-Caveat Lector-
>From wsws.org
WSWS : News & Analysis : North America : The Brutal Society
The Columbine High School massacre: American Pastoral ... American Berserk
By David North
27 April 1999
Columbine High School appeared to be, at least in the view of its
administrators and the county school board, such a lovely place for young
people to grow up and learn. In its official profile, the institution
boasted of its "excellent facilities" and "long history of excellence in all
areas." Nothing seemed to be lacking--Honors and Advanced Placement classes,
foreign language instruction in Spanish, French and German, and an artistic
program that included ceramics, sculpture, acting, choir and no less than
five bands and one ensemble. There were even "Cross-categorical programs for
students with significantly limited intellectual capacity." And, of course,
there was no shortage of athletics.
"Stretch for Excellence" was the motto adopted by the school. And its
mission statement--over which, one must assume, various well-meaning people
labored--promised that Columbine High School "will teach, learn, and model
life skills and attitudes that prepare us to: work effectively with people;
show courtesy to others; prepare for change; think critically; act
responsibly; and respect our surroundings."
Columbine, with its six guidance counselors, accountability committee,
dozens of peer mediators and techniques for "conflict resolution," and an
ethos of "collaborative partnership" with parents, viewed itself as a
"twenty-first century high school." The surrounding neighborhoods were
prosperous, with housing from the low to high six-figures, numerous shopping
malls and high-tech workplaces. But on April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold walked into Columbine High School armed with assault rifles and pipe
bombs. By the time their bloody rampage was over, they had killed twelve
students, one teacher, and themselves.
There have been, during the past two years, other school shootings that have
resulted in the death of students. But as terrible as the earlier incidents
at Pearl, West Paducah, Jonesboro and Springfield, the carnage at Columbine
was of a qualitatively different scope and scale.
Harris and Klebold manufactured dozens of pipe bombs, stashed explosives in
the school kitchen, studied the layout and traffic pattern to insure the
largest number of victims, and chose Hitler's birthday as the date for the
attack, in the course of nearly a year of preparation. Their intention was
to kill as many students as possible and blow up the entire school with a
propane bomb. Had they had the opportunity, Harris and Klebold would have
continued their rampage beyond the school. According to the diary that one
of the youth left behind, they hoped to hijack an airplane and crash it into
the center of New York City. Only an unexpected encounter with a school
guard and the failure of the bomb to explode thwarted their plan. Harris and
Klebold then fled to the school library where they proceeded to select their
victims before killing themselves.
What Harris and Klebold did on Tuesday was horrible, brutal and criminal.
But these words are only descriptions of their acts, not explanations.
As usual, the media has nothing to offer by way of analysis. It is
extraordinarily adept at milking the grief of the parents and community for
every possible rating dollar. But those who wish to understand the
underlying causes of this tragedy will find nothing of value on the network
news.
After a few perfunctory tears for the victims, the media is looking for
someone to blame. The parents, judging from the remarks of state officials,
are being singled out as the most likely target for public vengeance.
Perhaps they do bear some level of responsibility, but singling out for
exemplary punishment these grief-stricken mothers and fathers--whose own
lives have been utterly shattered by what their sons did last week--seems
not only cruel, but deceitful and hypocritical.
After all, the parents of Klebold and Harris were not the only ones who
failed to recognize and act on signs of the coming disaster. Columbine High
School administrators apparently ignored repeated warnings they received
about the boys' potential for violence.
This is not an individual failing, but one common to all the major
institutions of American society: governments, political parties,
corporations, the media, schools, churches, and trade unions. All are
essentially oblivious to the mounting social tensions, until they erupt into
homicidal violence at a post office, a high school, a McDonald's restaurant,
a commuter railroad train, or inside the US Capitol.
Then these outbreaks are invariably treated, not as a social phenomenon, but
as a police problem, to be handled by installing metal detectors, more
police, more surveillance cameras, and enlisting the population as
collaborators to inform on those with a supposed propensity to violence.
There's endless talk about "parents taking responsibility for their
children," and of "children taking responsibility for themselves." But there
is nothing said about the responsibility which American society has for a
tragedy like that which occurred at Columbine.
It is almost grotesque to treat the Columbine HS massacre as merely the
product of the breakdown of parental authority and supervision. Neither
parents nor high school guidance counselors are equipped to deal with the
societal dysfunction that found such devastating expression in the rampage
of Klebold and Harris.
Consider, for a moment, the social outlook of these two youth. They were
admirers of Adolf Hitler, fascinated by fascism's racism, its cult of
sadistic violence and death, and its general contempt for humanity. And yet,
there was nothing particularly Germanic about the views of Harris and
Klebold. In a statement that he posted on his web site, Harris wrote: "I am
the law, if you don't like it you die. If I don't like you or I don't like
what you want me to do, you die."
These sentiments, expressed with a little more polish, sum up the approach
of the American government to the rest of the world. "Do what we want or
we'll destroy you." As we reread the lines of Harris, in the aftermath of
the Columbine massacre, we recognize the brutality of a potential killer.
But what, then, are we to see in the words written last Friday by the highly
paid and celebrated columnist of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman?:
"While there are many obvious downsides to war-from-15,000 feet, it does
have one great strength--its sustainability. NATO can carry on this sort of
air war for a long, long time. The Serbs need to remember that....
"But if NATO's only strength is that it can bomb forever, then it has to get
every ounce out of that. Let's at least have a real air war.... It should be
lights out in Belgrade: every power grid, water pipe, road and war-related
factory has to be targeted.
"Like it or not, we are at war with the Serbian nation (they certainly think
so), and the stakes have to be very clear: Every week you ravage Kosovo is
another decade we will set your country back by pulverizing you. You want
1950? We can do 1950. You want 1389? We can do 1389 too."
Harris and Klebold did not have to study Mein Kampf to find special
"inspiration" for their actions. The editorials and columns that appear in
American newspapers, not to mention the vicious outpourings on talk radio,
would do just as well. And here we come to the crucial paradox that finds
expression in their assault on Columbine High. It is likely that Harris and
Klebold viewed themselves as rebels against society. In this they were quite
mistaken. Certainly, the venue of their action was unconventional. But the
deed itself represented an extreme application of the selfish and inhumane
attitudes that are commonplace in American society today.
First, their violent outburst was not conceived of as a response to social
injustice. Rather, Harris and Klebold took revenge against what they
perceived as personal slights. They did not act on behalf of others, but for
themselves. Further, they attacked not a symbol of oppression, but
defenseless children and a well-meaning teacher. And finally, even if one
were to accept that these two boys had been harassed at school, the scale of
their violence was out of all proportion to the injury they had suffered.
Their aim was not to right a wrong, but to create as much pain and suffering
as possible.
What Harris and Klebold did was monstrous. But does it help to portray them
as monsters? They were, let us not forget, only teenagers. Youth is
supposedly a time of hope and idealism. How, then, was it possible that so
much hate could be accumulated by these youth in so short a time? And not
only hate, but utter despair as well. In their own minds, they had many
reasons to kill, but none to live.
They plotted this deed, but were they its only authors? They are, in the
final analysis, the products of a particular time and place. However
terrible its consequences, the mad rampage of Harris and Klebold has deep
social roots. Of course, the political leaders and the media elite do not
care to delve too deeply into the social pathology of this dreadful crime.
It would require that they hold a mirror up to themselves.
Since the Littleton killings, the media is full of commentary from
psychologists, ministers, priests, police and experts of all sorts, gravely
enumerating the "warning signs" which may alert parents to the possibility
that their teenage son or daughter may be a potential mass murderer: Is your
child depressed, discouraged, anxious, over-stressed, uncommunicative,
disinterested, addicted to computer games, subject to mood swings, getting
consistently bad grades, worrying too much about maintaining consistently
high grades, etc.? At least 75 percent of all American children express one
if not more of these characteristics.
In reality, the concentration on individual warning signs will be of little
help in preventing further tragedies. Attention should be focused, rather,
on the social warning signs, that is, the indications and indices of social
and political dysfunction which create the climate that produces events like
the Columbine HS massacre. Vital indicators of impending disaster might
include: growing polarization between wealth and poverty; atomization of
working people and the suppression of their class identity; the
glorification of militarism and war; the absence of serious social
commentary and political debate; the debased state of popular culture; the
worship of the stock exchange; the unrestrained celebration of individual
success and personal wealth; the denigration of the ideals of social
progress and equality.
What is happening to America's kids? This is a question posed by Philip Roth
in his provocative novel American Pastoral, which tells the story of a
family ruined by a teenage daughter's dreadful and unexpected act of
violence. "Something is driving them crazy. Something has set them against
everything. Something is leading them into disaster."
What is that something? Look honestly at this society--its political
leaders, its religious spokesmen, its corporate CEOs, its military machine,
its celebrities, its "popular" culture, and, above all, the entire economic
system upon which the whole vast superstructure of violence, suffering and
hypocrisy is based. It is there that the answer is to be found.
See Also:
Society, politics and the school shooting in Littleton
[23 April 1999]
15 dead in Colorado school shooting
A nation at war ... with itself
[21 April 1999]
Top of page
Readers: The WSWS invites your comments. Please send e-mail.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Copyright 1998-99
World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Then there's Howard Stern to show some real "in-depth sensitivity":
>From AP
Tuesday April 27 1:37 AM ET
Stern Under Fire for Colo. Comments
DENVER (AP) - Howard Stern and a local radio station that syndicates his
show have drawn criticism over the shock jock's comments on the Columbine
High School massacre.
Stern was quoted by the Rocky Mountain News as saying that some of the girls
fleeing from the April 20 shooting were ``really good-looking'' and wondered
on the air whether the suicide gunmen tried ``to have sex with any of the
good-looking girls.''
``At least if you're going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why
wouldn't you have some sex?'' Stern asked, according to the newspaper.
The show can be heard locally on KXPK-FM, a rock music station.
``Let Howard Stern make his millions in other broadcast markets,'' the News
said in an editorial Monday. ``He does not belong in Denver.''
Stern was unavailable for comment. A message left with his agent wasn't
returned.
But KXPK general manager Bob Visotcky said he spoke with Stern on Monday for
20 minutes and reported that Stern ``feels that his comments were taken out
of context.''
~~~~~~~~~~~~
A<>E<>R
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled
one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller,
German Writer (1759-1805)
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Forwarded as information only; no endorsement to be presumed
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material
is distributed without charge or profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information
for non-profit research and educational purposes only.
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
