On Monday evening, I observed an altercation over a parking spot in front of my apartment on O Street in Sacramento. There are several restaurants on 16th Street that are popular and generate a desire for parking, and there is already a lot of local resident parking, so spots are hard to find at times. I had noticed that cars were backed up on the street as people were waiting for others to leave, but was not paying close attention until I heard yelling. A driver of a car stopped in the middle of the street was yelling at two people who had parked and were walking towards 16th Street, claiming that they had “stolen” his parking spot and demanding that they move. He escalated into threats against their car (breaking out all the windows) and against their persons (“I’m going to take you down”). The angry driver pursued the other two, and ended up shoving and slapping the male of the couple. He also made threats against the female. He continued the confrontation even when the others were trying to end it, and he taunted the male with “I slapped you in front of your girlfriend and you were too much of a wussy to do anything about it.”

My point is not to document the assault and battery, and given that it did not show up on the SacPD daily activity log, I presume the police, when they eventually responded, did not think it important. My point, rather, is to talk about the sickness of someone threatening to harm another over a parking spot. Over a parking spot! The perpetrator was completely prepared to do harm to the other two just because he felt unjustly deprived of his parking spot. Whether he was unjustly deprived or not, I can’t say, because I didn’t observe the taking of the parking spot.

What kind of world view leads one to think that it is justified to harm others over a parking spot? Only an angry sociopath would view things that way.

As I have said before, driving causes brain damage. But let me be more specific now. Driving not only encourages and brings out sociopathic behavior, it IS sociopathic behavior. Driving is sociopathic behavior. There, I’ve said it.