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Subject: 18 year old writes
Date: Mon, 10 May 1999 09:11:40 PDT
> Subject: Fw: 18-yr-old essayist's insight into the Colorado
> shooting
>
>
> From Where I Stand:
> A Teenager's Voice from Inside the Culture of Death
>
> On April 20, 1999, there was yet another gruesome shooting in
> Littleton, Colorado. Kids killing kids. And again, the entire
> nation in its uproar is trying to figure out why. I am eighteen
> years old. I live in a small town near Madison, Wisconsin. A
> small town just like the ones where these horrifying shootings
> always seem to take place. Every time those stories come on the
> television, I can't help but notice how easily it could be my
> small town next. And I want to know why this is happening just
> as badly as any parent or police chief or anchorman. The thing
> is, I am right in the middle of it. I am in the same age group
> as all of these high school kids. So I may have some insight for
> the world that has been otherwise unattainable since these
> shootings started some years ago.
>
> The night of the Littleton shooting, as I was flipping
> through the various news channels
> that were covering the story in Littleton, Colorado, I heard
> something that struck a chord in me. An anchorman was
> interviewing the mother of a victim in the Jonesboro shooting.
> His question was: "If you look at America in the 1950's, you
> will find that this kind of thing never happened; whereas if you
> look at America today, this kind of thing is becoming more and
> more frequent. Why do you think this is happening?" The woman,
> of course, could not answer the question. In fact, she didn't
> really even try.
>
> But I did. I thought about it for a long time
> that night. And again the next morning, when my favorite morning
> radio talk show asked its listeners why they thought this has
> been happening. Many people said it's the parents of the kids.
> Many people suggested television and video games. Many people
> even turned to popular musicians, looking to put the blame
> somewhere. But I will tell you what I think it is. What I, a
> regular teenager riding on the coattails of Generation X, blame
> it on. It is not the parents or the movies or the rock stars. It
> is AMERICA. It is this culture of death, this culture in
> which liberals and feminists and activists are so anxious to let
> anything be "OK" that the once tightened, knotted rope of
> society is unraveling right beneath us.
>
> Don't you see? There can
> be no order without discipline. All of those things people think
> are causing children to run into a school and shoot their
> teachers and peers and even kids they don't know, the movies,
> the video games, the parents, the rap artist, they are only
> REFLECTIONS of our society. Society breaks down, from one big
> metaphoric "family" into 50 metaphoric "families" and so on and
> so on, until you have the actual FAMILY, the one with the
> parents and the kids and the dog. It is not one thing or two
> things; it is the attitude of an entire "familiar" nation being
> reflected back at us in the kids. Just as that anchorman
> suggested, something was different about the 1950's. WE WERE
> CONSERVATIVE. We had boundaries; we had a definite knowledge of
> right and wrong throughout the entire nation. We didn't have feminists
> pushing women so hard to go get a job that a woman who didn't
> have a job was somehow "bad," thereby leaving kids at home with
> inadequate parental guidance and often times with parents who
> were truly unhappy. We didn't have liberals fighting so avidly
> to legalize everything that it was at the point of completely
> blurring the line between good and bad. We didn't have a
> nationwide media surge dedicated to sex and violence so intense
> that if you weren't playing killing video games at age 14, then
> you were trying to choose between contraceptives beforehand or
> abortion afterwards. We didn't have disputes over whether or not
> we should help someone who is dying die sooner over whether or
> not we should ASSIST them in committing SUICIDE. And we
> certainly didn't have a President who was in favor of NATO
> bombing and killing children in Serbia come on the television to
> grieve the loss for the families of children killed in America.
>
> We live in a loosely tied society, a culture dedicated to death.
> If you don't want the kid, kill it. If you don't want to live
> out the rest of your God-given days, kill yourself. Or better
> yet, have someone else come help you do it. I guess, no matter
> how horrible or gruesome or gut-wrenching it may be, it was
> just a matter of time before someone got that
> "killing-as-a-means-to-an-end" idea stuck in their head for the
> part between birth and death as well. Everything that happens in
> families and cities and states and countries is the mirror image
> of the big picture. We are falling apart as a society. Am I some
> random normal teenager in Farmertown, U.S.A. the only one who
> sees that? It's sad and it's hard to believe, but what's worse
> is that it's scary. I think it's time for our --America's-- Mom
> and Dad to ground us--to say, "If you don't shape up by the time
> I count to three..." And then really count to three. Because we
> are running wild and pretty soon we're going to be too far from
> home to ever get back. There was once a great saying by a
> famous man that has rung true throughout the history of mankind
> in every family and in every society and in every social group
> and in every religion, it was a frighteningly true statement
> that cannot be disputed. I am reminded of it now, in the wake of
> yet another indescribably tormenting result of a nation gone
> haywire... "By their fruits you shall know them."
>
> by Sarah Roney
> April 21, 1999
>
>
>
>
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