We are no longer safe in our own homes, and capricious brutality is always waiting in the wings--not in the form of a ski-masked monster, but an unsuspected teenager. Kubrick’s “ultra-violent future” is not much different from our ultra-violent present.  Once we realize this, we begin to see that Alex and his companions are not so different from the aberrations of our own society—and from what the news tells us, there are plenty of them to go around.