ANOTHER HIGH SCHOOL MASSACRE
John Q. Pridger
(22 March 2005)

There's been another school massacre. This time on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in northern Minnesota. A young student rose up and killed his grandparents, a school security guard, and seven students at his school. Others were wounded, and the shooter himself went out in a "blaze of glory" by his own hand. 

This killing spree has the social workers, sociologists, law enforcement personnel, and pundits, baffled. They are scratching their heads even harder than in previous high school massacres, wondering what went wrong to make another good boy go bad. Already they've uncovered an alleged link to a neo-Nazis web site. Apparently the boy admired Hitler and National Socialism. Hitler is still striking from the grave, and they'd be pleased to pin another atrocity on him. But this case is particularly perplexing because the young man was a Native American and not just another troubled white boy.

Of course, Pridger hasn't the slightest idea what the boy's problem was, but there are probably some common traits to the boys who pull these kind of stunts. Likely there was some drug involved – more than likely some medication commonly prescribed for children with imagined (or even real), "learning" or behavior problems. All were undoubtedly raised in front of television sets, and ten to one odds says that all of them liked R-rated movies, particularly of the Terminator variety. Chances are, most of them spent a considerable amount of time playing video games. None could see anything like a "real world" future ahead of them that could compare with what the movies and games portrayed. They sought "Terminator" solutions for their imagined dilemmas.

This is not to say that media influences all children, or people in general, in the same way. To most reasonably well adjusted individuals, entertainment is recognized as mere entertainment – an alternate experience, but not one to be duplicated in real life. The novel or movie that delves into, or even dwells upon, murder and other aberrant behavior never produce "copycat" behavior in well adjusted people. If that were the case, murder mysteries would have had to be banned a century or two ago. To the average man who allows himself to peruse pornography, the media itself serves as an illicit sexual experience that generally satiates his lustful desires and fantasies, but does not prompt him to go out and seek such experiences in real life or commit rape.

This said, however, there are always a few individuals who tend to be predisposed to violence or otherwise aberrant behavior. And these few may very well be influenced by violence in the media to undertake adventures they would not otherwise chance to indulge themselves in. The great preponderance of extreme violence and sexually explicit material available in the entertainment media today, undoubtedly increases the number of individuals who are given the extra necessary nudge over the behavioral brink.

Obviously, these instances would be particularly likely in a society where the religious culture has been greatly compromised and undermined – where gender and sex role confusion have taken a toll on both manhood and chivalry – and where the line between right and wrong has been blurred – and where numerous media "heroes" are depicted as extremely violence prone. Where that violence or aberrant behavior is shown to produce "good effects," or at least an apparently a high degree of "self-satisfaction" or "self-justification," there are always those few who will attempt to "talk the talk" and "walk the walk." This, in a subconscious attempt to establish "manhood" – in a society where manhood has generally been neutered (except, perhaps, in movies where manhood is made synonymous with extremely violent behavior).

Too frequently, simply learning to "talk the talk" is the catalyst to ultimately walking the walk and taking that final step onto a path the individual would not have walked had he not been preconditioned to talk the talk. When the most extremely provocative language has become so common place as to always be on the tip of the tongue, extreme reactions are bound to become more prevalent. When the most extremely insulting words in the English language are routinely tripped out on the most routine and trivial occasions, the fight or flight instincts and impulses are often tripped. In the case of fight the results can, of course, be deadly.    

Hollywood, primarily through R-rated movies, has been aggressively indoctrinating youth into talking the talk for three decades – referring to the most outrageous obscenities and provocations "adult language" and "adult behavior." Of course, adulthood and adult behavior are things that youth naturally aspire to. And today we have youth, as well as two generations of adults of both genders, spewing forth language that would at an earlier time provoked violent outrage. And it still sometimes does.

At the same time Hollywood produces super-violent fictitious heroes as male role-models, the "politically correct" forces in society have been diligently depriving the male of his manhood and traditional manly roles in society. There is no longer a "man's" army or navy. There are no longer any "men's" academies nor men's professions.  Many of the warriors in our armed forces are now women – and now it is said that the military could not function without them. The great men of history are now generally seen as oppressors rather than great men. In short, "man" has been marginalized while natural male instincts and male pride continue seething in the background – often teased and titillated by the media depiction of "real men" doing terribly masculine things.

Women now have the best of both worlds. They can undertake either traditional female or male roles without stigma or serious impediments. But only an aberrant male desires to fill a woman's role or appear feminine. In a society in which women have, in large and increasing numbers, taken on men's roles and jobs as their equal opportunity privilege, the pride of maleness has become a negative, anti-social, trait. There is no longer any manful pride in being a soldier, sailor, truck driver, or heavy equipment operator. Women can, and increasingly do, fill those jobs. Women may take pride in both their feminine attributes and roles and their ability to fill traditionally masculine roles, while men are left with the task of trying to retain a relevant gender identity.

Every once in a while boys, aspiring to be men, do the unexpected and unthinkable to regain the lost male identity in the most negative of ways – yet the only way that seems open to them. This, too often, with tragic results. The boys who go on killing rampages are likely the victims of a media indoctrination in male violence combined with the frustrations that result from the continuing attempt to neuter the male in society.

The boy wants to be a man, but society seems to have deprived him of that prospect, so he establishes his manhood by warring against society in a suicidal rampage (a last desperate and climactic battle), that both establishes his manhood and seals his fate. Since he knows the inevitable consequences of his action, he goes the extra mile to take himself out in a blaze of glory – refusing to meekly surrender to the society that has prompted his "last stand." And maybe he is making one last gallant and chivalrous gesture – standing in, as it were, as final defender – taking vengeance on himself on behalf of his innocent and unarmed victims. He, in his brief moment of fame and glory, has known the manly art of killing, and what it is like to be killed.

In the latest massacre, sociologists will try to make much of "cultural" factors having to do with being a Native American, and thus a member of an "oppressed minority." There is undoubtedly an additional cultural factor to be considered, but Pridger does not think it is nearly as significant as the common cultural factors at work in society at large today. The perplexing fact that the young man admired National Socialism (the oppressor rather than the oppressed), merely means that he was capable of thinking a little beyond his own native or national culture, and beyond the bounds of political correctness. In Pridger's opinion, the boy was influenced much more by what he calls the "Terminator" and "blaze of glory" factors than any racial or ideological motivations. He wanted to be a "brave" – a man – and acted it out as several other unstable young men have done before and will undoubtedly do again.

Contrary to academic conventional wisdom, and political winds to the contrary, there are significant innate differences between men and women. In the absence of "accepted" contemporary scientific evidence, history and common sense, if not the present male-female prison population ratios, prove it.

Of course, human nature being what it is, it's only a matter of time until some young lady, in the interests of gender equality, will take it upon herself to prove that women can go it too.