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Charles Jaco has written opinion and commentary pieces for dozens of magazines and newspapers. Each week, read and comment on a fresh on-line version. The discussion page enables you to share your view points world wide. If you would like to make a comment go to the " Join the discussion" link below. If you would like to view past editorials visit the Editorial Archive.
Editorial: 4/23/99 Every 13 weeks we rewind the tape. First come the breathless broadcast bulletins datelined from some small town. Then, the local TV aerial shots of panicked students fleeing the school. Then close-ups of anguished parents and teenagers. Then the SWAT teams. Then the body count. Then the talking heads. And imagine what those talking heads would yap about if these shootings involved big city high schools and black kids. Oh, it's those people again, it's the welfare state, it's government handouts, it's urban pathology, it's yak yak yak. But instead, the school mass murders are in Pearl, Mississippi, and West Paducah, Kentucky, and Jonesboro, Arkansas, and Edinboro, Pennsylvania, and Littleton, Colorado. What do we say about slaughter in Leave It To Beaverville? What we do is what we always do. We retreat behind a solid wall of preconceived ideas and shout over it. The NRA-types snort that it wasn't guns that killed these children, it was the lunatics pulling the trigger. That's idiocy in a number of ways. The worst is that it ignores the question---okay, so how were these unstable kids able to have access to guns in the first place? Maybe because there are so many of them around. The anti-gun people, meanwhile, say this proves the need for more gun control. Which ignores the fact that teenagers in the middle of nowhere, USA, have had access to rifles and shotguns and pistols for decades, but didn't start running amok until October 1, 1997. The professional educators blame the parents for dumping their disfunctional troubles at the school's front door. The parents blame the school people for not spotting trouble early. The remaining free spenders say this means we need more money spent on more government programs. And the every-man-for-himself crowd bleats about the loss of personal responsibility. One favorite sport is to blame the Sixties, and the Baby Boomer parents who grew up then. Try moving the clock ahead twenty years. If anyone wants to lay all of this on the front stoop of any particular ten year period, try the Eighties. Remember greed is good? The first violent reality TV shows? The first violent mass-marketed video games? The first hints of computers and the Internet? The first violent, sleazoid talk shows? That's when these kids were born and grew up, in the Eighties. The mass migration to cookie-cutter anonymous suburbs reached warp speed. Corporate and Wall Street players decided Darwinism was the best face of modern capitalism, survival of the fittest. So the work forces were downsized and gazillionaires created through hefty executive salaries, perks, and stock options. The culture became full of hyphenated Americans, African and Polish and Italian and Mexican, everybody sealing themselves off in their own little Serbias and Kosovos. And since the free market ruled, and violence sells, why not? All of those things have one thing in common---selfishness. Maybe it's as simple as all the white kids sitting one place, and the black kids sitting another in a cafeteria. Maybe it's the feeling that as long as I'm all right, well then, if the other guy has problems it's just his fault. Maybe it's cocooning in our houses watching the highest rated shows on basic cable TV--pro wrestling, where there are no good guys, just shades of violent, Gothic bad guys. Who says it doesn't take a village to raise kids? Think about it. Before age thirteen or fourteen, a child's most important influence is his parents. After that, the old folks drop to number twenty on the list. A teen's most important influences are his peers. Always have been. But now, teens have grown up in a culture that glorifies greed, violence, and immediate gratification. And the adults have adopted the ultimate theory of selfishness--as long as I think my kid's okay, well, other kid's troubles are other people's problems. Parents, neighbors, friends, teachers, TV images, pop songs, video games, the Internet--- are are hooked together raising teenagers. It's that kind of village. And it seems to be populated by village idiots. We've let major companies turn a profit off of poisoning our kids with violence. We've let ourselves think if we've done our jobs, it's somebody else's problem now. So unstable kids are left pretty much on their own. I've only seen slaughter like this in the war zones I've covered. Those are the only places on earth, usually, where angry adolescents are heavily armed. A teen aged male with a gun is the most dangerous creature on earth. That's why the world's armies are full of them. And we've managed to create a culture here that makes these kids even angrier. It tells them violence is just fine. It tells them that looking out for number one is the best thing. And it tells them the adults are too busy either ignoring them or taking their money to care much. |
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