Fear, Ignorance & Vengeance

Are three very powerful singular states of mind but, when combined are literally quite lethal to those caught in the vortex. I watched Frontline on PBS last night, it dealt with teen offenders subjected to life sentences without parole. I think all the incredibly violent incidents happened in Colorado around the same time that a youth crime wave was hitting that state (late 90's) and the adult population was being whipped up into the proverbial lynch mob by the press, elected officials and elected officials within the state justice system. Colorado, up to that time, had had a very progressive system in-place to deal with its youth offenders which had offered some kind of hope to those who had suffered at the hands of an overloaded social services system that '...expected teenage boys to be able to take care of themselves' and, for the most part, at the hands of their parents and extended families since their earliest childhoods.

As I mentioned, the cases highlighted here were of a very violent, almost passionate, nature. The boys did not deny their crimes, or in the case of one boy just being at the scene of a crime, and explained in detail what brought them to the brink of contemplating and almost instantaneously executing such crimes. They had all suffered one form of abuse or another, from rape by a step-parent (male) to sexual abuse by an actual parent (female). The physical abuse in these cases acted as a petri dish to the self-sustaining mental abuse and temporary insanity exhibited by the offenders.

That these boys suffered for most of their short lives from an anguish and unhappiness, that I cannot even imagine, is for me enough to give them a second chance at life. These boys were not thugs, gangsta's, street-urchins nor subject to environmental and social pressures where violence can be glorified and immitated as a kind of circular phenomenon, they were your classic middle-class white boys from decent neighborhoods whose only sense of crime was the ugliness happening to them on a daily basis within the confines of the 'family'. Suffice to say that Columbine was perpetrated by classic middle class white boys but the premeditation of that instance was lacking in the cases presented to us on Frontline.

The most stark and emotional moment for me was when, after a long description of the murder, both boys described the events as lasting seconds, less than a minute. The boy who witnessed the event said he had no time to react, to stop his friend from killing his mother or to even run. I can't imagine how I would react either, how quickly my brain could process that kind of horror, what would I do as an adult, he was 16 years old and although he assisted the young boy in cleaning up the mess he kept expecting the mother to '... wake up and be really pissed at us'. Sorry, but none of these kids were master criminals, all were apprehended within hours of the events - usually dazed and confused, there was no premeditation, no murder aforethought, these were crimes of passion and these boys will pay for them with rest their unfulflled lives.

Now the supporters of such strict interpretations and penalties are a motley bunch of canard spouters who wheel out the usual bromides about the kids being vicious killers, being tough on crime, caring about the victims and their families etc. The DA they interviewed assured us that he had prosecuted many crimes like this and they were always the nastiest, most heinous crime scenes imaginable well, to me that is not surprising and should be effing obvious, these kids - kids - have suffered heinous crimes upon their person and psyches by people who are supposed to be protecting and nurturing them and when they seek help they are ignored or worse under suspicion for alterior motives. They are desperate, unwanted and too young to process rage and its consequences, of course the crime scenes are macabre, they picked up the first thing they could find and beat away the rage. The DA is an ignorant idiot lacking in compassion and intellectual honesty. As for the concerned citizens fearful that crime will enter their smug, cossetted existence it already has, these crimes were committed within the confines of a suburban America that has gleefully abdicated its role in defining America's future cultural and social development for twelve pieces of silver and a McMansion. That these supposed adult's fear, ignorance and vengeance is so total, unforgiving and misguided speaks volumes about America in the 21st Century and why a change in the discourse and priorities of modern America is not only important, it is vital to our national interests. We must take the decision making process away from the fearful, the ignorant and the vengeful, they know not what they do.