Changing the Subject after Newtown

by G. Murphy Donovan (February 2013)

Indeed, schools and what they teach, beyond basic skills, are probably the worst possible preparation for a long, no less successful, life. Unfortunately, formal schools have failed, in too many cases, the basic skills test also. Half of Black and Hispanic kids in America do not reach the twelfth grade in one of the worst public school systems in the developed world. Thus, even the best vicarious public instruction, like prisons, may have little to do with social skills or useful training.

horrific end to a young life.

The second case is more recent, the sad tale of twenty-year-old Adam Lanza who returned to his alma mater, Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, and gunned down 20 students and six adults, and then took his own life.

Ironies in both cases abound too.

Unfortunately, parents, especially single parents, have a kind of civic immunity when it comes to their aberrant offspring. For the politically correct, parents are literal and figurative victims too. Yet, arrested development may not be limited to children or parents. Some observers argue that that extended infantilism is now a cultural phenomenon. The nanny state is not just a metaphor.

In their visions, McCandless becomes something of a mystic, a Thoreau reading, sensitive hero in search of truth midst bourgeois parents and a callous, material world. Here again, art attempts to change the subject. McCandless might be alive today if sensitivity was common sense.

cars, trucks, and aircraft from GM or Boeing could be outlawed too. And if small arms are taken from ordinary law-abiding citizens, couldn’t SWAT teams and Secret Service agents get by with nightsticks?

blaming the state of Virginia for Times Square homicides.  

wilding” is summer fun – where police are often spectators. The “no-go” neighborhoods of London and Paris are laws unto themselves.

Kitty Genovese

And when the subject is gratuitous violence, how do the Press, Hollywood, and the video game industry get a pass?

gun clip under a guest’s nose to score TV debating points. Unfortunately, mere possession of such gun magazines is illegal in the nation’s capital, a bit of research that seemed to elude NBC and Meet the Press gun “experts.” Gregory’s ill-considered stunt, and similar pandering from the likes of Piers Morgan, stimulated record gun sales in 2012. Blowback indeed!

record for an earlier generation of Holocaust deniers. That journal is again host to the likes of Thomas Friedman, an urban naif who thinks democracy can survive Islamism, a polite term for contemporary theo-fascism. Changing the Islamic trope requires strange bedfellows; to wit, American Jews in the vanguard of another quisling campaign. In the slack water of New York City politics, where Anthony Weiner swims, poseurs like Friedman are frequently confused with moral philosophers.

Somehow, any restraint on the gratuitous violence of Quentin Tarantino (Kill Bill), and like-minded Hollywood thrill shills, is off the table too. Tarantino snuff flicks are targeted on an audience of 14 year olds.

shooters” is not a marketing accident either.

Barracks bombing in Lebanon (1983) and every president since has sought to rationalize every subsequent Islamic atrocity – body bags be damned. Bill Clinton gets the cadaver prize for ignoring the million-plus Rwanda tribal genocide (1994) and the Obama/Clinton team gets a more recent creativity award for Benghazi. A plane load of tourists over Scotland is just another surcharge when petroleum becomes a cultural value. Excusing international mayhem is now a bi-partisan, Oval Office pastime.

G. Murphy Donovan writes frequently about military affairs, Intelligence, national security, and politics. He was raised in the east and south Bronx.

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