Chicken Soup with Columbine's Lords of Denial...

The 13th anniversary of the Columbine Massacre is fast approaching and in all that time not a single adult in Littleton, Colorado has publicly admitted to any significant degree of complicity. Children and teenagers do not establish and maintain the culture of a community.

Adults do that.

When victims of bullying and their parents complain to school administrators (adults), it isn't the student body that attempts to wait them out in the hope that they'll just give up.

Adults do that.

And not just random adults. Adults in authority choose to ignore the criminal behavior of their star athletes. Instead of placing a high priority on the safety of other people's children, they chose to concentrate on stroking the athlete's bloated ego. There's an awful lot of blame to spread around. There are the adults who want their children to be feared by other people's children. Google "another Jew in the oven" for a small sample. There are the adults who have the power to punish specific bullies or discourage bullying in general by openly and loudly condemning it. There are the adults who wouldn't miss a football game for anything, even when they know a boycott would send a clear message. Adults cause and/or perpetuate the vast majority of our society's problems, but they'll never admit it. Adults always have a scapegoat handy to deflect blame. Like psychopaths on the witness stand in a criminal trial, the adults of Littleton, Colorado truly believe that they did nothing wrong.

If you've read a few of the posts here you should have figured out that this weblog is not about bullies, terrorists, or other similar criminals. It's about enablers. When you're finished reading about enablers consider the following analogy to high schools like Columbine:

A thousand people get drunk, climb into their cars, and go somewhere. One of them crashes into another vehicle, killing and maiming several victims. The other 999 drunk drivers get where they're going without crashing into anything. Some of them come very close, but they just laugh it off as normal behavior. A few cause other drivers to swerve out of their way, resulting in traffic collisions that didn't directly involve the drunk driver who caused the problem. They laugh it off too. Think of all of the vandals, serial arsonists, bombers, and killers who can trace their anger to the community sanctioned cruelty they were subjected to as adolescents. Like drunk drivers who cause collisions without being harmed by them, these are the schools who cause tragedies without suffering from their effects. Perhaps you attended one of these gems of western civilization yourself.

The drunk driver who is unlucky enough to actually crash into something makes a few headlines, but all of the others remain anonymous. In their minds they did nothing wrong. Like the drunk who crashed, the Columbine massacre made a lot of headlines, but little effort was expended to thoroughly investigate the athletes first culture that precipitated it. Given the behavior of many athletes since Columbine, little effort has been expended to address the problem. American adults are very good at the art of denial.

There are a thousand Columbine's in America; high schools and colleges where cocky, violent sociopaths are placed on a pedestal simply because they play football. Only one of those Columbines became known as the Columbine. It's unfortunate that no one in the media spent much time investigating the adults who placed violent bullies on a pedestal and ignored the complaints of their victims. But that's part of American culture. Ignore problems that harm unimportant people and they'll conveniently go away.

I love that picture of Mr. Denial. It has that ...Who? Me?!!... look.

The reason no one is putting a spotlight on the adults most responsible for inspiring the level of hatred needed to stage the Columbine massacre is both simple and obvious. The victims of bullying were others people's kids, and in America the safety of other people's kids shrinks to insignificance when compared to the ego of a football player.

Go Rebels!!

Why do so many Americans make it so easy for domestic terrorists to hate them?

If you have an answer to this question, feel free to leave a comment.