Rant

[pat]

:steps on soapbox: :deep breath:

I really hate when people check their critical thinking skills at the door.

Remember that story about the boy that was arrested for writing zombie stories? The way it played out in the press and on the Internet, this poor kid was being persecuted for being imaginative by people paranoid of anything that smacked of being different. The fact that it happened in Kentucky only made people jump on it more.

Turns out that the story is not what it seemed. A media savvy kid was able to rally people to his defense based on nothing more than his own description of what was in the writings, and people's willingness to assume that people in law enforcement (particularly in a Southern state like Kentucky) are overzealous idiots.

Are there a lot of overreactions out there from police and school officials nervous of another Columbine? Probably. But should we automatically assume that every kid like this is somehow just misunderstood by people too hidebound to recognize creativity?

Klebold and Harris wrote about their plans for Columbine a great deal before they ever killed anyone. (BTW, anyone who still holds on to the mythology that the Columbine killers were simply misunderstood loners who snapped should consider the fact that they started planning it a year in advance.) There are reasons authorities now take it seriously when a kid writes about shooting up a school. And in the case in Kentucky, there is at least some evidence that it went beyond mere writing.

So what's the answer? Is the kid a misunderstood genius or a budding psychopath? I don't know, but I do recognize the issue to be far more complex and difficult to answer than many people seem to think. Not many things in this world are black and white -- this is no exception.

And I know something else.

A while back, there was a big stink about a teacher in my area allegedly being reprimanded for teaching his elementary school kids about the Declaration of Independence. No, what the guy did was distribute a packet of teachings that included writings from religious figures of the era making the case that the US was a Christian country. Yes, the writings had historical value, and teaching them in context to a *high school* history class would have been appropriate, but that wasn't what happened. Yet the right wing trumpeted this as an example of political correctness gone amok. Many people on the left (and I include myself in this case) derided what they saw as a lack of rational thought on the part of conservatives.

Could someone explain to me how the Kentucky case is any different, save that it's guys on the left who are screaming?

::steps down from soapbox::

Thank you for your indulgence.

Comments

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

For whatever it is that they did to those kids to make them that way. It would take a little snooping around and I'm not suggesting we start arresting parents on the mere suggestion of abuse but people don't just get born evil, or good for that matter. You have to raise them that way.

You show me most any serial or mass murderer and I'll show you a childhood chock full of abuse. I'm just playing the odds that if you look at how those kids were brought up, you'll find a closet with more skeletons than those kids had guns. A person who does that to a kid, ought to be punished.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

Not, apparently, the Columbine killers. (http://columbine.free2host.net/eric.html) Ted Kaczynski claimed he was verbally abused, but there is no evidence to show that he suffered other abuse. (http://www.crimelibrary.com/terrorists_spies/terrorists/kaczynski/12.html?sect=22) (And remember, Kaczynski had siblings who turned out perfectly normally, with a normal sense of right and wrong: Ted's brother was the one who turned him into police.) And Jefferey Dahmer had a perfectly normal childhood. (http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/dahmer/why_4.html)

Not all serial killers had abusive childhoods. Not all people who were abused as children turn into serial killers. Are you more likely to end up a serial killer if you were abused? Maybe. But that's not enough to charge anyone of anything, absent other evidence.

How a person turns out depends upon a complicated interplay of factors, of which the parents are an important but not a sole determinative. There are also inherited emotional and psychological traits, for example.