Connected Through Violence

So there it was again. Television cameras showing students running from a local suburban school because someone with a rifle had shot two students. The middle school was only 3 miles from Columbine High School here in the Denver metropolitan area.
The local media hopped right on the story and has continued to highlight it for the last four days. Two students were shot. One was injured with a wound to her arm. Another was shot in the chest but the wound wasn't lethal. He will recover.
Now the school is shown with aggreived parents and school staff hugging and sobbing as the school comes back together. And everywhere there's a personal story of trauma or shock. And everywhere a camera is present there seems to be a crowd of people willing to play the role of victim and hero for surviving the shooting of a madman.
Turns out the shooter really is an insane young man who fell through the cracks of the pathetically underfunded mental health system. His father talks about his son's daily conversations with his hallucinatory "friends" that only he heard or saw. The father talks about his son trying to get help but being unable to afford the costs. The police record of the young man is lengthy and full of violence and yet he only spent time in jail but was never hospitalized for his psychotic thinking.
Maybe I've reached the end of my compassion for the almost weekly shootings that go on in this nation by people who should never have had access to weapons. Maybe I've become desensitized to the violence of our culture. But you know the first thing I begin to think when the shootings are at a school and I see the mad rush of parents to the scene to make sure their children are safe? I wonder why they are so panicked about the safety of their children when they're in school but think it's normal and quite ok when their children are sent off to one of our incessant wars of aggression. I wonder why they aren't as protective when at age 18 or 19 their children are sent into combat with a much more likely chance of death and irreparable harm?
Call me cruel and heartless if you want but this has become my thinking because I believe we live in a time where the nations of the world are interconnected so closely that the violence of a culture in North America can result in the violence against a culture in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I can't help but wonder why parents are shocked when violence comes to their local schools when their kids are frequently mesmerized by games of war such as Call of Duty I and II. War games are prevalent in the market of games our children play on X-Box and other gaming systems. I even had my younger son, who very well knows my hatred for war, tell me he knows it's not cool but the graphics of the latest war game are so realistic he feels he's right there in the middle of the war.
I tell my son there will never be a game that can simulate the true feeling of combat. But, I sadly realize all across this nation there are young men who are obsessed by the games of violence. They will argue they're only games and they would never lead them to real violence. Some argue the games actually help relieve their aggression.
I won't argue the vague psychology of violent video games being causative factors of real life violence. What I will argue is the acceptance of violence in our daily lives has reached the level we should not be shocked when our children become targets in real life. The violence of our words and interactions with one another have a ripple effect. All across the blogoshere it's become totally acceptable to belittle one another with racist, misogynistic and threatening responses that are so easy when they remain anonymous.
Almost weekly the media of television and movies seems to find newer and more violently graphic forms of human carnage. NCIS, CSI, Criminal Minds, etc. are favorite forms of entertainment. Hollywood continues to churn out the bloodletting of horror movies so graphic that the idea of a "snuff" film seem tame. We don't need snuff films when we can watch real life events of violence on programs documenting car wrecks,  near death and death experiences and attacks by animals.
And yet the Pentagon and Presidency worries about showing dead American soldiers, the return of their caskets and the graphic nature of the wars we're involved in out of "respect". Mainstream media outlets continue to censor film or photos of the aftermath of drone attacks on innocent civilians in remote Afghan villages or the aftermath of 500 pound bombs on neighborhoods in Baghdad during the start of the war in Iraq. Are they seriously worried about the American people being unable to stomach what they might see if they showed the true nature of the wars they send their sons and daughters to fight?
It's more likely the censorship of the true reality of war has more to do with the fall out of media showing such scenes during the Vietnam war. If the true nature of war is allowed to be seen it might cause some Americans to start thinking about the reasons we're in these wars.
I believe there are connections between the costs of war and the spiritual health of a nation. I believe there's a connection between the costs of war and the collapse of the economy, the failure of government to maintain a safety net for Americans most in need, adequate housing and schooling, healthcare for all and the way the people of this nation are perceived around the world. I beleive there is a connection between the accidental killings of innocents and the continued number of insurgents and groups of people who hate America.
I believe there's a connection between the shooting of two students at a middle school here in the Denver area to the culture of violence we've allowed to fester and infect so many of our people. There is a connection of an American to a Palestinian to an Israeli to an African to a Chinese to all other people of all other nations. Our reliance on violence affects all humans. It diminishes us all.