Date: Tue, 11 May 1999 14:14:42 -0400
From: CAROL ESHELMAN 
To: Jkinsley@bticc.net,
    campbellkidz61@hotmail.com,
    weshy@juno.com,
    JFORD@mail.monroe.cc.mi.us,
    JKECK@mail.monroe.cc.mi.us,
    JMAURICE@mail.monroe.cc.mi.us,
    WBEZEAU@mail.monroe.cc.mi.us,
    lewis@monroe.k12.mi.us,
    lvancamp@nci2000.net,
    keshelman@tdi.net,
    georgi1@uakron.edu
Subject: [Fwd: [Fwd: Fw: Richard S Russow : Teens Insight]]


> 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
>   artists-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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