Where Have We Gone Wrong?
Last week I lamented about the horrific kidnapping and murder of a little 7 year old girl. Just a few days after Somer Thompson was found dead in a Georgia landfill, another girl Elizabeth Olten, age 9 was found dead in Missouri. A month ago we all stood in shock as kids in Chicago watched 16 year old Derrien Albert being beat to death with clubs and boards by his classmates for being too smart. We have all seen the videos of girls beating up other girls in the bathroom at school, or parents beating up other parents on the soccer fields. This morning I woke up to the news that one little boy in Coral Springs Florida has allegedly stabbed his brother to death with a knife to the chest over a video game feud and loud music playing while their parents were away. WTH?
If all of this isn’t bad enough–we now know that in Richmond, California at least 20 people watched the gang rape of a 15 year old girl after a Homecoming dance. According to news reports for more than two hours on a dark Saturday night, as many as 20 people watched or took part as a 15-year-old California girl was allegedly gang raped and beaten outside a high school homecoming dance, authorities said. As hundreds of students gathered in the school gym, outside in a dimly lit alley where the victim was allegedly raped, police say witnesses took photos. Others laughed. “As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated,” Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department told CNN.
I think I am at a loss for words here. We know that this has happened before in the infamous Kitty Genovese case, which occurred in 1964, where a young woman was robbed, raped and beaten in plain view by her attacker and dozens of people watched, pulled down their shades and did not call the police or help this woman–despite her loud pleas for help. Again, I am at a loss for words.
Here is the bottom line though folks: We had better wise up and fast. We are raising a generation of emotionally retarded, angry, cold and callous kids. No region, no neighborhood is immune to this rampant disorder that plagues our young people. No race, no gender knows any escape from this problem. Our kids are angry–disconnected and caught up in a reality TV based world where anything goes and anything is worth watching and sending on your cell phone to friends.
What has happened to us as a society?
If this is what technology has done to our kids we had better throw the damned computers, ipods, cell phones, videophones and other devices AWAY. The more we text, and type emails and don’t have to deal face to face with other human beings the more dangerous we are becoming. Parents, and child providers watch yourself–kids are like sponges they suck it all up and then spit it back. If our kids are angry and feel that watching a girl be RAPED is something to laugh at and send on a video phone–we are in big trouble as a nation. If this is what we have become–Al Qaeda is not the problem, they are not our greatest internal threat to peace, order, and security–WE ARE!
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