Segments: Slices From the Macintosh Life
Response to Apple Cider 5.05
Thanks, Tom, for telling it like it is. Child Control, not Gun Control works for me. I am one of the older generation and a ray of hope was generated when I read your column and makes me believe that the younger ones of this world may be our saviours. Speaking out helps so much and makes people think. We need to learn to discriminate between the truth and lies. The media blitz we get every day tells us only what they think we want to hear, spun to their particular agenda. Using your column to rant is acceptable to me and I hope to all your readers.
Helen Rousseau
hrousseau@macconnect.com
I found it somewhat amazing that Mr. Iovino felt that those two wretched young men were “crying out for help” during the year they planned their massacre. I would say that such “messages” happened, at best, ten years ago, perhaps more. To think that the parents who had done such a poor job until that time would suddenly wise up and impose “discipline” on fully grown young men is an exercise in wishful dreaming. Indeed, I’ve seen countless times over the past 50 years where parents who did apparently wonderful work in raising their children stood bewildered as those same children did inextricably evil and/or stupid things.
The true “why” of this whole incident will never be known, just as the real “why” of virtually anyone’s actions are never known. The life inputs which motivate one to doing this or that number in the billions. Trying to trace them back is an exercise in futility since most are long forgotten. Yet the pundits take up hours of air time and reams of trees giving us their “expert” advice and, in the end, change nothing.
Back in the ’50s when I was a teen, there were zip guns and switchblades and plenty of gangs to go around. Friends killed friends. Kids did drugs. Teens rebelled against their parents’ discipline or found ways to end their lives. And life went on. Nothing has changed now other than the speed of communication, the insatiable desire of the media for sensationalism—and the efficiency of weapons.
Columbine was a “tragedy” (God, I’m sick of hearing that word!) only in that it got enormous media coverage. It managed to extend the demand for still more soap opera drama in our lives. During that same day, hundreds of other people died in the US in accidents, suicides, crime sprees and illness. Did they deserve less mourning? Were they less important?
And no, instituting more gun control laws will also not change anything. But the government, which eagerly craves a disarmed citizenry, will initiate them nevertheless, using this sad chapter as its “reason,” hiding the real ones.
All anyone can do is live each day, each moment in the best manner possible, doing what s/he thinks
best at the time. Wailing and moaning over Columbine is not going to change or improve anyone’s life.
Only living can do that.
End of rant.
E. Barnes
pres@capitalfundsgroup.com
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Also in This Series
- About My Particular Macintoshes · May 2012
- From the Darkest Hour · May 2012
- Shrinking Into an Expanding World · May 2012
- Growing Up With Apple · May 2012
- Recollections of ATPM by the Plucky Comic Relief · May 2012
- Making the Leap · March 2012
- Digital > Analog > Digital · February 2012
- An Achievable Dream · February 2012
- Smart Move? · February 2012
- Complete Archive
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