I almost threw up a few minutes ago. As in, I felt physically queasy to the point where I was standing over the toilet bowl. The feeling is still in me.

Number of things came about. The first was my friend Greg, talking to me on ICQ last night. Bomb threats at his school. He decided to wear kevlar and bring a knife to school, just in case something DID happen. (If he'd been at Littleton, he'd have either stopped those killers or died trying.)

Second was a Princeton Review message board that I checked this afternoon. Apparently Greg's school isn't the only one like that. Apparently it's happening all around the country. Bomb threats. Evacuations. Cops in schools.

Turns out that people are being EXPELLED for this kind of stuff. One school has banned BACKPACKS until further notice! Numerous other schools have expelled kids who have said something even remotely threatening. One guy posted about a guy in his school, a football player, who said, 'We'll kill you guys this lunchtime' to a member of an opposing in-school football team (they play during lunchtime). The kid was SUSPENDED for saying this! Other kids have been expelled for having 'hit lists' (I've written them myself in high-school, lists of people you don't like. Lists you compare with your buddies, so you can bitch about common enemies and maybe plan to chuck an eraser at them or something.) The '(s)hit lists' are now being interpreted as death lists for your planned rampage!

Locker searches. One guy was almost arrested because people heard a ticking sound from his locker. Turned out this was a CD player. The bomb squad wanted the kid punished, regardless..for having a portable CD player in his locker?

Another guy on the PR boards said that one of his friends is now on indefinite suspension because someone told the headmaster that this friend wanted to kill a teacher. Who was this 'someone'? It was his ex-girlfriend. Personal motive? Who cares, throw this guy away. Let me point out that this PR guy and his friend are both apparently honor students and preps, not 0.5 burnouts.

This amounts to outright repression. Unauthorised locker searches? People being suspended or expelled on hearsay? Okay, it's only in schools. Nobody's being executed (although apparently a shipload of people have been arrested). Expulsion is a major pain in the ass and it may destroy your life, but it won't end it. It's only school.

But it's happening. It's in the US. What step is there between unauthorised surprise locker searches and surprise house searches? What step is there between a kid being kicked out of school on hearsay, or because something he said has been wilfully misinterpreted, and a guy being thrown in jail for the same thing?

And above it all is that filthy fat piece of human white-trash SHIT Clinton, a man who I wouldn't spit at if he were dying of thirst, and not only is he an American citizen but he is an important and respected one, one whose orders must be obeyed. This filthy, dishonorable, irresponsible FICKENKOPF (excuse the German..) is running things. Running things into the ground.

Has anyone else seen this Littleton crackdown for what it is? I don't think Clinton organised it. But I DO think that he saw it as a big opportunity. That the anti-gun nuts are having a field day over all this. And I think that if our country, 6-12 months from now, is like our schools are, we'll be fucked.

-- Leo (lchampion@ozemail.com.au), May 01, 1999

Answers

Francis Shaeffer wrote almost 2 decades ago:

"Humanism, with its lack of any final base for values or law, always leads to chaos. It then naturally leads to some form of authoritarianism to control the chaos. Having produced the sickness, humanism gives more of the same kind of medicine for a cure."

It's seems that our societal rejection of God and His firm values is finally producing the chaos predicted by Shaeffer. People will gladly give up bits of freedom in exchange for security, only to discover when it's too late that they have neither.

-- rick blaine (y2kazoo@hotmail.com), May 01, 1999.

Breeeeeth. The collective masses are trying to deal with something they cannot understand. When you are the problem, you cannot see the problem. Many of us old hippies really screwed up our kids by letting them run the show. We are now reaping what we have sown. You cannot let the CHILDREN do what they want, when they want. There must be contol of the CHILDREN, untill they can reason for themselves. The libs have engrained to much touchy, feely, warm fuzzy attitudes into society. That my freind IS, the problem. Reality is a hard teacher. It should be tought by the parents to easy the blow, but it hasn't. As for you, don't throw in the towel! Right is right, and wrong is wrong. The world IS NOT GRAY. Search for the white. Best Whishes!!!!!

-- SCOTTY (BLehman202@aol.com), May 01, 1999.

A witch hunt is a witch hunt, no matter the age or the sex of the suspected witch. Even an inanimate object (guns) can be the feared thing. So let's hunt them down and destroy that which we fear. Does this sound like the Salem witch trials or the McCarthy thing in the '50's? Lives can be ruined by irrational fear, while a healthy dose of caution could save those same lives. I don't have the answers to how to pick out the angry young men who really will carry out their threats, but there must be a way without expanding every remark into murder. Any ideas?

-- Juniper (silverfox@netutah.com), May 01, 1999.

Leo, I can't blame Bill Clinton for the knee-jerk, spasmodic (sp?) reaction to Littleton. He's only trying to make political capital out of it. It's what he does.

Blame? Start with me, and then you. We're both a part of the society that is so warped as to allow this.....not only the repression of students but also the environment in which the entire concept of schools shootings could occur.

Repression, maybe. One can argue that schools have always held the right to search lockers. If you have something you don't want the school to find, don't bring it to school.

But, the kids don't make things easier when they resort to phoney copy-cat threats, either. Hey, the very day after Littleton a group of kids showed up at their school in black trench coats (and stood in the hall 'shooting' people with their fingers)! Real funny. We could ask a lot of questions about their lack of common sense (and even more about parents who would let their kids walk out the door in black trenchcoats at such a time). People are up tight, so a martial law of sorts is being declared in schools. Liberties are lost under martial law.

It goes back to the founding fathers of the US, one of whom commented that the Constitution was only suitable for a moral people. As we've become progressively less moral, the freedoms guaranteed by this Constitution and Bill of Rights have become progressively less applicable. We no longer live as free men. This isn't sudden.....it's been hapening for decades. Some people are just finding out about it.

Deal with it. Tossing your cookies over it won't do a bit of good.

-- De (delewis@inetone.net), May 01, 1999.

Leo you are very immature. Surely you understand that one man cannot be the cause of all that ails us? Clinton wants background checks for people purchasing TNT and to raise the age of handgun purchase to 21. Is that so bad? Would the American people rather he do nothing?

What is unfolding in society today is very complex. When people on this forum jump to conclusions, their minds close, jeopardizing their ability to understand the full spectrum of the problem and to offer its best solutions.

-- a (a@a.a), May 01, 1999.

Look, Leo sounds like he is a teenager, or under 21. Of course he is acting immature. On the other hand, he is also reacting to injustice as he sees it. HIS friends aren't calling in copycat threats. De, by your reasoning, if you don't want your gun seized, don't buy one. And your attitude of "Deal with it" is just what got us into this mess in the first place. You don't want to listen to the frustration of young people. "Just deal with it, kid and don't bother me. I got BIG stuff to worry about." "Damn Y2K", mutter, mutter, growl. No wonder they're angry. We want them to "grow up", think and act like adults, but they shouldn't expect rights and protections to go along with those thoughts. Yeah, I know the argument that these are children and don't have the same constitution to protect them that adults do. Don't wash with me.

I also understand Leo's frustration with Clinton. When I see the president use the constitution for toilet paper (as in, he WILL send in ground troops, whether Congrsss approves it or not.), I get a little hot too.

Juniper

P.S. Don't forget, this young man will more than likely be called upon in the near future to put his life on the line under this "Commander in Chief". WILL YOU?

-- Juniper (Silverfox@netutah.com), May 01, 1999.

Leo, an Australian I believe, is not likely to be called up for service in the U.S. And the last I heard, he was eighteen years old. At that age some degree of immaturity, a certain level of inexperience, is hardly surprising.

The Littleton, Colo. bomb count has now risen to 67, some of which were still in the shooters' residences. I heard a report yesterday that over 20 of these weighed over 30 lbs. each, apparently designed as fuel-air devices.

County police, repeatedly warned of the threats the two boys had made, did not act. School officials at Columbine looked the other way and now say they knew nothing of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" or their activities. Students who knew of the shooters' views gave no warning to anyone. Metal detectors were not installed at the school. As I read Leo's post, this laissez faire attitude suits him just fine.

In effect, Leo's telling us. "Don't worry, be happy! Barring guns and knives in school threatens fundamental civil liberties."

Is this youthful folly? Aussie machismo? Or is it simply ignorance?

Be happy Leo's not on your school board.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), May 01, 1999.

The national hysteria fuelled by the media, making money by showing tragedy betewwn cat food commercials and toilet paper ads is what one should feel sick about.

Using Bill Clinton as the universal scape goat for every ill our nation is heir to is equally sickening.

The evil lies in our loss of a sense of the sacred. From the time we massacred 500 indian nations, and destroyed one of earths natural wonders we started paying the price.

Christianoid hypocrits are all around making political hay and forgetting the abused. Let them review the words of the Nazarene, and be silent for they have shown us no example of rel Christian living.

What we lack is a culture of the heart, true softness towards our children. American kids were carrying a gun at an early age but they never killed in the little red school house.

American racism was fostered by deliberate interests who sought to justify the dispossession of Native Americans and the Slave trade. Ignorance triumphs and fortunately two little zeroes 00 will level the playing field again.

With wisdom and learning how to think and love with our hearts we can at last build a CIVILIZATION to replace our barbarian TECHNILIZATION.

ZORRO

-- ZORRO (Z@ZZZ.net), May 01, 1999.

Clinton this, Clinton that, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. What is happening in our schools is a reflection of our society as a whole, and if you ask me, I began to notice the most extreme value changes during the Reagan Years. Yuppies, the "ME generation", working mothers, two income households that all of a sudden forgot about raising their children, the "trickle-down" economics that didn't trickle down, Star Wars, Iran Contra disgrace and cover-up, and on and on. I can't blame Reagan completely because I think he was more or less a puppet slave to the whims of mega-corporations, but if he had any ethics he would not have allowed American family values to take a back seat to the pursuit of materialism. Rant on and on about Clinton all you like, but I've been around long enough (probably longer than most of you, judging by the remarks I'm hearing) to know when the problems actually started. Just because Clinton gave into temptation and lied about something which was none of our business in the first place doesn't make him the nuclear madman Hitler that you guys say he is. It was during the decade of the 80's (the worst years of my life) when I saw the NWO Republicans start to force corporate values onto American society, and if you didn't play their game, you fell into the cracks. Nancy Reagan's "Just say no"; the beginning of the ridiculous war on drugs, MADD mothers, Big Brother advocates like Kenneth Starr who want to know how much money you have in the bank, and what you do in your personal sex life. THESE are the people who began the trend toward restricting your freedoms, because if you are not doing what best serves the elite leaders of NWO corporations, then you are an expendable liability as far as they are concerned. The only reason Clinton has to implement new policies about gun control is because of the tremendous selfishness and irresponsibility of parents of the last 20 years, and tremendous pressure by mad mothers who children have been killed due to the ills of our society. Funny thing about these freedom stealing, self-serving Republicans; when you mention the booming economy they say "Oh, Bill Clinton didn't do that, it is because of policies of Reagan and Bush." But when you talk about any of the current problems with our world, it's ALL Clinton's fault! WARNING to Generation X: Learn to make you own judgements - do not fall into the trap of believing the media circus propoganda or you will be selling your soul and freedoms to the Big Brother NWO Corporate Republicans.

-- @ (@@@.@), May 01, 1999.

Yeh yeh. Clinton this, Clinton that. You right-wing nuts should get a life. We're tired of hearing your rabid meanderings.

As to the school massacre. Chock another set of dead bodies up to the NRA. Then they hold a conference right on their graves. No wonder Colorado people are so angry at them. They are the worst kind of terrorists.

After Clinton, you nuts blame society, the media etc. Hey, other democratic open societies don't have these massacres. They see all the "bad" movies and TV, but for some reason they only have 10% of our murder rate. Only here in the US do we have this problem. What is the difference? We, unfortunately, have the NRA and the gun nuts.

-- nospam (nospam@nospam.com), May 01, 1999.

Columbine High: Wag the Dog Part Deux

By DeAnne

4-29-99

It amazes me that intelligent people will watch the news with the slack-jawed amazement of Arkansas yokels seeing a horseless carriage; slurping down the smoothly modulated drivel like it's gospel. The latest of our media bread and circuses involved the death of some popular kids in a picturesque small mountain town. Gosh, is it sweeps week already? Wait, kids wearing black committed the crime? Did they happen to like Marilyn Manson? Whoo-Hoo! Get the camera and makeup crews on the plane! Televise the memorial service! Someone get me theme music. Is Elton John available?

Did anyone else notice that while we were watching the show on center stage, the magicians on the other stage managed to slide 10 billion dollars and 33,000 ground troops towards our non-war in the Balkans? That's billion, with a B. Remember the budget surplus? It's gone. We're using it to fight Serbia and Iraq. Remember Iraq? It was all the rage during the election. We're still there. Remember the Japanese internment camps of WWII? They're building new ones all over the country. Theoretically to hold Serbian refugees. Your tax dollars at work.

Now, if this were a movie, the plot would end there. Distracting the country with dead teenagers so you can play soldier is quite the PR stunt. Once we have troops on the ground, it's easy to convince the public to pull out their yellow ribbons. I mean, they've been used so often in the last decade that people keep them in the kitchen junk drawer, so as to have them close at hand. Once the yellow ribbons are out, patriotism is worn like a badge; government has much more leeway and big brother's wallet opens for new toys that go boom in the night. It worked for Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Poor Nixon, if only he'd known the power of the Yellow Ribbon. We might have won Vietnam if we'd used Mattel's PR engine instead of their M16's.

However, I propose that the plot is more Machiavellian than a poorly disguised excuse to distract the public while the military budget gets pumped again. Armed teens on a rampage is the best of all possible situations for the gun control lobby. What's that? The President has a new gun control policy already written and ready for Congress? How convenient. I guess the 17 laws the rampaging teenagers broke were not enough. Surely, if they knew they were going to break 20 laws, the plot would have been foiled.

Now, you know that I'm not a voice for the NRA, but by the same token, I don't trust our government enough to let them have all the guns. But all it will take to disarm Americans is a few public incidents involving kids in this era of child idolatry. You can hear the cry going up around the country even now, "Won't somebody please think about the children. Sob, sniff ". Hysterical soccer moms who forgot to teach their children right from wrong are waving tear dampened hankies, demanding that the government fix their mistakes.

So I'm paranoid am I? Seeing conspiracies where there are none? Ah then, what are the odds that suddenly a bunch of baby unabomber/mad gunner Trenchcoat mafias would suddenly appear everywhere at once? Last evening, while half listening to the local news, my attention was caught by the arrest of some local kids that school officials thought "might be dangerous" because of clothing, reading and music habits. There was no other evidence to suggest that these kids were dangerous. Since it was the second story about kids getting arrested, I did a little checking around to see just how many areas were suddenly having problems with the black-wearing set. Since I'm basically a slacker, and didn't feel like going through the newspaper stacks at the library, I checked via the web. Granted, not a statistically sound sampling, but a sampling none the less.

I started at http://www.broadcast.com/television/ and went randomly down the list of news broadcasting stations where I could see the broadcast and where there were printed archives of the stories. I stopped after 7 stations because if I'd waded through the saccharin speech patterns of one more bleached blonde my brain would have exploded. 5 of the 7 stations had local stories about guns in school.

WHAS-TV - ABC 11 - Louisville, KY. Death threats at Salem Middle School Notes that threatened the lives of four students surfaced at the school on Friday. Parents are suggesting everything from locking down the school during the day, to metal detectors, to book bag searches. http://www.whas11.com/redirects/news.html

WABC-TV - ABC 7 - New York, NY. Student Brings Father's Gun To Middle School Two sixth grade students at the Turn of River Middle School in Stamford, Connecticut have been suspended after one of the boys brought an unloaded gun to school. The other student was suspended for allowing the gun to be stored in his locker.

KENS 5 Eyewitness News - San Antonio, TX. Teens Held in School Bomb Plot While the town of Littleton, Colorado continues to bury its dead and deal with tragedy, closer to home things are slowly getting back to normal in the hill country community of Wimberley. http://www.kens- tv.com/prd1/now/template.display?p_section=100&p_who=KENS

KXTV-10 - Sacramento/Stockton/Modesto, CA. A Lodi student arrested for making a bomb threat to his school reportedly admired Unabomber Ted Kaczynski. http://www.kxtv10.com/news/Storiesarchive/April1999/042799/lodi.html

News Channel 5, WTVF - Nashville, TN. 9th Grader Arrested Tennessee isn't immune to what happened in Littleton, Colorado. Metro Police took a 9th grader into custody today at a bus stop in South Nashville after an officer spotted him with a little bag of gunpowder. They charged him with possession of an explosive component. http://www.newschannel5.com/headlines/headline.htm

Hmm, that seemed a little odd. So I checked newspapers with online search engines. Again, came up with large instances of this activity showing up all over the place in the last two weeks, usually in smaller towns. Towns where the NRA is likely to have a large membership base. (Note that the time frame was 2 weeks, so not all of the incidents could be tied to or assumed to be "copycat" crimes.)

So, let's think about this for a minute. Take one weird war out of nowhere. Add thousands of refugees being brought to the US. Mix into internment camps going up all over the country. After all, that is why those camps are being built, right? Separate local reserve forces from their states and send them to Europe. Move the "real" army into now empty reserve bases. Blend in a dash of Oklahoma City, a pinch of Waco and a cup of Columbine. Whip into frothy peaks of nationalism and pathos. Sprinkle liberally with fear of people who are different or "undesirable". Anyone else hear the shades of Nuremberg in that recipe?

So, here we are; facing a paternalistic government with relocation camps and armies in our backyards. But let's all remember; guns are the enemy. It's the loners and the people wearing black we have to beware. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Shouldn't you be looking for your yellow ribbons anyway?

-- Andy (2000EOS@prodigy.net), May 01, 1999.

Who's DeAnne, sort of a backwards Andy? I don't follow. Anyway, I believe in more conspiracies than most people, but Columbine High isn't one of them. Those kids were very angry but completely sane, made their intentions very clear, and acted of their own free will. Unless somebody is putting some kind of suggestive mind control drug into Pepsi, I just don't see it. I completely understand their frustration in being rejected from the system, but this was merely a red flag to some very serious problems with our society, and movies, the internet, guns and video games have very little to do with it. Those are just the easiest things to blame.

"Hysterical soccer moms who forgot to teach their children right from wrong are waving tear dampened hankies, demanding that the government fix their mistakes."

You got THAT right! It is time for the "grown-ups" to finish growing up and start taking some responsibility to raise their children to be decent. It is very easy to produce children, but people should think about what they are doing before they bring another life into this world. Are they going to love and nurture it, or just use it as an excuse to claim tax exemptions or collect welfare? It is no wonder children these days put little value on life - look at who they learned from.

-- @ (@@@.@), May 01, 1999.

since when do most murders occur with legal guns? the NRA doesn't promote in any way the illegal gun trade, only responsible ownership and the protection of our constitutional rights. please recall, one of the first things Hitler did was to abolish the gun-ownership rights of the Germans and to stage house-to-house confiscations. without the ability to protect themselves from a corrupt and mislead military, the population became easy prey.

-- sarah (qubr@aol.com), May 01, 1999.

To: All
Re: Roots of violence in late-20th-century civilian society

Please read the excellent article CT 8/10/98: COVERSTORY: Trained to Kill at http://www.christianity.net/ct/8T9/8T9030.html

This article is one of the best I've ever read about the roots of violence in late-20th-century civilian society.

Grossman's psychology-based explanations ring far truer than any morality-based, politics-based, or religion-based arguments. Many people do not wish to accept that modern psychology can usefully explain "bad" behavior, but the evidence is there anyway.

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 01, 1999.

Leo,

There are other forums where this thread would be on-topic. Why not try one of them?

-- No Spam Please (No_Spam_Please@anon_ymous.com), May 02, 1999.

@, I'm not so sure - anyhow, devil's advocate, funny about the media blitz hitting us all around the country now. What will be next I wonder?

later,

-- Andy (2000EOS@prodigy.net), May 02, 1999.