Evil Spirits

By freeacre

As I got dressed this morning, I found myself wishing that I had some sort of talisman to ward off evil spirits.

I can’t help it. This Cho Seung-Hui massacre has just sent me over the top of my capacity to deal with the troubles that surround us. Thirty-two people gunned down on the Virginia Tech campus in a shooting spree that seems to have been copied in many respects from the Korean revenge film, “Oldboy,” which it is said that Seung-Hui had watched repeatedly. Additionally, in a Columbine-like milieu of institutional violence, his sister is reported to be working at a black ops support organization after graduating from Princeton. (Link to cryptogon.)

We are horrified to hear of 32 students massacred on a Virginia campus. I wonder how it is that I have not felt so acutely the senseless deaths of innocent bystanders in the hundreds of gang-related murders in our inner cities or the daily deaths of children and their parents while shopping in the Middle East by roadside bombs targeting whatever civilians happen to be walking down the street.

I don’t think that removing guns will in any way solve the problem here. It’s not about the trigger or the trigger fingers. It’s about the minds and hearts so disconnected and resentful of the people around them that they feel compelled to kill. And, it’s also about the ineffectual mental health care system that continually falls short in their efforts to protect the emotionally tortured souls that beg for help.

Cho Seung-Hui became a pain and hate-filled monster who could no longer stand to live another day. He went for years to classes and refused to speak to anyone, and made no eye contact even with his roommates. He wrote violent, hateful, twisted messages in plays, poems, and essays that intimidated his teachers and classmates. It is almost incomprehensible that he was on the verge of graduation with this history of sickness and alienation.

For him, at least on this plane of existence, it is over. But, the parents and loved ones of those killed are experiencing a sorrow that will never go away. Having a son that age myself, it makes me almost physically ill to contemplate it. When I extend my empathy to the mothers and fathers of the victims of the gangs, domestic violence, child abuse, prison populations, soldiers, and “collateral damage” or our assorted wars, it is just too much. My mind TILTS like a shaken pin-ball machine.

Maybe that’s why we don’t do it. Maybe we can’t do it.

What I fear is that we are in for more of the same as our culture continues to deteriorate. The pressures on the maxed-out families that are losing their homes, their jobs, their health care, their ability to cope with the larger forces of collapse and depletion are increasing daily. We usually think of the adults in this picture. But, these adults have children. These children have had no say in the decision-making that has led to their disenfranchisement. Headlines in cryptogon and speakingtruthtopower today report an 800% increase in foreclosures in California this month compared to last year. How many children are going to be turned out onto these mean streets?

After WWII, Americans created the first truly middle class nation. But, all that has changed. The income gap between the the ruling class and the middle class is wider here than in any other advanced country. The least wealthy 50% of families now hold only 2.5% of the wealth of the land.

We are awash in astonishing levels of private debt, adding excruciating tension to family life. The Washington Spectator reports that “American families have amassed record housing, auto, education and credit card debt. In the last decade, the average family’s credit card debt increased by 137 % and its mortgage debt jumped 154%. Debt payments now consume 19.4 % of the income of the average American family.” Public college costs have increased 25% since 2001. Private schools are averaging $29,026 per year. Graduating students are hitting the streets owing around $60,000 dollars at interest rates that are a crime compared to what they were in the seventies.

And, they are going to have to pay off these loans with jobs that are from the service sector, have reduced or no benefits, get little or no over-time pay, have no collective bargaining power, and may be out-sourced anyway to third world countries.

This is not even factoring in the oil and natural gas depletion that will make feeding ourselves much more expensive (already 17% increase since last year) and the all but inevitable collapse of the retail economy which relies on shipping goods thousands of miles, or the environmental challenge of global warming. Oh, and the crisis in social security as us Boomers retire, as well as the crushing debt of the trade imbalance and projected currency insolvency.

So far I have been referring to the squeeze on middle class kids, which is bad enough. The working class and underclass – those children of immigrants and the ghetto, the rural and migrant workers, single parents and the working poor, are the ones who have it the toughest. These are the ones who have faced childhoods of lack and humiliation in the all-too-cruel mall world created by advertising hype and compromised public school systems. These good and honorable kids trying to “Be All That They Can Be” have joined the military in order to feel a part of something valuable, with a future they can be proud of, despite their lackluster childhoods.

We have armed and trained these kids to do battle on the city streets of Iraq. They have been traumatized, stressed, wounded, poisoned with depleted uranium ordinance and god-knows-what-else, had their tours extended and been taken advantage of until they are on the verge of snapping like twigs – and still it doesn’t stop.

The counseling services of one of the best colleges in the country couldn’t deal effectively with the pathology of an upper-middle class kid with a history of watching violent movies and playing video games. What is going to happen if the young veterans come home traumatized from a real war and find that, once again, there is nothing here for them?

One can only hope that their compassion and strength is greater than our own. It is going to take much more wisdom than we have heretofore demonstrated to avoid the consequences of a battle over diminishing resources and opportunities in the coming culture of less instead of more. The potential for race wars, class wars, and undifferentiated hostility in the near future is sobering.

Let us use this tragedy to learn how to reach out to each other in solidarity and support, rather than try to insulate ourselves from the suffering that seems to be in store for our next generation of children.