School shootings are becoming commonplace, almost. The only thing that shocks us is that each is more horrific, more brutal, than the last.
I think we vastly underestimate how alienating this culture is to anyone who is different at all. The recent shooter's words in the video speak to class difference, and mark my words, there is a LOT of simmering anger in the "have-nots" that can and will explode if not dealt with in some way.
The U.S. used to have a "war on poverty", now it's more like a "war on the poor". Our culture is jamming consumerism down people's throats, and at some point, we're going to vomit it up. If you watch MTV, (and kids do), the message is constantly hammered home that you are NOTHING if you don't have the look, the bling, the car.... People like Paris Hilton are famous ONLY for being rich (it can't possibly be her looks and talent, after all), and all the rhetoric against the poor makes it seem as if it's their fault. We have a sick culture, and a sick culture is bound to breed sick individuals.
When Columbine happened, the earliest reports were saying that Klebold and Harris were "killing jocks". Even then, I said, "well, THAT was bound to happen, eventually". I was never shocked, never surprised, except maybe that it didn't happen sooner.
I don't know, maybe my perspective is skewed because I was violently teased in school. I was spit upon, I was beat up, I had my head smashed into a piece of concrete. Why? Because I was different. Because I was smart, and liked to read, and didn't care about anything but drawing and horses. Maybe because we weren't as rich as the kids I went to school with. (And probably, in part, because I look Jewish, and in the uber-white suburbs of Denver, that was enough.) I learned early on to hate rich kids and jocks, too. I WAS that emotionally disturbed kid in high school, and I DID have liberal access to guns. Luckily, I never confused my fantasy life of revenge with real life, but who knows what could have happened if I were more mentally unstable? I look at these kids, and think, "that could have been me". Everyone focuses on hating these kids that do the shooting, but no one focuses on preventing the next one. No one looks at the root cause, or sees it as a societal problem, all the focus is on the individual.
