems, he asked me if I’d drive his car once a week to keep the engine in good working order. I agreed, and I placed one of the bird heads on the antenna. I knew I’d have a use for it one day!

After driving the car on the freeway for the first time, I noticed when I got home that the ears of the bird head had ripped due to wind resistance. So I pulled out another one, and this time, I placed the bird head sideways so the ears would slice through the wind. The new position worked, and I drove for weeks without the slightest bit of damage to my $1 investment.

My $1 foam bird head wearing the classic Mickey Mouse ears hat, which boldly sits atop the radio antenna of my stepfather’s car.

Then one beautiful, not-a-cloud-in-the-sky day, I went out to the street to hop in the car and run an errand. As I approached, I noticed something unusual, something cruel.

Someone — some destructive “wolf” — had mutilated my bird head, and it was clear that he or she wanted me to know that it was no accident. The ears, which had been torn off, lay neatly stacked on top of the head.

Forget the dollar I had spent! I was pissed off by the vandalism. I said to myself, “What kind of sick, destructive psycho would do such thing?”

I didn’t lose any sleep over it, but it did get me thinking because my little radio-antenna birdy, my personal property, had been violated at the same time the 2020 riots were happening throughout the United States. Perhaps because I had witnessed some of the agitators at work and the resulting destruction over the previous months, my emotions were raw.

You’re probably thinking, Wait! It was 2020 when this incident happened, and you’re writing about it now?

The “gruesome” crime scene I came upon. It’s the same bird head after it was mutilated.

Yes, it was a while ago, and the 2020 riots are long over. But the senseless violence that is plaguing our country is not subsiding; it’s increasing. Just in the past couple of months, I’ve seen these headlines:

STABBING SPREE HITS SAN FRANCISCO’S TENDERLOIN DISTRICT

ARREST MADE IN TRIPLE HOMICIDE AT GEORGIA RUN GUN RANGE

CALIFORNIA MOM ARRESTED IN DROWNING OF HER INFANT, TODDLER IN BATHTUB

DC SHOOTING INJURES FOUR, SUSPECT FOUND DEAD IN APARTMENT BUILDING

CHICAGO SEES MOST VIOLENT WEEKEND SO FAR IN 2022

I’m in my 60s. Nobody can tell me, especially millennials and Gen Z’ers, that the violence we’re seeing today has always been like this, because it hasn’t. When I was growing up, there were no school shootings. They didn’t start happening until 1999, which was my eighth year as a police officer.

When I was a kid growing up — in Southern California, no less — the only stringent rule for me and my younger sister was BE HOME BEFORE DARK. Now, no parent in their right mind in a metropolitan area would let their children walk for miles alone or go to a playground alone.

Of course, when I was young, there were murders from time to time, and each murder would be reported for about a week because they were rare, but it never seemed like there was more carnage at home than in war zones.

Take the city of Chicago, for example. So far, there have been 166 victims killed there in 2022, according to the Chicago Sun Times, and we still have eight months to go until the end of the year. From 2013 to 2021 (eight years), the number of military personnel killed in Afghanistan, an actual war zone, went from a high of 91 to a low of 0. You’re statistically safer in some of the hot spots of the world than in Chicago. And that’s just one American city.

Slavery was a thing of the past, a subject we all read about in our history books. Now, the amount of human trafficking happening within our own borders, which is modern slavery, is like in pre-Civil War days.

No sane person anywhere in the country, at any time in the past, ever would have conceived of “defunding the police,” much less actually do it. That’s like leaving your front door wide open every night with a lawn sign that reads GUN FREE ZONE. Criminals, being “wolves,” would most definitely take advantage of that opportunity.

I can honestly state that from what I have seen in 40 years of dealing with violence in my law-enforcement, military and security careers, the lupus — the wolves — are more plentiful now and more vicious.

So why am I telling you about this bleak reality? Because today, more than ever, all good people need to be training in the martial arts.

Old men and women are being beaten in broad daylight in public. Therefore, senior citizens need to train.

People are being pushed onto the tracks in front of oncoming trains for no reason. Therefore, businesspeople and students need to train.

An untold number of children are disappearing daily. Therefore, children need to train.

Sexual assaults are through the roof. Therefore, women, girls and boys need to train.

Learning the martial arts is no longer a luxury like it was when I was growing up. Today, it’s necessary for survival.

BE A HARD TARGET