Public Service Announcement

    Everything is not okay in America. Our quality of life is across the board appalling for a first world country. Education means nothing to the majority of the population and educated people laugh at the idea of following a career in humanities. Every time some person stuck in their demented, delusional, and lonely head decides to get a gun and try to shoot up a whole mess of people, the public clamors that youth is to blame without asking why.
    Why? Why would someone do such a thing? Why does it keep happening? Why has it happened in the past? It has happened in the past (A lot of times they used bombs instead.) Don't ask we who, don't ask me when, don't ask me where. Pick up a book and do some work for yourself. Work on being a human. Here I'll give you some direction: Read almost anything Don Delillo has written, read Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. Read Kurt Vonnegut I write for the millionth time. Okay, some more specifics: Cosmopolis by Don Delillo. Shut off your brain to morbid and glorious globalization and read that book.

    Blaming reflection is a cowardly move. If you blame thinking for doing, you aren't thinking straight because you are most likely afraid to think.
    What do I know? Lots of things most people I know believe to be useless. This is why I write. No one wants to hear it again.
    It's not not nice. I know. Do you know what is nice? A sunset? A mountain? A vast body of water? A child?
    Nope, those are only nice in pictures. A sunset is so radiant and colorful due to noxious vapors released by products of human progress poisoning the air we breath since the industrial age and the nuclear core of a star that is, as much as many of us do not  want to hear it, finite. A mountain is a scar on the seam of a landscape, evidence of the Earth's growing pains and a monument to the fact that it wants humans dead. A vast body of water, any vast body of water is, at our core, humanities toilet. A beautiful cistern for our poisonous run off. A child? A child is a selfish being. They only know self, unless we teach them that they aren't that special. As much as many people want to believe this, hitting them will not teach them humanity or empathy. Children must experience things to understand them.
    Zero tolerance on growing minds breeds contempt for those imposing zero tolerance. Zero tolerance is for those who already know better or should know better.
    A ten year old bully is a reflection of an adult bully who should know better.
    Why are we scared to talk to children? We were children once, we know what it is like, we know it can hurt, and we know we made it through it with help from others who made it through it as well; with us or before us.
    A ten year old with a gun? I'm almost positive I could out wit a ten year old with a gun unarmed. They are without full dexterity and, by the way, why the fuck does a ten year old have a gun? That is a reflection of someone who should know better.

    Things are not okay in America. If you are jealous of the youth of America, you must have had a really fucked up youth. I'm sorry to know that. Remember the fist fight you lost because you never knew you were going to be in a fist fight? Remember when you were hit for doing something you didn't know was wrong until after you were hit? Do you remember the first time a girl accidentally crushed your heart by simply not paying attention or not caring? And you made it through all of that and much more. You have something to say to these children, no matter how they act, selfish as they are.
    What about eighteen year old children wishing to wield weapons? Send them to the middle east, correct? I still don't believe oil is an excuse and that (as well as road rage brought on by extended inactivity behind the wheel of a car) is why I try to ride my bike as often as possible.

    Have you ever watched a documentary by Ken Burns?
    Jazz.
    Baseball.
    The Civil War.
    The War.
    National Parks.
    The West. (That was his brother, but it is still great.)
    Prohibition.
    The Dust Bowl.
    Everyone of those is a reflection of America on a shoe string budget. The Public Broadcasting System is deteriorating with every passing year and this makes me a little more depressed. But who am I? Just a human writing what I need to write to get by at the moment.

    Everything is not alright in America, but it could be worse. It could also be better and there are many trying to make it better. Believe it or not, a lot of them are young and because they are young they are most likely scared. Understandably scared. Moral support goes a lot further than moral condemnation.
    It is a beautiful September day in Indiana. It is warm and there is very little humidity. If I cannot appreciate that, I cannot appreciate anything. Thank you.

Aaron C. Molden