Have you lost a friend who was shot to death in your school classroom?
Remember the war protests in the 60s? Some kids can think for themselves.
By that standard, I’m not able to comment. I’m closing in on 40 but not quite there yet, so no, I can’t say I remember the war protests of the 60s.
What I do know, however, is that today’s youth is lost and starving for attention. Sometime between now and the late 90s, the kids in this country lost their souls and took to violent acts as an acceptable outlet.
I was in college when Columbine happened and couldn’t help but think that just a few years before I was sitting in a high school classroom surrounded by frustrated, impetuous boys who spent the weekend plinking cans off a fence with a .22 or firing shotguns at tins cans. Not a single one of us ever considered taking that rifle or those shotguns to school to vent our frustrations.
What’s different? We were God-fearing, church going boys. We loved our mothers and listened to our fathers. We respected our elders, didn’t talk back, and knew when we were beat either intellectually or physically. Kids today take to social media to vent, bully, whine, cry, threaten, etc. That’s just a hollow echo chamber. They’re not getting out their frustrations; they’re being called crybaby or queer or dumb or psycho. There’s no discourse left in this country. We’re a hollowed out tree stump waiting for a hard rain or a stiff wind.