The cycle of American Violence surrounding 04/20 (Originaly posted 4/29/07)

Why Waco 4/19/93 OK City 4/19/95 Columbine 4/20/99 Virginia Tech 4/16/07 and countless others like Jonesboro AR, Springfield OR, Littleton CO, Lake Worth FL, Santee and El Cajon CA, Red Lake MN?

America springs eternal? Aggression in springtime is a pathological self annihilation instinct usually counterproductive in today’s world unless channeled positively.  Desperation, isolation contributes. Moral outrage and unusually high standards of self versus others common.  More typical in individuals within societies where state violence is accepted and personal violence is condemned.

The US’ disproportionately large number of such cases since the early ’90s is partially a consequence of the fall of the Soviet Union and the final ascension to world dominance by the US since WWII.  The abolition of the draft and the transformation of the US Army after Vietnam as well as the apparent successes of organization such as the CIA to act unilaterally across the globe contributed to the global psychoses of the American psyche.

As violence receded from our everyday lives under Regan in the 80’s the US government began to understand how to best to manipulate the media as well as the products we buy and sell.  The Regan and Clinton miracles of economics, while opening world markets, creating inconceivable amounts of wealth, have at the same time each occurred at the expense of the American taxpayer and worker.  Instead, now we’re just consumers.

The vast majority of Americans have been or soon will be essentially leveraged by birth into the society.  While generally a good thing to be born in America rather than 90% of the world, there is a responsibility, a complicity involved in taking part in life in America today.  It is a rejection of this ethos which results in acts of mass violence by an individual.  In an immoral world the moral individual cannot survive.

Springtime… the natural rhythm of life.  Ancient impulses in culture and instinctive needs to die and be born again.  The choice implied by Easter to accept or reject this life is too great a question for some to bear.  In a society  ignorant of the history, current events, and the world at large, we do not know what we eat, what we drink, or what we breathe.  Americans have completely given up control of their lives to their government and the global industrial complex of private wealth.  Control and power, given or taken away are categories incompatible with the idea of morality.  Normally, we may find ways to rationalize the ethics of American life in the 21st century; but a full moral understanding of the world can only move one to act.  For those with a predominantly moral sense of the world on either side there are cases of extreme goodness and evil.

Morality implies conscious acceptance or rejection of what you understand to be the conditions you experience.  As activity returns with the spring some people due to their moral understanding of living in post 1976 America cannot take it.  It’s a massively fucked up world and some people just can’t accept it.

Radical Dislocation

So again, “Northern Illinois University on Friday identified the man who fatally shot five people in a classroom as Steven P. Kazmierczak, whom police described as an award-winning student “revered” by colleagues and faculty.” according to cnn.com

Another violent dislocation in American Society, the motivation of which is in question.  Culminating one’s life in an act of shooting others and then shooting and killing oneself.  Such an overt dedication to fighting the ills of society and such an atypical overreaction to the opposite extreme. 

The question is what was the medication that Steven Kazmierczak had stopped taking in the weeks leading up to this event?  Which doctor prescribed the medication he was taking? Why did he exhibit erratic behavior in the weeks leading up to the murders? Could those symptoms have been interpreted as indications of possible violence?

Many various reasons are said to contribute to such a bloody dislocation with society on the part of otherwise passive individuals. 

From violence in media, to U.S. military aggression, to the neurosis of the American psyche over its conflicting values of democracy one the one hand and capitalist economic growth on the other, to the use of powerful anti-psychotic medication many explanations are offered for killings like this.

Access to guns as the problem or the answer?  Surely the easy web access to the purchase of firearms has accelerated the scope of the trend of mass killings in America over the past 15 years.

Is it a coincidence that “A Web site used to buy gun accessories by Steven Kazmierczak is owned by the same company that operates a site patronized by Seung-Hui Cho, the company said.”?

Of the simplest reasons for this is mere imitation and longing to fulfill a dark romantic fantasy of revenge to avenge all the perceived wrongs which have accumulated over years of mental illness.  Managed with medications that often cause issues as potentially damaging as the ones they are supposed to cure.  The containment of the dualistic schism in the individual’s psyche through the use of medication and without addressing the underlying psychological understanding of this individual’s mental condition leads to isolation of aspects of the self and often leads to latter subconscious dislocations of personality.

The fact that in America this very day another otherwise good, intelligent individual executes his premeditated dream of the glory of appearing for a moment before society to express some sort of maladjusted need for recognition.  Too weak to face the reality of their own lives by killing themselves, and incapable of creating meaning in their lives in any other way. 

The choice to kill, the deliberate act of murder point blank and the successful execution of one’s own self to avoid repercussions cannot be wholly explained by any one cause.  That does not mean this act was not preventable given proper treatment.  The means of identifying and treating mental illness in America remain in question.

In a society at war the collective consciousness of a people is shaped by its own fears.  The manufacture of fear in America is the great unheralded force behind it’s people’s actions.  Fear will lead a people to war and will also keep a population from thinking and questioning the actions of its government.

All excuses for cold blooded murder and suicide aside, the desperation for any sort of expression, for any type of recognition as someone real to another is real.  Such a heavy expectation of life. 

Said Martin Wnuk of Friendswood, Texas  “..We are creating these seemingly soulless ghouls who are in reality desperate, lonely, hopeless and ill … and capable of unthinkable random violence. I have no answer to it. In a few weeks this will be forgotten, except by the fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and friends of the slain, who will live with it forever.”