Monday, December 17, 2012

The worst of it all - with audio!

Some theme music to get you started… click it and come back to this window to read now that you have some background music.

Audio Link:  Gotta be a Good Life

So there is this city in Ohio where this past August a scenario that has become all to frequent in this country unfolded. A high school, end of summer, party took place. There was the usual social higherarchy guiding the unconscious morality of teenagers, fueled by insecurity and booze and non-existant "adult" supervision. A girl who was there became super-drunk. She was 16. And what do horny, boozy, testosterone filled and idolized jock boys want?  Easy prey for a quick lay. And because of the polarized nature of this particularly football crazed town, these boys operate under the assumption of total immunity and invincibility. As well they should, a star quarter back and a celebrated receiver  are what their parents, neighbors, teachers, coaches, cops and authority figures had given them the idea that they were. Naturally, these carefully constructed 16 year old megalomaniacs preform true to their nature, with total unconscionable sadism.  And the debate that exists (as to weather or not their filmed and photographed sexual assault of a blacked-out drunk female honor student ever really  happened) is the worst of it all.

There are so many things wrong with this situation that it is hard to know where to begin...

First, there is the all-too-common debate as to weather by willingly getting drunk, did the girl "ask for it" ("it" referring to her being stripped, fondled, fingered, raped, urinated on, left naked on a couch in a basement, then ostracized by her community as a result of her essentially saying that this was wrong, it hurt me, i am ashamed, and want some form of justice or retribution, and for at least the next decade of my life being a living nightmare). How this is even still an actual question, let alone one posed by the legal community, that exists in this day and age boggles the mind. Unless... we have regressed to a point where we idolize the situations like those on Law & Order; SVU or in The Rape of Nanking.

Audio Link: … keep rolling with the appropriate tunes…

Second, there is the hesitancy of any of the many other party-goes to offer up even the slightest objection to these goings-on when they were taking place, as well as their subsequent filming encouragement of this behavior, not forgetting the overall indifference to any grain of decency and morality. An example being the tweet that "Nirvana's 'Rape Me' is the theme song of the night," proving both the total inhumanity of the tweeter and his total ignorance to that song's lyrics and meaning are a plea against this kind of behavior.

Third, (I have a feeling i will run out of numbers on this one) why is it that one's physical ability to PLAY A GAME is so heralded by schools (and society as a whole) during the most formative years of a person's life, and that ones ability to be insightful, creative, intelligent, questioning, compassionate, logical, etc isn't rewarded equally until ones mid-twenties (if ever)?

Fourth, at what point will the people passing all this judgment on these CHILDREN look at the larger aspect of models of social psychology like; the Genovese syndrome, Asch Conformity Experiment, or a full-on social extrapolation of operant conditioning. Children don't act like this without reason. They have to learn some sort of "moral code" from somewhere… And correct me if i'm wrong here; but isn't it that the parents have had a larger influence on the society that these kids learn this from, rather than the other way round? Think about it… Who's really holds the smoking gun now?


On to number five… Sure the boys should be punished; so that they learn this type of behavior is unacceptable, but in many ways i can hardly hold them responsible… they were rewarded for all the baby steps of behavior that led up to this and (i can assume) rarely punished for acts of theirs that mirrored all the little parts of their current depravity. Of course they should be tried as juveniles; they have the consciouses of five year olds. 

Six. Why is it that none of the other kids will come forward to testify that this happened? Oh yeah, they are afraid of the backlash from the other citizens of the city… for doing the right thing. Well, they would be sentencing two star football players to some punishment, and the town won't stand for that. Who would want to punish a pubescent god of the gridiron? WHAT THE HELL? oh yeah, that's where the victim is living… she found out what happened to her by reading about it online/ in the newspaper. 

Se7en… <<see John Doe's monologue, in the back of the car, on innocence>> … binge drinking is not a  strictly American activity… Paris & London… I know your kids do it too… what kind of world are we living in where kids feel the need to escape from it so brutally, in the name of having a 'good' time? 

"Gee Jenny, it's Friday night. Wanna have some fun? Let's see how many shots of Vodka each of us can do before we pass out... Doesn't that sound like fun? We won't feel a thing but pain and sickness but it will be better than what we're feeling now… and we'll both be lucky if we remember it the next day, hell there may not even be a tomorrow if we do it right!.."

Audio Link: … heart breaking just a little yet?..

Okay, fuck the numbers… Rome is burning and you're all just fanning the flames.

Why is anyone surprised that after years of rewarding violent competition, material wealth, and all the opposite qualities of what i listed in the previous paragraph, these children grow up to be sociopathic monsters? I am never shocked anymore at the depravity of these people we create. When there is a 'tragedy' like a spree shooting, a bombing for political means, or a Holocaust I feel nothing but hate and outrage for the people on the sidelines expressing their sympathy, and shock and disgust; this is the world that their values created - so why is anyone surprised when they get what they ask for?

All the good people in this world are relegated to obscurity and scorn; that's why most of us keep to ourselves, drink and do drugs, toil away in hopes that someone else will notice our compassion, give up and kill ourselves, or snap and try and take as many of these terrorists of reason out as possible. It is this  insistent idolization of the worst of human possibility that creates all these 'monsterous'  individuals… You quash and demean the best qualities of a truly wonderful person long and hard enough and that individual will play your game against you as to the best of their brilliance will allow. The horror. The horror.

The horror is the blindness and unaccountability of each individual member of this awful world to their own role in crating it. You stupid silly little things. If i didn't have my one frayed thread of hope left that i cannot be alone in really trying to practice what i preach, and that i'm not the only one out there that operates under the assumption that compassion based on reason is an ideology worth fighting for… I would do everything in my power to indiscriminately eradicate every last one of you in order to save the rest of existence from the human race.

I can't even consider that this is happening any more right now… I'm going to go throw up & cry… but i'll come back to this… it is the epitome of everything that disgusts me, in almost every way… and now that i've covered the basics of this horror, next time i can move onto the theory and how this reflects directly on the cause of many other major problems we face like climate destabilization and world peace.

In closing, pass this post along to anyone (and everyone you know) if you are against a culture of rape and unaccountability. The only way to stop these things it by thinking and sharing and caring.


p.s. for further reading see the article that got me going here… it's in the sports section…
NY Times Link: Rape Case Unfolds on Web and Splits City

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