Off The Rails

[Dr. Pot]

http://m.chronicle.augusta.com/opinion/editorials/2011-11-
02/rails

It’s an age-old question, but a hopelessly quaint one: What’s
the matter with kids today?

Historically, the answer has been: not quite as much as adults
think. It used to be that the question was an overreaction – to
hair length, to Elvis’ hips and such.

Today, however, it’s a very good question with an extremely
urgent and vexing answer: plenty.

Just a couple of recent examples:

Two 12-year-old boys in New York Sunday dropped a shopping cart
four stories onto a woman – just for fun. She likely would’ve
died, if not for a doctor who happened to be nearby. As it is,
she was in a medically-induced coma early this week.

The woman, identified as Marion Salmon Hedges, was out with her
14-year-old son buying Halloween candy for underprivileged
children.

The New York Post reports that the two young suspects were
laughing and joking as they were led away by police.

Closer to home – literally – a gang of teens and an 11-year-old
were in custody after a home invasion Sunday in Grovetown in
which a woman was forced to the floor at gunpoint. Only the
sound of a man upstairs – reportedly locking and loading a gun –
inspired the assailants to flee without further mayhem or injury.

Thank goodness the resident was armed. Unfortunately, no weapons
can protect one from falling objects.

And how utterly perverted that the shopping cart in New York
managed to find someone on a humanitarian mission.

In Aiken, S.C., a 10-year-old trick-or-treater – playfully
threatened with having his candy taken – brandished a 9-mm
handgun at the teaser. He had the ammunition on his person at
the time. Unbelievable.

In Florida, reports say a 9-year-old girl recently threw a four-
felony tantrum that included spitting on a school bus driver,
throwing rocks at the bus and tossing a patio chair at a law
enforcement officer and threatening, in profane terms, to kill
him. Unbelievable.

In Columbia County, two Greenbrier students have been arrested
this week in an alleged plot to kill a classmate. Unbelievable.

So back to the question: What’s the matter with kids today?

The answer: with the vast majority, not a thing. But with the
few, there is seemingly more wrong than ever before. There have
always been wayward youths, but there’s a sociopathic edge
present today that is more pronounced and widespread than we
ever remember. When 12-year-olds are dropping heavy objects on
innocent passersby for sport and 11-year-olds are participating
in home invasions, at least one of society’s wheels is
completely off the rails.

Home invasions are a particularly alarming incarnation of evil –
even when there’s an acquaintanceship, as there apparently was
in the Grovetown case. Since this country’s founding, it’s been
an American birthright to be secure in one’s home. Increasingly,
that sacred line is being erased by a growingly brazen and
amoral criminal class.

One has to suspect it’s all due to a great convergence of some
not-so-great influences: absent and awful reproductive vessels
parading as parents; an anything-goes culture that not only
eschews moral values but mocks them; omnipresent entertainment
media that have no core principles; the God of life being
replaced by the gods of materialism and indulgence; packs of
self-absorbed youths who’ve been fed cartons of imitation self-
esteem, and whom adults no longer feel empowered to correct. The
list goes on.

As long as adults don’t hang together, they’ll hang separately.

Or have shopping carts dropped on them during the commission of
a good deed.