nin137

Nick's Journal
2008-02-15 17:27:29 (UTC)

I feel for the people of NIU

just a little over a year ago some psycho unleashed is
psychopathology over the campus where i had gotten my
undergraduate degree.
just yesterday some deranged psychotic unleashed mayhem on
the northern illinois university campus.

i feel for those who lost their loved ones in this tragedy.
i felt for them the second i saw that red scrolling text
trollying overtop the cnn screen in our cafeteria tv.
"Valentine's Day Massacre!!!"
my my how classy the media is. treat it like it's some form
of slasher film. always need some nomenclature for it to
make it enticing. just sickening.

but what can you do? and that's what juliann asked me last
night. about all this in general. people shooting each
other. i don't know i said. i feel too fatalistic about
it. what can you really do? what could we have done to
stop the VT death toll? we can't lock people up before they
commit a crime; and the mechanisms to lock someone up for
mental instability (which the NIU person apparently suffered
as well) are so onerous that noone is really willing to
pursue them (also take into account the cost).

so what can you do? will i be treated to some classless
scrolling text every other year? is it our environment?
are we just living in such a culture of decadence that we
deserve this? ha, please. we're no more decadent,
disheveled, or despondent than any other generation. is it
the tv? the Hostel and Saw movies? is it all the guns?
possibly. those movies and that tv do add a level of
desensitization; but they're not the cause. i mean come on.
i've seen so many violent movies and shows i can't even
count and i have no desire to hurt anyone.
the guns? sure they make it easier, but as the kenyans are
all too happy to show us, they aren't exactly necessary to
massacre people.
in short, guns and tv likely facilitate violence, but
they're no more a direct cause as a cold pot roast are to
beat the shit out of your wife.

"if this had been some black kids getting shot up in the
ghetto, noone would have cared." yeah, that's what my
friend demesius said to me today. fuck that pissed me off.
so we had our monthly racially charged "discussion". i
told him that was a callous and stupid thing to say. he
says that, being black, he feels more deeply for death
because its closer to him. that's another stupid thing to
say. i hate all of that shit. like when people get all
indignant because such a big deal is made about natalie
holloway. just because she's white it's such a big deal.
true.
but what exactly are you saying? i'll tell you what you're
saying to me. the reason why black deaths in the ghetto
aren't broadcast nation-wide is because of their frequent
nature. but it's even more than that. it's within the
ghetto culture; death is a part of life in that facet of
life to those that live there.
the culture they live in not only accepts death but even
promotes activity that will lead you swiftly to it.

so maybe i was wrong. the environment you grow up in
obviously has something to do with your predilection for
violence. take muslims for example. jihad and martyrdom
are more than a way of life, they've been elevated to a type
of deification.
to an extent we are products of our society, and i guess my
fatalism is based upon the problematic recurrence of
people's willingness to buy into the ghetto culture or the
muslim faith.
even though both of these are just conduits towards death
pepople eat them up with a silver fucking spoon.

but that's not really all of it. there are so many other
factors to all of this. most of these massacres come from
loners, people who don't believe in shit. people who are
deranged. but are they deranged because they committed the
crime, or committed the crime because they're deranged?
both teh VT shooter and now the NIU shooter apparently were
completely batshit crazy.
so what do you do? my inclination is to help those who buy
into such conduits for violence to cash out. to spend more
money for the incarceration (excuse me, rehabilitation) of
the mentally ill, and finally, just hope that when the
bullets fly, you have the luck to not be in the cross-fire.




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