: Samuel: What's going to be the result of all of this media publicity surrounding the kids who killed fifteen people (incl. themselves) at Columbine High School in Littleton Colorado? More authoritarian legislation aimed at kids? Anti-gun legislation? Pro-gun legislation? Better attempts to integrate high school kids into "mainstream society"? I hope the latter...: DADDIO: Eh? I thought "mainstream society" was the PROBLEM. Guns, violence, divorce, abuse, neglect, corruption, T.V., video games, drugs, disfunctional relationships, neuroticism, pollution, bad diets, authoritiarian legislation, etc. Aren't these typical aspects of "mainstream society"?
SDF: Perhaps, but please consider why radicals such as Martin Luther King Jr. chose "mainstream society" as their public-speaking audience -- approaching the mainstream is the only way of confronting these "typical aspects" of society head-on.
NOTE TO YOUNG STUDENTS READING THIS MESSAGE: go out and actually read the words of Martin Luther King Jr., if you can actually find them. There's also a really good CD with parts of his speeches, BUY IT if you can find it. Every January the public schools take a day off in celebration of this guy, and sometimes they tell you a little about who he was, but they always tell you some bland mushy nonsense about how he was a great guy like Abraham Lincoln or George Washington or those other guys who have holidays in their names. Find out what he actually said, as much of it as you can -- it's the sort of stuff the authorities don't want you to hear, and don't want you to think, because what he said ultimately can threaten their sense of power over your minds. After all, the big boys, the ones who really run the US government, did have him shot and killed for this same reason.
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: Seems to me like "mainstream society" has some serious problems that need to be reevaluated before making more efforts to integrate kids into it.
SDF: The kids I see each day are "already integrated" into mainstream society. One of them attacked me today as I was substitute-teaching his class -- I found it interesting, in this regard, the regular teacher was foolish enough to put, in plain sight on her desk, a standard form for "reporting suspected child abuse" with this kid's name penned in on it. Don't you think kids like the one I mentioned ought to be "integrated" into a society with better, less abusive parents? I do.
The problem of the "trenchcoat Mafia," as I understood it, was that they had this opinion of themselves that they were outcasts who were going to solve their social problems by killing everyone else. No?
: I'd say that the safest thing you could do for your kid right now is get him as far away from mainstream society as possible.
SDF: The urgent task-at-hand is to make mainstream society less dangerous, don't you think?
: Pull him out of public school, turn off the television, and go camping alone in the woods somewhere away from all of this crap and confusion.
SDF: Camping is fine -- I did it, year-round, to avoid the "crap and confusion" myself, on and off for about three years. Eventually I had to confront the monster out there.
