It's Midnight, America, Do You Know Your Kids are Dying?
February 3, 2016
I was asked this morning if I watched the Iowa Caucus,
whatever dog-and-pony show that was in our political process. I replied,
no, because I have not had a television for over twenty years. I
evicted it for non-payment of reality and worth. I haven’t missed it.
People say, “How do you know what’s going on??!!” Easy. I say, well, I’m
guessing we’re at war somewhere, there’s been some natural disaster
someplace else, some horrific crime in some state, politicians in some
scandal, and products advertised you can easily make yourself. Am I
right. “Uh…well…yeah…”, they reply. In the time they’ve watched two
television shows, I’ve made my own bread, set a tub of cabbage to
fermenting, read two chapters in a book, and meditated. Gosh, and the
world went on without my watching it on TV!
You see, things are not that difficult to predict with more accuracy than the weather. Some schlub will win a nomination and run against the rival brand’s candidate. It’s like a runoff between two manufacturers of peanut butter slices. Seen those? They’re slices of peanut butter you slap on bread-like slices of that American “cheese food” so you don’t tear the bread spreading the peanut butter on it. One political party says, “Yes, but our candidate has no high fructose corn syrup!” Big deal. He’s still full of saturated fat in his cranium.
But something else caught my eye this morning. Teen suicide is in the news again with a double teen suicide and people can’t figure out why they did it. I don’t want to mention names because it’s not respectful to broadcast their names all over the place. People ask why this happens and we hear the usual retorts that we need intervention and an army of crisis counselors descends upon the school. Excuse me, but where was all this concern BEFORE those kids committed suicide? Now, I had a friend during high school that committed suicide. So, it’s not an unheard of for teens to kill themselves. But I wonder if we’re asking the wrong questions and arriving at the wrong conclusions as a result. I’m not going to win any friends with what I’m about to say, but it needs to be said.
Why are children killing themselves, America? Why, in this so-called “greatest nation on Earth” would those with their whole future ahead of them strongly decline that and exit life itself? Do you think it’s all just mental illness? Or could it be despair? Hey, America, you don’t suppose this could be your fault, do you? You know, even though I got rid of my television, I know what’s on it. I know what’s in the movies and the music you’re putting out. You suck young minds into this “culture” you’ve created and can’t even see how nihilistic, depressing, and dark it truly is. You make heroes out of pimps, criminals, serial killers, and so on and then you assume this cannot have effects on the subconscious mind at some point? Kids are in the process of learning what social values are and look what you show them and teach them! I mean look at this, our society has glorified pimps. Here’s a guy that beats women he’s exploiting and has basically enslaved, selling them for sex. Then you don’t think this sends a message to your girls as to their worth in your society? You are teaching your daughters that her value is as a sex toy, and one that can be bought and sold at that. You are teaching your sons that this is the way you treat a woman. For all the “feminists” out there, where were you when this society basically said a woman’s place is in the strip club doing a pole dance? But they’re not at home cooking and cleaning, so they’ve been “liberated”, right? Oh, but let some woman practice modesty, then she’s shamed. You have a culture that glorifies violence and debauchery, then you wonder why your kids direct violence towards others? Or, just to themselves, and remove themselves from it? How is it you wonder?
What is this life you are handing down to your children? A series of sham elections with empty promises never kept by serial liars and people as trustworthy as a Water Moccasin. Yes, except poisonous pit vipers are only acting according to their nature. You, as leaders, are called to rise to a higher standard than a reptile but you cannot. You treat the government as if it’s your own personal kingdom and we’re just your serfs whose lives you can throw away in futile wars and impoverish with taxes when you’re not doing that. You have no future to offer these kids, none whatsoever, because you’re too busy getting hairdos and make-up so you look good lying on national television. What future have you promised? None worth having if the number of teen suicides is any indicator. Those are warning signs that your society is broken, America. And your leaders are too busy padding their political resumes to care. Not that this is a problem requiring a political solution, but the fact remains that our “leaders” cannot make good on this “greatest nation on Earth” shibboleth. These politicians have nothing to give us in return for this public confidence awarded them in elections. Did you party hacks forget that to whom much is given, much will be required? Yes, and how many of you know where that proverb comes from? That’s one more thing that’s missing in our society.
See, people were in such a hurry to do whatever they wanted to do and so on they evicted spirituality from society and, then, from their own families. Some kid asks his dad about God and the dad goes, “Well…uhh…I guess I never thought about that…” That’s the end of the conversation and dad goes back to watching football, genuflecting to the god he actually serves. Then you wonder why kids have hopelessness? Why their take their own lives when you cannot provide them with any spiritual nourishment whatsoever as a family or society? Right, that’s the job of the clergy, except if they try to hand out Bibles at a school, here come the atheists to protest that move. People have recently been complaining about Islam possibly being taught in school. They say, “If you let Islam be taught, you need to teach every religion!” Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. At least that way, some spiritual nourishment will reach these kids.
Again, you’ve created a society with no life-affirming values. You’ve built this house on sand, not stone, and heavy rain is on the way. Your kids are overdosing on the medications you yourselves have been escaping from this reality with. Then you’re shocked, America? How so? Is this not what you wanted? Hey, God is out of your life, out of the schools, and then you don’t think that this has consequence? I’m not saying march everyone to church and force everyone to pray. But I’m saying America threw the baby out with the bathwater and left no place of spiritual refuge for their own kids unless they do the footwork to find it. There’s more public outrage over placing a Nativity manger scene in front of a courthouse than when a kid kills herself. Because Jesus is easier to remove from the public eye than looking into the mirror. Remove the plank from your own eye before you call the attention to a splinter in someone else’s. Right, we run around condemning and criticizing every other nation on this planet, bombing them into rubble to make that point clearer, and look at this place.
America sits there and says, “Look at these suicide bombers in the Middle East! I don’t understand why anyone would do that!” Oh, really now? You don’t say?! So you can’t see that we have kids here committing suicide daily because they feel this American life is not worth living? Suicide bombers in the Middle East are trying to achieve some political objective, even if we do not understand it. But teen suicide here? Maybe it’s time we asked what those objectives are. Because that’s what America really doesn’t want to know. Because, gee, guess what? It isn’t the guns that kill people. It isn’t allegedly easy access to prescription drugs that kills people. These are social issues and not one politician will address that because those emperors not only don’t have any clothes, they don’t have hearts or minds, either. They’re just automatons in suits and sensible shoes repeating phrases fed to them by “life coaches” and the other sham-man guru false prophets out there.
Someone needs to say this. America, your kids are dying. They’re dying in senseless wars and you sit there and watch it all on TV like a football game. Then others come home from those wars and kill themselves and you still don’t get the message. Others don’t make it to enlistment age and kill themselves first. Do you not at all wonder what this means? No, not what talk show hosts say or the endless parade of professional experts on the talk radio and television circuit, all making a living off of sensationalizing real human suffering that needs real solutions, not chatter. Yes, we need interventions. We need a major intervention. We’ve got to start from the ground up. We have to build the society that’s worth living in. The government is not going to do that for us. If you have not discovered that for yourself by now, well, I don’t know what else to tell you. It isn’t someone else’s job. It’s our job. Mister “I Don’t Know” and Miss “Not My Job” don’t work here. This is our society. These are our brothers and sisters out there around us, our kids, our grandkids, our mothers and fathers. These are not “constituents” or “voters”, okay?
There comes a time when America needs to hear the words they don’t want to hear. As I have said here many times before, nothing simply occurs at random. A series of causes and conditions leads up to it. Not a leaf falls from a tree, not a sparrow falls from the sky, without causes and conditions leading up to that. You cannot sit there and wonder why kids commit suicide and not think a series of causes and conditions leads up to it. No! The answer is not to medicate these kids into a stupor! This isn’t some childhood disease like the measles or chickenpox. When our very society is as fractured as it is, we must do some deep looking into the causes and conditions leading up to these suicides. I seriously doubt this is all just teen hormones or chemicals running amok. This is about what we’re showing these kids on a daily basis. No one wakes up one morning and hangs himself on a whim or because there was too much pepperoni on the pizza the night before. We need to walk in truthfulness and admit to ourselves that this “culture” we’ve created is, itself, one of the causes and conditions leading up to suicides.
I don’t know, folks. At some point, we’ve got to turn off the television and wake up. What, we’re going to elect some other clown in 2016 and he or she will fix it? Yeah, well, people have been thinking that for several generations now and guess what? Some kids ain’t buying it. They’re being buried.
You see, things are not that difficult to predict with more accuracy than the weather. Some schlub will win a nomination and run against the rival brand’s candidate. It’s like a runoff between two manufacturers of peanut butter slices. Seen those? They’re slices of peanut butter you slap on bread-like slices of that American “cheese food” so you don’t tear the bread spreading the peanut butter on it. One political party says, “Yes, but our candidate has no high fructose corn syrup!” Big deal. He’s still full of saturated fat in his cranium.
But something else caught my eye this morning. Teen suicide is in the news again with a double teen suicide and people can’t figure out why they did it. I don’t want to mention names because it’s not respectful to broadcast their names all over the place. People ask why this happens and we hear the usual retorts that we need intervention and an army of crisis counselors descends upon the school. Excuse me, but where was all this concern BEFORE those kids committed suicide? Now, I had a friend during high school that committed suicide. So, it’s not an unheard of for teens to kill themselves. But I wonder if we’re asking the wrong questions and arriving at the wrong conclusions as a result. I’m not going to win any friends with what I’m about to say, but it needs to be said.
Why are children killing themselves, America? Why, in this so-called “greatest nation on Earth” would those with their whole future ahead of them strongly decline that and exit life itself? Do you think it’s all just mental illness? Or could it be despair? Hey, America, you don’t suppose this could be your fault, do you? You know, even though I got rid of my television, I know what’s on it. I know what’s in the movies and the music you’re putting out. You suck young minds into this “culture” you’ve created and can’t even see how nihilistic, depressing, and dark it truly is. You make heroes out of pimps, criminals, serial killers, and so on and then you assume this cannot have effects on the subconscious mind at some point? Kids are in the process of learning what social values are and look what you show them and teach them! I mean look at this, our society has glorified pimps. Here’s a guy that beats women he’s exploiting and has basically enslaved, selling them for sex. Then you don’t think this sends a message to your girls as to their worth in your society? You are teaching your daughters that her value is as a sex toy, and one that can be bought and sold at that. You are teaching your sons that this is the way you treat a woman. For all the “feminists” out there, where were you when this society basically said a woman’s place is in the strip club doing a pole dance? But they’re not at home cooking and cleaning, so they’ve been “liberated”, right? Oh, but let some woman practice modesty, then she’s shamed. You have a culture that glorifies violence and debauchery, then you wonder why your kids direct violence towards others? Or, just to themselves, and remove themselves from it? How is it you wonder?
What is this life you are handing down to your children? A series of sham elections with empty promises never kept by serial liars and people as trustworthy as a Water Moccasin. Yes, except poisonous pit vipers are only acting according to their nature. You, as leaders, are called to rise to a higher standard than a reptile but you cannot. You treat the government as if it’s your own personal kingdom and we’re just your serfs whose lives you can throw away in futile wars and impoverish with taxes when you’re not doing that. You have no future to offer these kids, none whatsoever, because you’re too busy getting hairdos and make-up so you look good lying on national television. What future have you promised? None worth having if the number of teen suicides is any indicator. Those are warning signs that your society is broken, America. And your leaders are too busy padding their political resumes to care. Not that this is a problem requiring a political solution, but the fact remains that our “leaders” cannot make good on this “greatest nation on Earth” shibboleth. These politicians have nothing to give us in return for this public confidence awarded them in elections. Did you party hacks forget that to whom much is given, much will be required? Yes, and how many of you know where that proverb comes from? That’s one more thing that’s missing in our society.
See, people were in such a hurry to do whatever they wanted to do and so on they evicted spirituality from society and, then, from their own families. Some kid asks his dad about God and the dad goes, “Well…uhh…I guess I never thought about that…” That’s the end of the conversation and dad goes back to watching football, genuflecting to the god he actually serves. Then you wonder why kids have hopelessness? Why their take their own lives when you cannot provide them with any spiritual nourishment whatsoever as a family or society? Right, that’s the job of the clergy, except if they try to hand out Bibles at a school, here come the atheists to protest that move. People have recently been complaining about Islam possibly being taught in school. They say, “If you let Islam be taught, you need to teach every religion!” Maybe that’s not such a bad idea. At least that way, some spiritual nourishment will reach these kids.
Again, you’ve created a society with no life-affirming values. You’ve built this house on sand, not stone, and heavy rain is on the way. Your kids are overdosing on the medications you yourselves have been escaping from this reality with. Then you’re shocked, America? How so? Is this not what you wanted? Hey, God is out of your life, out of the schools, and then you don’t think that this has consequence? I’m not saying march everyone to church and force everyone to pray. But I’m saying America threw the baby out with the bathwater and left no place of spiritual refuge for their own kids unless they do the footwork to find it. There’s more public outrage over placing a Nativity manger scene in front of a courthouse than when a kid kills herself. Because Jesus is easier to remove from the public eye than looking into the mirror. Remove the plank from your own eye before you call the attention to a splinter in someone else’s. Right, we run around condemning and criticizing every other nation on this planet, bombing them into rubble to make that point clearer, and look at this place.
America sits there and says, “Look at these suicide bombers in the Middle East! I don’t understand why anyone would do that!” Oh, really now? You don’t say?! So you can’t see that we have kids here committing suicide daily because they feel this American life is not worth living? Suicide bombers in the Middle East are trying to achieve some political objective, even if we do not understand it. But teen suicide here? Maybe it’s time we asked what those objectives are. Because that’s what America really doesn’t want to know. Because, gee, guess what? It isn’t the guns that kill people. It isn’t allegedly easy access to prescription drugs that kills people. These are social issues and not one politician will address that because those emperors not only don’t have any clothes, they don’t have hearts or minds, either. They’re just automatons in suits and sensible shoes repeating phrases fed to them by “life coaches” and the other sham-man guru false prophets out there.
Someone needs to say this. America, your kids are dying. They’re dying in senseless wars and you sit there and watch it all on TV like a football game. Then others come home from those wars and kill themselves and you still don’t get the message. Others don’t make it to enlistment age and kill themselves first. Do you not at all wonder what this means? No, not what talk show hosts say or the endless parade of professional experts on the talk radio and television circuit, all making a living off of sensationalizing real human suffering that needs real solutions, not chatter. Yes, we need interventions. We need a major intervention. We’ve got to start from the ground up. We have to build the society that’s worth living in. The government is not going to do that for us. If you have not discovered that for yourself by now, well, I don’t know what else to tell you. It isn’t someone else’s job. It’s our job. Mister “I Don’t Know” and Miss “Not My Job” don’t work here. This is our society. These are our brothers and sisters out there around us, our kids, our grandkids, our mothers and fathers. These are not “constituents” or “voters”, okay?
There comes a time when America needs to hear the words they don’t want to hear. As I have said here many times before, nothing simply occurs at random. A series of causes and conditions leads up to it. Not a leaf falls from a tree, not a sparrow falls from the sky, without causes and conditions leading up to that. You cannot sit there and wonder why kids commit suicide and not think a series of causes and conditions leads up to it. No! The answer is not to medicate these kids into a stupor! This isn’t some childhood disease like the measles or chickenpox. When our very society is as fractured as it is, we must do some deep looking into the causes and conditions leading up to these suicides. I seriously doubt this is all just teen hormones or chemicals running amok. This is about what we’re showing these kids on a daily basis. No one wakes up one morning and hangs himself on a whim or because there was too much pepperoni on the pizza the night before. We need to walk in truthfulness and admit to ourselves that this “culture” we’ve created is, itself, one of the causes and conditions leading up to suicides.
I don’t know, folks. At some point, we’ve got to turn off the television and wake up. What, we’re going to elect some other clown in 2016 and he or she will fix it? Yeah, well, people have been thinking that for several generations now and guess what? Some kids ain’t buying it. They’re being buried.
Jack Perry [send him mail]
is an arrowmaker and writer who lives in the Four Corners area of the
Southwestern United States. He has been a truck driver, a purchasing
agent at a now-defunct renewable energy company (don't even ask him
about the "Green energy" scam), and served in the 101st Airborne
Division. He spends his time practicing traditional archery, making
arrows in the wilds of the Arizona high desert, and finding himself only
mildly amused by the antics of the Great Father in Washington.
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