FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
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| RANT Editor, Fast Forward: The shooting incident last week in Springfield, Oregon has shocked the world with its senselessness and brutality. Parents mourn and wonder whether their children will be the next to be shot or the next to pull the trigger. Twelve children have died at the hands of enraged children in schools during the past year. The crimes have cut across class and culture, from the Midwest to both coasts, and the question remains: Why? Why did these children kill? Why did they have access to loaded firearms? Why did their threats go unheeded? The children who kill are showing us a world gone mad from the core - a world which has no values left other than the mighty dollar, or failing that, the gun. Is it any wonder that these children - our children - direct their deadly anger at everyone? They kill their parents for bringing them into a sick world, then destroy those who ridicule them and invalidate their anger. Psychologists and therapists would say that these kids are the products of individual mental illness or influenced by media images of this mad world. But, as I said, these kids come from "nice homes" and across different classes, so the cause of their anger may lie elsewhere. These kids are fed up with being ignored, fed up with a world turned upside-down. They have lost their souls to the heartless, apathetic and cynical adult world and the lies perpetrated by the media every day of their lives. They are venting an anger that seeks to overthrow a society gone bad from the bone. The anger that these children show is a reflection of how they have been taught to solve problems. It doesn't take an army of experts to understand that this anger has a point: the world is fucked up and they ain't gonna take it anymore! Instead of protesting on the streets as some of their parents did in 1968, they shoot and kill. It's the only solution they know other than to escape through sex, drugs, music, media and suicide. Should they survive, society turns their anger and hunger for justice and hope inward, into individual problems, through jail terms, therapy and/or medication (Prozac, anyone?). But these partial solutions only displace their collective rage. When these angry children grow up, they become Terry Waites, David Koreshes, Unabombers and American Psychos, continuing the cycles of pain and death. Thankfully, some transform their anger into art, like Throbbing Gristle, Skinny Puppy or Marilyn Manson. While I do not condone violence, I, too, am fed up. I am fed up with a society that can market the deaths of celebrities like Princess Diana and Frank Sinatra for the highest dollar. I am fed up with the deaths of innocents who did not have a chance to make lives for themselves because an angry teenager was expelled from school. I am angry with laws that gave that same teenager access to loaded guns. I am angry with America for being so stupid. It was the greatest experiment in human freedom the world has known and it blew it, big time. When the American Constitution was written, the new government did not have the resources for a standing army and professional police forces were not yet invented. The citizens were to bear arms for the purposes of mustering a colonial militia during a time when they had several enemies. Now that there are no enemies strong enough to fight the US, there is no need for this piece of legislation to exist. Again we have to ask, why do angry children (and angry adults) have access to guns? So, George Bush, where is your "kinder, gentler nation" now? I feel that it is resting on the therapists' couches and in the back-rooms of support groups for survivors of all forms of oppression, where it can do no harm to the needs of major shareholders and top-level executives. All, however, are victims of a society's collective madness. Our morals and ethics have been sacrificed on the many altars of power, money and violence, creating a society that has children who kill. Wake up America! How can you save yourself from yourself? Ron Roffel, |
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