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the problem with this "nothing is wrong any more" business in this case is simply that the kid, for whatever reasons, decided to kill himself and take some others out along with him. maybe it followed from the nature of the school system as a whole--but it obviously followed from this particular kid's experience of a particular school. to make linkages is not to do anything but to try to understand something...even something that, in the end, is not really understandable to others because this kid's experience was--and will remain--other than yours.
besides, it's not like people did not kill themselves back in the "good old days"...you heard less about it maybe..but that follows from an aspect of the good old days being rooted in a tendency to close off from the world.
the cartoon version of this would be to say that there was a gun so the kid went off. but that's a cartoon. it might be a cartoon that is like what folk who oppose all gun controls would prefer to think those who oppose them politically on this issue are like. but that's nothing more than a politically motivated projection that functions those who indulge that game to imagine themselves as above and beyond those who oppose them.
on the other hand, the claim that people in the united states value life more than people in other places is thoroughly absurd...same nonsense, different word.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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