A Legacy of Rage

As another story of school violence comes out where a worker has been brutally beaten until unconscious and the student wouldn’t have stopped their beating until the victim was dead if they had not been restrained we have to ask ourselves what it will take to wake us up. 

A brutal war has been going overseas for over a year now and at this point our nation is more concerned with how pop stars perform during the Super Bowl and if gay people are on their television. 

We’re over the loss of innocence life and are back to our privileged disdain for the things that we don’t like or approve of as we cluck our tongues. 

LORD, the world has CHAAANGED we cry, waving our hands in the air. 

But nothing has changed but us, and the change that has happened is we have become angrier, crueler, and more hateful. 

We have become more dangerous. 

Maybe it’s not that we should be surprised at the mass shootings but that we should wonder that there are not more. 

We are a culture and a human race standing on the edge of a razor. 

Part of it is Covid, the frustration, the feeling of lost time and lost people, and part of it is the confusion of what the truth of it all really was and if the great Stay In Place order was worth it. 

It’s become so politicized that even the most ardent believers may ask themselves – was it really worth it?

We may all get sick no matter what and those that don’t believe never will and never would. 

Because part of the issue is politics. 

It’s people lying to us on our dime. 

Putting their pursuits and aims above the service of the nation or community.
Lying has become so commonplace that the idea of truth seems a bit old fashioned. 

Hustle culture has infected children, who want to be famous and seen and loved and yeah, rich too I guess. They think it’s just as easy as making a viral video or showing enough skin to become a model of some sort. 

Dreamers have always dreamed but now it’s gotten so the less ‘work’ the better because THEY just make it look easy and fun. 

It’s never as easy as we think though and those rare people that go viral and get famous for a moment do it usually without realizing it at the time. They are living their lives as genuinely as they can and they capture a spirit, a ‘vibe’ and people connect to THAT and they get famous. 

It’s not as easy as doing a poor mimic of a popular dance in short shorts in the middle of a mall because everyone else is doing the same thing. 

And it isn’t working for them either. 

And we’re so angry. 

Our dreams seem further away. 

Our hopes are fading. 

And the reality of one old white man or another leading all of us but only speaking to half of us turns us cold. 

We see the rich fail upwards while we lose our jobs for what seem like far lesser sins. 

And we’re so angry. 

We rage at one another, at the computer, at the television. 

All generally passive rage because most of us don’t really want confrontation but some do, and they want more than that. 

And too many kids are doing as their elders. 

They are beating one another, shooting one another, and killing one another when they should be living some of the most carefree days of their lives and why do they do it?

Small crimes usually. 

A slight. 

A dis. 

Something that in the moment seems more important than anything else on earth but which, in a month, or a year, will be barely a memory…unless you act on that moment of rage. 

And so many do. 

We are not teaching kids self control, we are not teaching them how to cool down, and we are not teaching them about consequences. 

We are showing them, in fact, that we don’t care about consequences. 

We want action, and we want it now. 

We are teaching them that we deserve whatever respect we deem we need and that all people will give it at all times. We don’t need to earn it or work for it. We are owed it. 

We are owed. 

We have disenfranchised so many people that it’s a wonder things are not worse. 

We preach patience, we preach peace, but then we still come at those people with a firehose and a billy club when they ask us for something more than the table scraps they are given. 

The great rage is earned but it’s the small rage that is setting this country on fire. 

The small rage of selfishness and ego and misplaced anger. 

The fire that consumes all things. 

That changes all lives it touches. 

Kids don’t get consequences because they are under a fatalistic belief that there’s no future. 

For them or anyone. 

And I get it. 

We are a culture of war and hate and it’s hard to see past it when the world is dying and we’re dying and yet people want to get mad at Disney for standing up for LGBTQIA+ rights. 

Or people want to learn about the non-White history of the nation. 

And this is where we are. 

We are the masters of the universe and the centers of that domain. 

Our romantic or sexual interests must submit. 

The world must step aside. 

And if people don’t treat you like the lord of the realm you are then they will pay. 

And so will the kids. 

So will we. 

Schools can’t handle this, they scarcely could but without the threat of beatings, and with parents willing to sue even if their kid is in the wrong, what can they do?

No one takes their punishment seriously when education is belittled. 

So kids become feral beasts and with parents too busy to parent and schools too scared to intervene the kids must figure it out themselves. 

And maybe they did. 

The end is nigh. 

Burn it all down. 

Burn it down because it feels too hard to deal with how we feel, and that we aren’t the centers of all things, and that some dreams we can’t live, and that some things we will be wrong on, and that sometimes we need to be punished. 

We are not the golden children.
We’re just people, and we hurt, and we hurt others, and it sucks. 

And sometimes it has to suck. 

But unless we’re taught that, and how to deal with it, we’ll just becoming living bombs…waiting to explode. 

…c…