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Northern Ill. University: Was the Killer Crazy, or the Campus Hopeless?

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted February 16, 2008.


Bracket this massacre as the work of a lunatic on drugs, and you miss the chance to consider the horrors of life in middle America.
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Unlike Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui -- a sullen misfit who could barely look anyone in the eye, much less carry on a conversation -- Kazmierczak appeared to fit in just fine. -- Deanna Bellendi, Associated Press
Why? Why did this rage massacre at Northern Illinois University happen? Why did Steven Kazmierczak, "armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case," step from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at NIU and open fire on a geology class, killing seven, wounding many more?

The explanations are a repeat of the ones we hear after every other massacre, leading nowhere: gun crazy, evil perp (Nazi, anti-Semite), didn't take his meds, broke up with girlfriend ... none of them are satisfying, none of them lead us anywhere except away from genuine examination.

In my book Going Postal I proposed looking at these uniquely American and uniquely post-Reagan massacres without cheap moral blinders. Look at the setting of the crime, look at the people who live in that setting, and look at the genealogy of the crime.

These rage massacres began in the mid-1980s in post offices, one after another, all seemingly "senseless." Mass killings like the one in Edmond, Oklahoma postal massacre in 1986 which left 14 dead, were quickly transformed into water cooler joke material: The phrase "going postal" replaced "having a cow," and the clash between the Happy Days-era world of mailmen and dawning age of rampaging maniacs was too silly, and seemingly safely confined, to be spared this transformation into cheap black comedy.

But by the end of the 1980s, the water cooler crowd started getting shot as well: workplace massacres spread like a nasty virus from the postal service to wider private sector, and they haven't stopped. The jokes got more nervous. Workplaces transformed into little Atticas, with surveillance cameras, badges, armed rent-a-cops, along with snitches and mutual suspicion.

But the jokes about "going postal" didn't really end until rage massacres spread to the next logical place in Middle American life: our middle-class schools. Suddenly horror and revulsion overwhelmed the irony. Privately, in the safe anonymous world of the Internet, the Columbine killers have become heroes to untold numbers of America's kids, just as they'd set out to do. Like so many terrorists and insurgents, Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold set out on a suicide mission to "kickstart a revolution." And like many successful terrorist or insurgency movements, they succeeded by spawning an ever-growing supply of schoolyard killers.

Over the past few years, the killings leapt from the K-12 schools to universities. Not the top universities, which seems significant to me, but rather to obviously-second-rate universities, as well as the third-rate "vocational" schools. This is relevant, because in a culture so obsessed with being number one, and where the socioeconomic gap between the Number Ones and Everyone Else is growing so wide that it's starting to take on medieval dimensions, it's the ones stuck in the vast middle who face real existential terror.

We're just starting to learn a bit about the NIU killer, 27-year-old Steven P. Kazmierczak: he's been described as a "fairly normal, unstressed person," as well as a bright honors student. Before there was a photo and a name, he was described as a "skinny white guy" wearing all black and a ski mask. In other words, a caricature of evil. Now, one look at the photo of the pimply, pinheaded, goggle-eyed Kazmierczak, and it's hard to match the evil to the recognizably twerpy, sympathetic face.

A Northern Illinois law student told the Washington Post, "The person who did it is a loser. He doesn't deserve a name or picture reference. You're not Kurt Cobain if you do that."

Let's assume he's at least partly right: Kazmierczak probably was a loser, by the standards of Midwestern American winners. For now there's too little information to sort out. But judging from previous massacres, it's likely that Kazmierczak reached a point where life no longer was worth living. His medications are now being held up as a cause, but they just as easily could have been the effects of living the life he lived.

While most of the media focuses on the healing Christian spirit of Dekalb, Ill., home of Northern Illinois University, I've done some searching of what students wrote in anonymous forums, particularly studentsreviews.com, about NIU and Dekalb. Not what they're saying now, when the cameras are on and everyone's officially grieving and Wondering Why, but from last year to three years ago, when they were honest. What you find is an enormous amount of anger and regret -- the sort of regret you'd expect from a middle-aged Willy Loman looking back on a wasted life.

"NIU is a glorified community college," writes one former student. "Let's just say there aren't many Albert Einsteins on campus. If you got solid C's in high school and otherwise are destined for a career path that involves shoveling shit, then NIU is the right school for you. If you are a gang banger from the inner city who has just enough smarts to con a subsidized college education out of the system, then NIU is the right school for you. If your greatest career ambition is to one day be the assistant manager at GNC or Radio Shack, then NIU is the right school for you. If your dream mobile involves one day owning an eleven year old minivan with half the trim missing, then NIU is the right school for you. If you think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a "high end" beer, then NIU is the right school for you. If you like following a football program that hasn't been to a bowl game since 1983, then NIU is the right school for you. If you like following a basketball program that is lucky to draw 1,200 fans to a home game, then NIU is the right school for you. If you like going to a school that ranks as one of the butt ugliest campuses on planet earth, then NIU is the right school for you."

The physical ugliness and intellectual mediocrity are a recurring theme:

"NIU is the pits. It's a suitcase school with a horribly ugly campus that ought to re-label itself Northern Illinois Community College."

"The academic rigor required to do well at NIU is a joke .... Best advice to any high school students considering NIU? Do everything in your power to get yourself into a better school like U of I, Illinois State or some other well regarded public or provide school …. And don't even get me started on the NIU campus. If there is an uglier or more disorganized one on this planet, I haven't seen it in all my travels. There are rundown CHA buildings in the most blighted parts of Chicago that are in better shape then the NIU dorm complex. Outside of Barsema Hall and a few others, the rest of the other buildings are dreadful and embarassing. The first thing 95% of NIU students do upon receiving their diploma is to run like hell from DeKalb and never turn back."

DeKalb is a small farming town full of cornfields; its population is 40,000, while NIU has roughly 25,000 students. Both town and school are overwhelmingly white. One student described the town this way: "[A]llergies are bad because of the cornfields, and it smells in the summer because of the PIG FARM!! Also, people in the area are generally not very nice."

Speaking of not very nice people, DeKalb's most famous son is Joseph F. Glidden, was the inventor of barbed wire. The university's most famous living graduates, are Dan Castellaneta, the voice actor for Homer Simpson, and slimeball Republican Dennis Hastert, who famously declared after Katrina that certain "neighborhoods" [read: black and poor] should be "bulldozed" rather than rebuilt. So there you have it: DeKalb's most celebrated citizens are a pair of creeps and and the voiceman for the epitomal American loser.

As one woman from NIU's class of 2006 shows, it's really the people who make life there a living Hell [I'm including her grammar mistakes]:
"[D]on't make the same mistake I did, NIU is a terrible school a complete waste of my time and money. I came into NIU as a transfer student despite the fact that i had several friends that told me how horrible it was. WEll they were right!! First of all the students here are completely self centered and ignorant. Not a friendly campus AT All. everyone stays in there own cliques and groups even out at the bars, dont expect anyone to be friendly to you. Apartment and house parties are closed here usually just groups of friends. The faculty here are extremely unhelpful and unwilling to help you. The financial aid and other administrative offices treat you like shit, not to mention their "offices" look like prison cells. Coming from a school which had everything remodeled it was very hard coming here. This school looks ilek it hasnt been remodeled since 1800. ALl the buildings (except Barsema) are disgusting SICK i wouldn't be surprised if huge rats were crawling around. The on campus dorms and dining facilities I will not even get into that if you unfortunately decide to invest your time into an education here you will find out BEWARE!! THe library is terrible, I had a better library at my grade school. The gym: I have a better gym in the basement of my house. It looks liek a bunch of treadmills thrown into a basement. This is a suitcase school. 70% of students leave for the weekends. WARNING: Massive amounts of drug consumption at this school. Extremely high drug scene, so if you aren't into that you will have ahard time finding people like you. Dekalb is an awful, ugly town with nothign to do. There is no mall nearby. There are no places to work in town. NIU has been the worst experience of my life. I would give anything to go back and have listened to the 10-15 people who advised me not to go here. So here is your chance right now for anyone reading this, before you make the same mistake and regret it. Don't choose NIU!!! Invest your time, money, and college experience somewhere else."
It's not just the transfer students who grieve about the people in DeKalb, as one psychology major explains:
"I think NIU is the shittiest decision a person can make as far as picking a university that will broaden their horizons. I was very motivated with my studies before I moved out there and the lack of job opportunities doesn't give you a way to apply your studies so I've lost a lot of inspiration. It may be reasonably priced financially, but I was absolutely miserable so it wasn't worth saving the money. If you're planning on depending on your bike to commute around town good luck. It seems that people in Dekalb are unfamiliar with the invention of the bicycle. When I've ridden on the sidewalks I get harassed. When I ride on the street on one trip I have numerous people yelling obscenities at me to get out of the street. Last year when I was living in the dorms while My bike was chained to the bike rack somebody stole my entire front wheel. I got it fixed this year and within two weeks of the repair while I was in class somebody seemingly attacked my bike (the front wheel's rim was bent and tire was flat.) I don't understand why anyone would do something so pointless, but it seems that's how a lot of people in Dekalb are. I managed to make a few close friends but the majority of the people in Dekalb are insensitive, uninspired (with reason considering their surroundings), and pretentious even though they have no reason to be cause a lot of them are very lucky to have even gotten into NIU. Even if you're motivated and don't have trouble finding a job where you're from, it's very hard to find a decent job in Dekalb. Almost everything is minimum wage. I was making $11 an hour before I transferred to NIU and then the best I could find was a job at a gas station making $6.50/hr. The only way for you to get experience in your field is through volunteer experience because there are very very few decent jobs in the surrounding area. This is going to sound ridiculous but the weather is seriously always worse in Dekalb than anywhere else. I'm from the south [Chicago] burbs and when I take the hour and half drive to Dekalb it's always storming harder, snowing more, more humid in the summer or the wind is much more extreme. Dekalb is always very windy though probably because of all the farm land and lack of trees breaking the wind. Whatever it's from, NIU is like a wind tunnel. The majority of my professors are also insensitive and don't understand unusual family situations. The campus is ok in some parts but hideous in most areas and it doesn't have a lot of natural beauty. The most scenic part of campus the main entrance by the lagoon is ruined by ugly looking satellites scattered about. I could go on forever. I attended for a year and a half an now i'm transferring. I had a bad feeling about the campus from the start when I visited and I guess I should have gone with it. I'm just trying to keep other people from making the same mistake."
If you're wondering why Kazmierczak transferred out of NIU to the University of Illinois-Champaign last spring, this might help explain it; if you're wondering, as many bloggers have, why he'd come back and shoot up NIU rather than his current university, these sentiments are at least worth considering.

Kazmierczak's hometown, Elk Grove Village, Illinois, is also revealing of the vast, flat middle of Middle America. Located on the edge of Chicago's hyper-busy O'Hare Airport, Elk Grove Village has a humble population of roughly 40,000 almost all-white middle-class citizens (mostly German and Polish stock), yet it hosts, as it proudly boasts, the largest consolidated business park in North America. Packed into its humble 5.4 square miles are 3,800 business, hosting over 100,000 workers servicing O'Hare Airport alone, and several Interstate highways servicing the wall-to-wall giant flat-roofed warehouse structures, corporate offices and, yes, suburban tract homes.

Two years ago, Kazmierczak's parents moved from Elk Grove Village to Florida, where his mother died of Lou Gehrig's Disease.

Scratching the surface of his life -- a very familiar, flat sort of American Hell -- makes his need for medications a bit more understandable, as is the case for the millions of Americans like him who take psychiatric medication. Indeed, someone who wouldn't turn to antidepressants would, in my opinion, be the sick one.

If we bracket his massacre as the work of an evil lunatic on drugs, we'll miss yet another opportunity to genuinely examine what life is like for most Americans today, who live in that terrifying gap between the official propaganda about a nation of happy fun-loving Number Ones, and the reality of mediocrity, petty malice, and a flat physical setting that reflects the malice and mediocrity of its town elders.

For more, read Mark Ames' article on the Virginia Tech massacre.
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See more stories tagged with: kazmierczak, rage massacre

Mark Ames is editor of the Moscow English alt weekly, The eXile. He is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton¿s Columbine and Beyond.

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Why doesn't it happen more?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: lamar on Feb 16, 2008 12:46 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If this were a case of the horrors of the midwest and/or the campuses there, why doesn't this sort of thing happen more?

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» RE: Why doesn't it happen more? Posted by: justaperson
» Medieval culture Posted by: Cathyc
» RE: Why doesn't it happen more? Posted by: madmax427
» RE: Why doesn't it happen more? Posted by: penobscotdziekuje@yahoo.com
» RE: Why doesn't it happen more? Posted by: setterwoman
» Because Posted by: fifthworld
» RE: Why doesn't it happen more? Posted by: newtype_alpha
Looking at it from a distance
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Lector on Feb 16, 2008 1:07 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
My comment is far from a comprehensive summary but I think the problem partly lies somewhere in the mixture between America’s violent gun and Jesus culture and the myth of the American Dream, where you’re told if you are determined, and regardless of your social class or ethnic background, you can gain a better life. Well, it seems the apparatus to make this happen has broken down. Now we’ve got a more complex socio-political world, the rise of monopolies, corporations squeezing the little man out of everything including his job, governments taking from the people and giving little in return except more rules and surveillance to live under. Add the population explosion, meddlesome religions, oil wars, higher cost of living, less security all around, and greed to the soup, and you have the American nightmare instead. Is it no wonder some people in a population of over 360 million more or less have this urge to start shooting. It is also a sign that Western civilization is dying.

Pointless

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» American Hell Posted by: Richard House
» Very insightful comment Posted by: skoog5600
» Finally Posted by: Kcanadensis
» Reality 101 Posted by: nigelbest
» RE: Reality 101 Posted by: nigelbest
» RE: eality 101 Posted by: YogiBear
» Dear Nigel Best Posted by: Prairie Waif
» Hello Nigel Posted by: Cathyc
» RE: Looking at it from a distance Posted by: Prairie Waif
I'll be completely blunt
[Report this comment]
Posted by: andabottleof_rum on Feb 16, 2008 2:56 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
A Northern Illinois law student told the Washington Post, "The person who did it is a loser. He doesn't deserve a name or picture reference. You're not Kurt Cobain if you do that."

It's this kind of attitude toward the weak, awkward, and suffering that causes shooting sprees. Everyone can feel this deep down, but they don't like to admit it's the harsh, egotistical, judgmental, and small-minded attitude our culture promotes, as exemplified by this future lawyer's comment, that's rotting society.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» As a sidetrack to a sidetrack Posted by: improperly_sedated
» RE: I'll be completely blunt Posted by: MyLeftFoot
» Oh, please! Posted by: pcushniesr
» Are you serious? Posted by: photon's feather
» RE: Oh, please! Posted by: donl51
» RE: Oh, please! Posted by: Prairie Waif
» RE: Oh, please! Posted by: madmax427
» RE: I'll be completely blunt Posted by: artemisia
» AGREED! Posted by: Prairie Waif
» RE: Are elephants really rageful? Posted by: Prairie Waif
» RE: I'll be completely blunt Posted by: andabottleof_rum
» RE: I'll be completely blunt Posted by: constitution, what constitution
» RE: I'll be completely blunt Posted by: GEM-592
» RE: I'll be completely blunt Posted by: Livemike
Why are the medications being kept secret?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Feb 16, 2008 3:18 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The same thing was true in the case of the Virginia Tech shooting - no new media organization has ever published what drugs Cho had been taking or what the results of his autopsy was.

If the Northern Illinois shooter had been on medications, and then stopped taking them, and then snapped, then one would like to know what medications he was on. People coming off medication tend to have withdrawals - which could explain a lot. Tobacco smokers without their cigarettes, meth addicts without their speed - same deal.

While Northern Illinois might truly be awful, many other people survive it without going on rampages. At the very least, the public deserves to know what specific drugs were involved in this as well as in Virginia.

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» Excellent Question Posted by: Persephone8
» RE: xcellent Question Posted by: babs
Fish in a Barrel
[Report this comment]
Posted by: girlperson1 on Feb 16, 2008 4:03 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Gun Free Zones, it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

If the law requires that schools be "gun free zones" then the law should also require that schools should have proper security to protect everyone within those zones otherwise, well, we see a pattern developing here of suicidal persons who decide they want to end their own lives in a spectacular way so they shoot up these schools and then finally end their own lives.

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» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: benzene
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: girlperson1
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: benzene
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: girlperson1
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: girlperson1
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: benzene
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: girlperson1
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: YogiBear
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: Livemike
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: madmax427
» RE: Fish in a Barrel Posted by: YogiBear
Knee Jerk Psychology Here
[Report this comment]
Posted by: iconoblaster on Feb 16, 2008 4:10 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This article is way off base and just another example of unqualified folks offering simplistic explanations for unexplainable actions.
Student gripes about their campus, faculty, etc. = mass murderers? Please.

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» From limited experiences... Posted by: ABetterFuture
» RE: Knee Jerk Psychology Here Posted by: helenwheels
A bit unfair
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Mercury46 on Feb 16, 2008 4:15 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I certainly agree that chalking this up to some "crazy loser" is irresponsible, but the author's portrait of NIU is totally unfair.

I grew up in central Illinois, and now live in Chicago. After high school, I applied, and was accepted to NIU. After visiting a couple of campuses, I chose to attend Illinois State where I partied my balls off and ended up flunking out. My experience with the professors at ISU was that they were typically not there to help me out. I attribute that to the fact that I rarely attended class or did the work, and then, 2 weeks before the final and aware of my imminent failure, went in to ask if I could drop the course. Unsurprisingly - no dice.

I now (10 years later) attend a school with an awful reputation (all I could get into given my college history), and am having a very good experience. The professors are dedicated and the quality of instruction is great.

Anyone can find terrible reviews of any school by people who went there, but I suspect that anyone who is investing the right amount of time and energy into succeeding in college will find that most professors are willing to work with them.

Granted, the campus is pretty bleak compared to many other schools, but it's hardly a place in which most would feel "hopeless." I haven't been there since my sister graduated about 5 years ago (she had a good experience there, by the way), but what I saw was not rat-infested, inner-city project caliber facilities.

Even the mighty University of Illinois has negative reviews like the ones included in this article. Here is an excerpt from an NIU student who attended both NIU and UofI:

I would not trade my experience and colelge career at NIU for any other school. I have been to University of Illinois and other Illinois schools and i am still happy with my decision. There are a lot of organizations, clubs, fraternities/sororities, etc. for students to get involved with. I am constantly surprised with the level of knowledge and ability of teachers to teach classes in an interesting manner. NIU has a solid core of alumni in Chicago and the west suburbs of Illinois.

More reviews (and the ones the author included) can be found here

Anyway, while it's likely not the only factor, I think the kid definitely had a big chunk of "crazy loser" in him.

[« Reply to this comment] [Post a new comment »] [Rate this comment: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5]

» Crazy loser? Posted by: heid
» RE: Crazy loser? Posted by: Cooltruth
» RE: Crazy loser? Posted by: Mercury46
» Crazy losers Posted by: setterwoman
» RE: Crazy losers Posted by: hagwind
» Crazy Loser? Posted by: Cathyc
» Better known alumni... Posted by: brunowe
The Death of Community ...
[Report this comment]
Posted by: gazooks on Feb 16, 2008 4:43 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
... seems to coincide within a cultural vacuum in American divergence towards a life discounted simply as business. Burbs devoid of any authentic, reflective sense of history, creative expressions in art, architecture and the aesthetic influence of literature surely contribute to an epidemic of soulless self-centered anxiety and violent rejection.

Environmental organization overtly and exclusively influenced only by considerations of marketing efficiencies, commerce and revenue deliver nothing beyond the product for sale at the expense of our cultural psyche.

Boxed at home, in transit, at work and increasingly isolated at play, often exceedingly violent fantasy play at that, eliminates opportunity to interact in a thoughtful and potentially creative personal way.

Meanwhile, in the rush to cultivating always lower prices in a veneer of facsimile and aesthetic disregard, we cost ourselves our humanity and cultural soul.

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Wow, condescending, much?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rwday@cox.net on Feb 16, 2008 4:54 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
So NIU isn't Harvard, it's a 'glorified community college.' So what? Community colleges have their place, as do 'obviously second rate universities' (I'm assuming that's where this author would place Virginia Tech - a sentiment, as a Virginian and a mom of a VT alum with which I can't agree). Even if we were to fix every problem in our schools so that every child got a quality education, there would still be a place for these 'lower tier schools' - not every student has the ability or interest in attending the top colleges. Lots of students derive great satisfaction from their attendance at these schools, far more than the number who find them hopeless and wastes of money and time, and infinitely more than take a gun and start shooting.

As this article points out, the NIU shooter wasn't even a current student at the school - he'd managed to use whatever he'd gained at the glorified community college to transfer into the University of Illinois (also no Harvard).

I'm not saying there's nothing wrong with American life and culture - there is, quite a lot, and we need to address the systemic problems, preferably sooner rather than later. But millions of Americans live in this author's 'very familiar, flat sort of American hell' and get along just fine, or if they have difficulties, they handle them without resorting to violence. The primary blame for this crime rests with the shooter, and with a culture that makes guns far too easily available. If, out of despair, he'd killed himself, I would be sympathetic. He lost any shot at my sympathy when he took his rage and frustration out on a classroom full of innocents.

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» RE: Wow, condescending, much? Posted by: CrystalD
» RE: Wow, condescending, much? Posted by: armswideopen
» RE: Wow, condescending, much? Posted by: Freethemind
» Ivy League "education" ... Posted by: Cathyc
» RE: Ivy League "education" ... Posted by: Freethemind
» RE: Wow, condescending, much? Posted by: newtype_alpha
» Everyone is Special! Posted by: lasarte-oria
» RE: veryone is Special! Posted by: armswideopen
» RE: veryone is Special! Posted by: Elmo55
This Article Says Nothing
[Report this comment]
Posted by: MTHarris on Feb 16, 2008 5:02 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It appears for the sake of publishing something quickly on the shootings at NIU, Alternet has published this shallow, useless article. Obviously, a person's environment can have an impact on their mental health. But to write about the bleakness of the DeKalb campus as part of a possible explanation for what happened to this man is utterly ridiculous. By the logic displayed here, you might think thousands of desperately impoverished people in Mexico or Darfur or certain parts of the west side of Chicago would be routinely "going postal."

I know DeKalb well. It's hardly San Francisco, but it might be more productive to inquire into this man's specific life story, his family and childhood and psychiatric history. It's reported that he spent nearly a year in a mental health facility in 1999, so obviously there's a story there.

There is a larger social context to the issue of violence in America, of course. But in suggesting this specific act of violence might have something to do with the limitations of NIU or DeKalb is superficial nonsense.

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» RE: This Article Says Nothing Posted by: helenwheels
» RE: This Article Says Nothing Posted by: Luther Blissett
» RE: This Article Says Nothing Posted by: thealltheone
» RE: This Article Says Nothing Posted by: Livemike
» RE: This Article Says Nothing Posted by: MTHarris
epidemiological studies show that men with low social status in a hierarchical society
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Suzon on Feb 16, 2008 5:39 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
are more violent. The taunt of "Loser!" speaks volumes. The author of this article seems to me to be on the right track (see Richard Wilkinson's The Impact of Inequality for corroboration), even if other factors were involved.

Guess what? Education is a business in America. Educators thrive because of the empires they construct. Chomsky points out that newspapers exist to sell readers to advertisers. Similarly, colleges and universities can be said to exist by recruiting students to support teachers. In many fields, a degree is a tax paid by job applicants. It's a substitute for on-the-job training.

Perhaps the country would be healthier if degrees were only required in a few select areas such as engineering and medicine.

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» The THIRD TYPE OF TEACHER. . . Posted by: Prairie Waif
the Lake Wobegon effect
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Posted by: war_on_tara on Feb 16, 2008 5:41 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I remember reading Mark Ames' analysis of Columbine awhile back & completely agreeing. High school is uniquely brutal. But this one seems like a lot of whining to me.

Must we have a multicultural Lake Wobegon, where all colleges are above average, all JOBS are above average, etc? How can that be accomplished? It's just a fact that most jobs are pretty boring.

And while I enjoy interesting architecture, can we really blame mass murder on bad architecture? Sounds like Ames is channeling Ayn Rand there!

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» RE: the Lake Wobegon effect Posted by: wittler youth
Make a effort to be kind to each other ~!!
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Posted by: Kelli B on Feb 16, 2008 5:53 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I don't think that the result of allowing more guns per square mile is going to result in less lead entering human flesh. The article explores the back street of this persons life. Perhaps the disassociation and the resulting alienation of peoples connection with one another is resulting in these violent acts? Do you remember the day after 9/11. We looked strangers in the eye and told them we cared. Were there mass murders commited by Americans in the months following 9/11? Lets be kind to each other. Freak ourt the next stranger you see and let him./her you care, if just for a moment!

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Just a symptom.
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Posted by: heid on Feb 16, 2008 5:58 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
These incidents are not isolated. They're the products of millions of people who are desperate, usually without realizing it, since everything around them says that they are supposed to be happy. So, they put on the show, like nearly everyone else - all of whom are miserably desperate, too, but cannot risk being labeled as different or somehow wrong. So, people continue on the treadmill to nowhere, trying and trying to be that happy image projected to them, falling further and further behind, feeling more and more like failures.

This is the problem. There are far more of these tragedies, but most of them take place under the radar. They end up as suicides, addicts, physically ill from their mental burdens. This is the American society today.

The saddest part is that it's being exported, often by force, to the rest of the world. Some places do better than others at ignoring it, but the glitter keeps sparkling, and more and more are sucked into this void.

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» RE: Just a symptom. Posted by: carlie727
» Educated and Wealthy? Posted by: Cathyc
» RE: Just a symptom. Posted by: liberalibrarian
Unrealistic expectations can be hazardous to your sanity
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Posted by: hagwind on Feb 16, 2008 6:13 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
OK, in among the NIU bashing, the Midwest-bashing, and the rural/small-town bashing, there are some good points worth building on -- and one glaring omission.

As others upstream pointed out (esp. Mercury46 -- good post!), what you get out of college has a lot to do with what you put into it. What GWBush got out of Yale had less to do with professorial attention and well-maintained buildings than with the connections he had going in. In the last generation or so, college has been sold as this thing you have to have to "get ahead." The emphasis is on the diploma, not the educational process that leads toward it. The hard sell spawns unrealistic expectations; thwarted expectations sometimes turn ugly. Not to mention -- if you have to work full-time to put yourself through school, it's going to be much harder to discover and take advantage of the opportunities that your school offers. If everyone is working full-time, how much "campus life" is there going to be? How open to new people and experiences can most students afford to be?

About despair that leads to homicidal and suicidal rage -- well, here's the glaring omission. How many of those people who went postal, how many water-cooler killers and school shooter-uppers, were female? Where's the teenage girl who thinks she's going to kickstart a revolution by shooting up her high school? The author writes that "the Columbine killers have become heroes to untold numbers of America's kids, just as they'd set out to do" -- could we have a gender breakdown here? Are these "kids" mostly boys? mostly girls? mixed half and half? I don't know -- I doubt the author does either -- but I have this hunch.

I don't for a minute believe that this has much, if anything, to do with testosterone or the Y chromosome. I think it's about socialization, and especially about the expectations we lay on ourselves and the expectations that sometimes make it hard to see what we're looking right at. Which may be why the author didn't even mention what is so glaringly obvious to me.

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Why attack the university?
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Posted by: lasb on Feb 16, 2008 6:22 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As this is my first comment to Alternet, I had ideas in my head of how I wanted to respond. Then, in setting up my account I read this:

AlterNet will not tolerate:

personal attacks on our writers or readers
excessive profanity
racist, sexist or other discriminatory or hateful language
comments that are off-topic or irrelevant to the story or discussion at hand.

So, now my comment has changed to: Why would Alternet publish a story that seems to be mainly a one-sided rant on the quality of NIU? It reads as a personal attack, complete with hateful language. While kicking a mourning community, it offers no solutions to stopping this increasingly common societal problem.

Perhaps I am biased, as my sister attended NIU 20 years ago. And perhaps because I was on NIU's campus last fall for a student organization conference where I found the students to be as enthusiastic and forward-looking as on any college campus. Yes, it's not the prettiest campus on the planet. Yes, it is still in the middle of a cornfield...even 20 years after my sister graduated.

But...perhaps all of the hateful comments about the school the author cited were by students who really didn't put their all into their education and made choices while students there that did not enhance their opportunities.

This report was a totally biased, one-sided attack on an institution that is not responsible for the event. No institution is. Just as Westroads Mall in Omaha was not responsible for the killings there, neither is ANY university or school where shootings happen.

I would suggest it is our society that is responsible; that as a society we have come to a point where things are horribly wrong. We should be able to go to class, go shopping, do our daily business and not be in fear of this kind of "homegrown" terrorism.

Attacking the location of the incident is NOT the solution. I'm dissapointed that Alternet chose to print this story.

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» RE: Why attack the university? Posted by: thealltheone
» RE: Sure guns are not the problem. Posted by: thealltheone
» RE: Why attack the university? Posted by: Cooltruth
» RE: Why attack the university? Posted by: commonsense1
» Why attack? To peddle his book Posted by: allenjhist
» RE: Why attack the university? Posted by: ibtrippen
its the same in Nebraska
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Posted by: zooeyhall on Feb 16, 2008 6:29 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Wow! What can I say about this terrific article? I haved lived 53 years in rural Nebraska and believe me people it is the same out here. Describing DeKalb is like describing the intellectual desolation and economic wasteland of rural Nebraska.

We have several community colleges in my area, and they are nothing but shills training for the local McDonald's and the factory hog farms in my area. The administration of these colleges are nothing but cynical whores to the local (low wage) manufacturing interests. The teachers at these colleges are largely local people who are expert at zeroing in on one of the few high-wage and safe jobs in rural Nebraska.

I also like how the author notes that this seemed to start in the mid -80s. Yeah, everyone around here thinks Reagan was the best pres since Lincoln. Just another symptom of the intellectual bankruptcy of people out here.

Yes rural America is declining because of economic reasons, but a large factor is that finally the "chickens are coming home to roost" of the pig-headed conservative knee jerk attitudes out here.

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Answers not so simple
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Posted by: BST on Feb 16, 2008 6:32 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
None of us may ever know (he may not have known) why this man acted. But I'll forego demonizing -- as some will -- those who do crack, even in horrific manner, or hypothesizing from blogs.

As a human being and parent, my sympathies whenever one of these rampages takes place go to victims, families, friends, community. It may happen 1,000 miles away; it might as well be next door.

But it is a time to wonder, as we consider our own beloved circle, how a smart, apparently well-liked individual can also become a black-garbed shooter. What happens to prompt that transformation? Pre-existing mental health issues? Awful loneliness? Shame? Urges beyond control? Loss?

How well do we know one another?

The grip of mental illness in tandem with the isolation felt by many people in a modern world more enamored of technology than the human interaction that plants us at the dinner table with family, is a tough yoking. Consider the thesis of "Bowling Alone" by Robert Putnam.

As I said, my deepest sympathies go out to the survivors of the children who were killed and to those deeply injured in body and spirit.

But my heart also goes out to the father of this shooter, interviewed in his turmoil on TV begging reporters to leave him alone.

I would not be so quick, as this author has been, to use a few student postings to broad-brush the campus experience, implying that the answer may lie there. Every campus has critics.

True answers reside somewhere so deep in the human heart that a quick diagnosis/synopsis is seldom going to be on the mark, even though kernels of truth may be contained therein.

It is certainly well past the time when parents and schools began speaking very directly and early on about exactly how and where kids can get help when they're starting to feel overwhelmed.

I hope that any young people out there who are carrying around grief or anger or fear will, somehow, turn not to mayhem but to a parent or trusted adult, valued friend, teacher, doctor.

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» RE: Institutionalised Child Abuse Posted by: SatanicJamboree
» RE: Answers not so simple Posted by: GEM-592
Jesus Christ
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Posted by: daveinchi on Feb 16, 2008 6:36 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This campus and this community just endured a horrific and violent nightmare, and your reaction is to spend three pages talking about what a shitty town, and a shitty campus it is?

I've been to DeKalb, and yes, I'm sure it has its problems. Is THIS going to help it though?

How utterly inappropriate.

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» RE: Jesus Christ Posted by: Lycas7x
Are Anti-Depressant Drugs Responsible?
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Posted by: oldhippie on Feb 16, 2008 6:43 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I sometimes wonder if some of the prescription drugs are responsible. The shooter had stopped taking his medications, but what were they? Was there some kind of effect still present from taking the meds? I had a cousin who killed herself while taking an anti-depressant. Although there is evidence that there are serious side effects from these drugs, doctors still prescribe them.

I think another influence is the violence in our movies and TV programs. Just take a look at the TV schedule and you will see a list of police, CSI, and crime programs. This becomes a model for some people's lives. Younger generations have become numb to violence.

Growing up is difficult for most of us. There are many stresses including problems with family members, lack of income, non-acceptance by classmates. You have to have a strong sense of who you are to survive.

It's sad that so many people feel hopeless and helpless. This is a sad commentary on our society.

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It is tragic that history unlearned repeates itself.....
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Posted by: cisc on Feb 16, 2008 6:46 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
we cannot look any deeper into these tragedies and learn. We have prisons bursting with people and yet we still don't have enough prisons. Fifty percent of our marriages end in divorce, what happens to the child? If a child has never seen normal, how do they know what normal is? We hold up vacuous celebutants, train wrecks like Britney Spears, and juiced up athletes as "winners". Our leaders are not people of integrity and honor; they espouse family values when not visiting public bathrooms or hookers. Lack of enough faith is frequently held up, but when faith is used as just one more tool of manipulation how can it not breed the cynasism that is enveloping us. One psychiatric nursing professor at my depressing little community college said we have issues as a culture that we cannot even admit to let alone address, so we take pills, we build prisons, and we step on the weak, helpless failures among us because that's all we can do to feel better about ourselves. Study the people in prison, study the people who should be in mental hospitals (but probably arn't getting ANY kind of care), and study the people who drown children in bathtubs or do school shootings to get to the SOURCE of these behaviors. The thing we REALLY don't want to find at the end of day as the people we hold up as winners are fairly often really just functional sociopaths and the rest of us would rather just go along to get along. We will look at horrific things, be very uncomfortale, and look away.

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Spiritual Problem
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Posted by: redbird30328 on Feb 16, 2008 6:55 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The common thread running through these nihilistic tragedies is the accelerating decline of the spiritual dimension of American society. The Buddha taught that all unhappiness is the result of an unhealthy focus on the self. The daily relentless bombardment of advertising images certainly contributes to this, but in the end it is up to individuals to determine their own happiness. They are responsible. This tragedy has nothing to do with the terrain or weather of the northern midwest; it has nothing to do with Reagan or Bush; it has nothing to do with having no bike lanes in Dekalb; it has everything to do with the shooter being focused on himself and nothing else. American society (we, not the government) are failing our children by neglecting their spiritual development. We ignore the basic spiritual principles (see Aldous Huxley "The Perennial Philosopy") at our peril. Events such as these are the Kharmic retribution for this neglect.

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» RE: Spiritual Problem Posted by: tween
» Faith Posted by: Cathyc
» RE: Faith Posted by: Lycas7x
» RE: Faith Posted by: Gungneir
» RE: Faith Posted by: Cathyc
» The effects. . . . Posted by: Prairie Waif
» RE: Spiritual Problem Posted by: GEM-592
Only in the U.S.?
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Posted by: taxidriver on Feb 16, 2008 7:04 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Articles like this seem to suggest that rural angst and anger, and architectural bleakness, only exist in the U.S. As you travel in foreign countries, you realize it's not all Paris, Oxbridge, or Milan. Every country has its "third-tier" institutions (however that's measured) located in bleak neighborhoods. So why don't we see more violent shootings overseas by the "despairing"? Could our violent culture have something to do with this? The ready availability of guns? To understand these issues, we need more context. Sadly, this article is little more than a screed against NIU and the alleged dystopia of its environs.

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» Suicide bombers Posted by: suprmark
» USA Military CULTURE Posted by: Prairie Waif
» Agreed Posted by: Hans B
Anomie
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Posted by: Steve Adair on Feb 16, 2008 7:11 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Anomie...and a Sociology major at that!

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Masculinity and guns - did anyone notice?
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Posted by: www.suekatz.com on Feb 16, 2008 7:12 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I hope we're all looking at the intersection of this culture's "take" on what constitutes "an american hero" or even what constitutes foreign policy -- with guns so easily available that you can pick up a few within a couple of days. It's not girls/women with sling-shots who are perpetrating these killings, after all.
www.suekatz.com

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DeKalb, IL is a farming community
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Posted by: catmandoo on Feb 16, 2008 7:18 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
home of the DeKalb flying corncob (advertizing for seed corn). It was, until sometime in the sixties, the home of Illinois Normal, an old fashioned teacher's college. Mark Ames is over the top in describing DeKalb, though. It's hard for someone who is not from a prairie to understand prairie. I certainly don't and I have lived in a prairie state for some 35 years. The people who come into the city from the prairie towns are often a great mystery to me.

DeKalb may not be the best place for a university in its seeming isolation, but its only an hour and a half away from the stimulous of Chicago.

There seem to be town and gown struggles as well as homesick young people struggles, and growing up struggles are natural to people in their teens and twenties.

Ames is off track, IMO, pointing to the geography for this horrific event. Having attended college at a different Illinois prairie school (SIU Edwardsville), we complained mightily. Why? Because it was fashionable, it was hip, it was cool. Looking back, I got a damn good education out of that school for which I am very grateful.

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These Complaints are not Unique
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Posted by: WhutDaFun on Feb 16, 2008 7:29 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I don't believe that the negative comments Mr. Ames sites are indicative of anything about NIU or any other environment, be it school, workplace, neighborhood, or Cub Scout pack. If you search comments on any subject, I think you will find that the vast majority are going to be negative. It just seems to be human nature to complain.

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Disgusting article
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Posted by: g50 on Feb 16, 2008 7:47 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Excuse me, but if you're going to come of the perspective that this is America's fault, and that everybody should be pampered, and - gasp - never have to live near a farm or never encounter someone rude or never live far from a mall or whatever - that is the self-indulgent attitude that gives people the license to do violence to others.

Morality. It is immoral to do violence to others. It is morally wrong to hurt others. Maybe instead of focusing on pampering, we on the left should start embracing a moral code that inspires people in a way materialism clearly does not (materialism in the consumer sense, not the philosophic sense). Yes, you want to understand why, but you just can't go on and on endlessly apologizing for what amount to immoral actions.

It is so easy for people on the left to Bash bush as evil. So when somebody actually picks up a gun and hurts fellow human beings, why suddenly then is context the key?

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Great story...
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Posted by: johnshadows on Feb 16, 2008 7:55 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
... looks like this guy was living in a beige world that broke down his psyche.

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Is There Just One Face In The Crowd.....
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Posted by: picket on Feb 16, 2008 7:56 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
that looks at another possible suffering human being with compassion, kindness and mere recognition and understanding about the perils of living???

OR...is it like the reflection in a mirror an icy stare, a robotic snarl.

Days, long ago, the strict but caring NUNS taught the Corporal Works of Mercy....feed the hungry, visit the sick, visit those in prison. give drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked..etc

One human's HORROR may be believing that there is not ONE Single Human that Cares an inkling whether you are dead or alive OR even that there may be a loving God that is waiting for SOMEONE to obey HIS command to do to others as you wish to have done to you.

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midwest born and lucky to have been
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Posted by: nebgirl on Feb 16, 2008 8:02 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
i was born and raised in the midwest (rural community of 1500 people) and consider myself very lucky to have been. as children we were completely free to roam the hills around town on foot or on horseback. we didnt go to art museums on the weekends but we were free to use our imaginations and explore the world around us without the adults hovering over us for fear we would be kidnapped. personally i believe large cities are harmful to the human psyche. give me the open prairies of the midwest anyday.

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Killer Crazy vs. Campus Hopeless
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Posted by: PaulK on Feb 16, 2008 8:09 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
These are too different issues. Talking about the defunding of a college and its crummy buildings and academic rigor is a valid topic at any time but in the month after a shooting at that campus.

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slavery is freedom
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Posted by: HANGTRAITORS on Feb 16, 2008 8:10 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
lets repeal the 2nd ammendment right now... defenseless population = slaves.... which is what this is really about

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Snobby theory?
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Posted by: kepstein7777 on Feb 16, 2008 8:11 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I don't see a relationship between the name brand of a college and the sense of gloom, alienation, failure, etc. among the students, at least in my experience.

I went to a "good" school for my undergrad years, and it sucked.

Years later, I went back to a community college and a run-down little state school for a few courses. Those were much more positive experiences, and the students were much cooler, because they were ordinary working folks like me who were touching up their resume, and not a bunch of brats looking for a party. The instructors were better. The curriculum was better, and I learned more. NIU may be a terrible place, but I don't really understand why going to a no-name school should depress me or make me go postal.

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Dismal Life at NIU Has, At Least, Spawned a Gifted Comic
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Posted by: mrtshw on Feb 16, 2008 8:31 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In a country that elects amoral sociopaths such as Mccain, the Bushes,Cheney, the Clintons,Hastert, Delay, 'Bitch' McConnell,ad nauseum; I am surprised we haven't spawned massive armed rebellion in a Network's-Howard- Beale-on-steroids display of public outrage.
Sadly, it somehow seems completely understandable a psychotically frustrated nerd would come to the end of his SSRI fashioned noose in such a tragic manner.
The only ray of hope revealed herein is the comedic genius of the first letter writer shared by the author. Unfortunately our collective will to smile through our tears in this land of " Survivor ", " American Idol "," Dancing With The Stars " banality is I fear becoming exhausted.

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Golly Gee
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Posted by: GollyGee on Feb 16, 2008 8:35 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Thanks daveinchi, oldhippie,redbird, taxidriver, g50, Paul K, Kepstein and the rest for nailing this stupidity and resisting the hysterical fingerpointing that erupts after these crimes.

It's a silly, mean essay that should never have found it's way on to AlterNet.

Whatever the cause, it is not DeKalb, the Midwest, cornfields, or NIU.

A better place to look might be at how the mentally ill are treated, at what kind of medication was used, how a person with a history of mental problems was allowed to buy 3 handguns....

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Fo' real?
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Posted by: Asses of Evil on Feb 16, 2008 8:36 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
So there's a campus tragedy and the author's response is to cite demeaning comments, at length, about the school and the outlying community? This could be written about just about any school in America. Ames, you are usually on point with your writing, but it would seem someone else is off their meds given this piece.

I agree that to write off school shooters as crazy is wrong. I think most people outside the mainstream media recognize that. But to suggest that any community which has a school about which some students are unhappy and which exists in a rather mundane American suburb is the cause of such rage, is like college plagiarism for its weak analysis. Really, Alternet editors, this piece is absolutely trash. And my commiserations and heart go out to those residents of the area affected by this tragedy. Ames, shame on you for this tripe.

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» RE: Fo' real? Posted by: thealltheone
» RE: Fo' real? Posted by: TerryS
The American Equivalent of the Suicide Bomber
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Posted by: ot on Feb 16, 2008 8:54 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Wake up America!

This is our own home-grown equivalent of the Islamist suicide bomber. Don't confuse the details, i.e. bombs vs. guns, with the general form of these acts.

Yes, the American Suicide Shooter has been with us at least since those early post office killings.

So take that meme to your water-cooler...

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» BINGO Posted by: form516
» VIRGINS WAITING? Posted by: gellero
Instant fame and an end to misfortune?
[Report this comment]
Posted by: mnissley on Feb 16, 2008 8:57 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I agree with the writer that in many ways America is an ugly, hostile environment. It seems to me in a society supercharged with superficiality where people do want to be #1, they feel they need fame, adulation, and recognition and the bare facts are it's never going to happen. A lot of the good things people could do with their lives are simply not possible, since most are forced into shitty jobs needed for basic survival. Much important, needed and potentially highly personally rewarding work never gets done, because it doesn't pay. Option 1: a shitty life. Option 2: just check out. I think there are two important things at play here, among many others as well I'm sure. One is the very real desperation of the silent slog that life is for many Americans, and another is the desire to immediately have the exact opposite - the entire world as the audience for your sorrow and anger. You're not going to get that from going in your basement and killing yourself.

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Why??
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Posted by: Ruby on Feb 16, 2008 9:00 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Why did Steven Kazmierczak, "armed with three handguns and a brand-new pump-action shotgun he had carried onto campus in a guitar case," step from behind a screen on the stage of a lecture hall at NIU and open fire on a geology class, killing six, wounding many more?

Because he had guns. It's not possible to have done this without them. The question should be: why did he have guns? Maybe the NRA could explain that to the families of the victims, including the shooters'.

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» RE: Why?? Posted by: Cwood
» RE: Why?? Posted by: AMERICAN VETERAN
» RE: Why?? Posted by: Ruby
» RE: Yeah, right!! Posted by: fearn
» RE: Yeah, right!! Posted by: YogiBear
» Rwanda, Kenya, Darfur Posted by: suprmark
» RE: wanda, Kenya, Darfur Posted by: babs
» RE: Why?? Posted by: Ruby
» RE: Why?? THAT'S THE REASON Posted by: VZEQICVA
» RE: Why?? THAT'S THE REASON Posted by: VZEQICVA
» Short-timer Posted by: YogiBear
Dr.
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Posted by: leebee on Feb 16, 2008 8:59 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It is with great sadness and anger that I read the scathing comments about a university I love and have wonderful memories of. Northern Illinois University changed my life and gave me a good foundation to continue my education. Thanks to that foundation, I had a long and rewarding career. Yes, the physical campus is not what it was when I was a student there and it was small and quite enchanting. I never had an allergic reaction to the lovely corn fields and I never smelled anything offensive.
I think we need to look at the changes in this society. Having taught at the college level for 25 years, I witnessed a profound change in student attitudes. In too many students, there is a sense of unhealthy entitlement, a lack of commitment to learning, a disrespect for faculty, a willingness to project blame onto other people and other circumstances. Don't blame NIU. Look at who and what you are. Look at what you contribute or don't contribute. It's not a perfect place, but it's not deserving of your criticism either. You know, you could transfer - but perhaps U of C or Harvard or Yale wouldn't want you.

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» RE: Dr. Posted by: g50
» RE: Dr. Posted by: scared rabbit
» RE: Dr. Posted by: lissajayne
selfish
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Posted by: Herb3705 on Feb 16, 2008 9:00 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
i find it interesting that his field of study was social work.

he had at his finger tips, if he so desired, the opportunity to obtain counseling in a matter of seconds.

drugs of no drugs...problems or no problems...instead of choosing help he opted for the ultimate act of selfishness.

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» RE: selfish Posted by: VZEQICVA
This article is simply silly
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Posted by: tomkara on Feb 16, 2008 9:02 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
While a school's physical plant or academic standards might engender student dissatisfaction, it hardly accounts for a murderous rampage. The author has missed the point. Generally, anger stems from deeper sources than the comfort level in a dorm room or the fact that you aren't in the Ivy League. Unhappiness with one's own life, or life in general, usually involves a complex history involving social circumstance, past history, and personality. The real issues here are the lack of an integrated health care system in the United States, which treats mentally ill people as though they are patients on an assembly line, using drugs without combining adequate social support (too expensive! yeah right), along with a culture where citizens are constantly exposed to violence using firearms on TV and other media, along with easy access to firearms. The murderer was clearly disturbed, and the fact that he was on medications and stopped taking them cannot be trivialized. The broad social context in which this happens is obviously even more important, but I don't think this incident happened because Northern Illinois University isn't Ivy League. Let's focus instead on a society which doesn't value universal health care and integrated medicine involving not only drugs but social support, a society which portrays violence as the answer to problems, a society which devalues people who do not make a lot of money, a society which doesn't think people who work at "low end" jobs should be paid fairly and have the right to unionize without hindrance, a society which too often endorses revenge over reconciliation, a society which buys into the shallowness of material success.

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anti depressants do not work for everyone.
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Posted by: thealltheone on Feb 16, 2008 9:10 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
It is a crap shoot when going to the doctor for help these days. the new "in" diagnosis is bi polar. everyone is bi polar now. My husband was mildly depressed for valid reasons. He went to the doctor and every two months was given a different anti depressant. I was living with a different person every two months, and it was a crap shoot. He would become violent, or suicidal. When after 25 years of marriage, he never was either. The doctor said, that there were over 200 anti depressants and one is bound to work when we find the right one. I said no more or we go to divorce court. Now that he is not taking anything, he is back to normal. Then there is the label or stigma of feeling like something is wrong with you. You do not feel like you are connected to other people anymore. I hear over and over about the countless and growing number of violent acts caused by people who are on several medications or abruptly stopped one. The Iraqi veterans are dealing with this problem. They may not shoot up a school, but they are abusing or killing their wives and children. The housewife in Houston that drowned her children in the tub was on several anti depressants and had stopped them. It is not guns, it is not video games it is not the colleges fault.

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» RE: Well said! Posted by: Ghoulman
There isn't one explanation
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Posted by: Cwood on Feb 16, 2008 9:13 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Most of the comments on here seem to either be saying "it was all due to his context" or "it was all him, an isolated case of violence/insanity." Anybody think maybe its an extremely complex mixture of the two? If it was just insanity, why wait until now with no warning signs? And if it was just his environment, why isn't it an epidemic?

Anybody who's completely discounting either explanation is just being lazy and claiming some special insight they don't really have.

Personally, and this is just my guess since I don't really know either, I think a mentally disturbed young man who's life eperiences were a bit rough but overwhelmingly mediocre, and found himself a community that can't be described as the epitomy of warmth and acceptance, in a country with a national obsession with violence and "the spectacular," made a very poor but calculated decision to end his life in a very selfish way.

Also, I haven't heard anybody mention this, the kid was a Sociology major. I'm a sociology major as well, and I can tell you this -- one semester in a sociology class will change the way you look at things in this country; majoring in it will definitely alter your views. You'll become aware of things that probably didn't register before (racism, sexism, classism, cultural hegemony, nationalism, etc) in everyday lie. In some cases its illuminating and fascinating; in others its more than a bit depressing. Every individual will interpret things differently.

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fish in a Barrel
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Posted by: girlperson1 on Feb 16, 2008 9:19 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The issue here is about security at all schools and other gun free zones. Protection of unarmed persons against armed persons. Colleges and universities don't want to spend MONEY, they just want to rake it in. PROPER SECURITY is the REAL issue here. Gun Free Zones have literally become shooting galleries.

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The "American Dream" is a sham...
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Posted by: VickyinSD on Feb 16, 2008 9:23 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
and trying to achieve it... even a little piece of it, is getting harder and harder for average Americans.

Why has so much changed in the last 40 years?

I fully understand the urge to just start shooting... but if it were me, it sure wouldn't be a university or workplace. I would aim much higher on the ladder of evil.

Thank God I have a grandaughter who keeps me tethered to reality, and who helps keep the "postal" urges at bay.

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Offensive
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Posted by: Fishbone Soldier on Feb 16, 2008 9:31 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This is the most offensively idiotic column I've read on Alternet. I'm sure the author is steeped in the subject of rampage killings, but bases his insight into NIU on questionable sources at best. His main evidence of rationale for someone to shoot students at a school is because of angry ranters on internet message boards?!? Is there a single school in the world who doesn't have a few angry kids who hate it? I spent this past fall traveling to a different college campus every week (on a football project), and heard similar complaints (along with praise) at each one of them. Kids get angry. They get on the internet and bitch that the dorm cafeteria was out of sesame seed bagels and that it happens all the time and the school sucks and "why didn't I go to Kansas State?"

Furthermore, the implication is that this has happened because the school isn't any good. I did not attend NIU - I graduated from Michigan with honors. For ten years I worked at a major market research company in Chicago. In my time there, our department hired seven NIU grads, all of them at least as smart as I was. None of them showed this kind of contempt for the school, and none of them fit the descriptions of the "evidence" declared in this article.

After any tragedy, people want to place blame. They want to be angry at someone. With Virginia Tech, (probably rightfully), the school was taken to task for not acting more quickly. With 9/11, people were all too eager to take their frustrations out on Iraq (how's that working out?). In this case, to blame Northern Illinois University for being "boring" or "bike stealin'" or having "unattractive buildings" is as unfair as it is dumb.

We obviously want answers in this situation, right? I believe Chris Rock hit the nail on the head a decade ago when he asked, "What ever happened to crazy? You can't be crazy no more?" Things are rough enough today in DeKalb. They don't need some pompous windbag combing the internet with the intent of blaming the innocent victims.

An offensively stupid article in my opinion, no matter how boring growing up in Elk Grove Village may be.

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» RE: Offensive Posted by: GEM-592
» RE: Offensive Posted by: babs
» RE: Offensive Posted by: GEM-592
Behaviour modification drugs they are called and they do the job.
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Posted by: Bulldog on Feb 16, 2008 9:31 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
In addition, the otherwise exemplary behaved lad, who liked helping people, was ex-army, given discharge on unspecified psychiatric grounds.
This is a repeating, recurring pattern plus, someone should contradict me but with proof please, when I say that nearly all, if not all the campus and high school shootings going right back to Columbine have been by young adults on psychiatrically prescribed behaviour modification drugs.
Come on, do the research don't put recurring patterns of coincidence down to chance.

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» RE: Good call Bulldog. Posted by: Ghoulman
Northern IL University
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Posted by: commonsense1 on Feb 16, 2008 9:33 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I found this article to be a most insensitive, caustic and angry account of life at a Midwestern university fueled primarily by unsourced quotes from "anonymous forums" and information that obviously wasn't obtained by a visit or any other credible, factual information. To begin, Dekalb is spelled DeKalb.

Most of the students at NIU are from surrounding Chicago area communities. NIU's purpose is to serve the students in the area who either do not want or cannot attend college away from home, cannot afford out-of-state tuition or cannot meet the qualifications at top-ranked universities (of which there are only two in Illinois). Many of the students who attend NIU are doing their best with their individual situations - yes, often trying ones. Many are attempting to earn a degree with limited funds and perhaps not toting 30s on their ACT but certainly not ignorant, as the article's many blanket statements would have you believe.

I attended and graduated from NIU. I went to this "second-rate" university because it was close to home. I had taken a year off after graduating from a very highly ranked high school in Chicago's Northshore suburbs to help care for a friend who was dying from cancer. My parents did not want me to go out of state at that difficult time. My dad was an executive with a Fortune 500 company, working on Michigan Avenue in beautiful downtown Chicago - hardly the dregs of the earth described as a typical NIU student.

I was a business major and graduated 4 years later with a B.S. in Management. I had several offers upon graduation and chose a Fortune 500 company who relocated me to San Francisco to begin my career - hardly the Pabst beer drinking loser you describe in your article.

Today, after living all over the United States with my jobs and those of my husband's, we are successfully seeing our three teenage children to attending those "first rate" schools that you proclaim NIU isn't. NIU does not pretend to be a first tier school. It certainly was enough to give me a very solid business education and years of fun and good friends that led to a rewarding career as an executive - not unlike many of my peers at the time. "Wasted life"? Please.

NIU exists in the middle of a farming community - that can't be changed. Everyone that attends knows that when making their decision. Not every college campus is tree-lined and ivy covered or has the climate enjoyed at Berkeley. Many can't afford those schools or gain admission into them. Should those student give up like Kazmierczak? Those students are doing the best they can and certainly did not deserve to be shot while pursuing their dreams or be insulted in this article two days later.

Characterizing life at NIU as not worth living is an insult to people who are trying and chose this place for their attempt. No matter the surroundings, it is not acceptable that a disgruntled, angry soul, for reasons we'll never know, came back and shot strangers at his alma mater. The mediocrity and "flat physical setting" I suspect will stay the same even if there's ever proof that mountains and landscape prevents people from shooting one another? It's a Midwestern University but serves a better purpose than the cited bathroom door quotes describe.

I think a visit would have resulted in a much different article. A perusal of an NIU alumni magazine to read about the may great things NIU's graduates have done and are doing is also in order. Northern Illinois University is a proud place with faculty that comes from many of the best businesses in the Chicago area to share their expertise. NIU is not a horrible place. I left gleefully upon graduation and moved with job offer in hand to sunny California. After years there and other places in between, I am happy to be back on Chicago's Northshore and am proud to defend my alma mater. Stay strong Huskies!

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» Happy to Be Back Too Posted by: Gravitas
» Thanks for defending a great school! Posted by: timemachinist
Bad Feng Shui?
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Posted by: Dobs on Feb 16, 2008 9:37 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
You're article rounded out the reality of Steve Kazmierczak life and added dimension to a situation that is already becoming a cartoon.
It sounds like Steve lived in a mean, ugly, stupid place.
But bad Feng Shui is rarely a motive for murder. I don't care how much the carpet clashes with the wallpaper, some thing is really wrong when you start shooting.

I think your complete dismissal of the effects of prescription drugs is irresponsible and misguided. We live in an over prescribed society. We can take a pill for EVERYTHING. But taking a pill isn't going to change the outside reality. You have to take an action. If something sucks, and I take a pill that makes my brain think it doesn't suck. Well, when I stop taking the pills, what happens? The numbers are starting to stack up to support the idea that one of the side effects of the happy pills is mass murder.

While it sounds like NIU sucks. I think this kind of crappy is why people start garage bands.

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Searching for simple answers.
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Posted by: Sojourner on Feb 16, 2008 10:05 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
An event as horrible as the one reported here provokes grief. The dominant feature of our grieving is that it takes time. So the "Scoop" MO of media, when it pretends to offer solutions, misses the point.

The author of this article proposes that some explanation can be found in our mass culture for the new "post-Reagan" pattern of youthful violence. Show me a writer who knows what to say that does not depend on sweeping accusations? That's what MSM does for a living.

Using this event as an excuse to blurt out all our complaints is like the first stage of grief, which is denial. Such killings hurt us all, although none quite so much as the kin of those dead and wounded. We need to shout, "ouch." Beyond that is nonsense.

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Articles should be more than rhetorical polemics.
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Posted by: matthill on Feb 16, 2008 10:08 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Sir,

I am not quite sure what this article intends to highlight. You connect a legitmate argument about the plight of middle America to a particular event as if You are intimately aware that this is the reason for why this young man killed five other people. The rush to print has damaged the potential for this connection to be made dispassionately. Perhaps what I find offensive more than anything is your decision the incorrect grammar of a student writing on a message board is indicative of a crap university. Are you seriously intent on arguing this point with any degree of seriousness? If one was to listen to what you identify as essential in understanding the causes of events then you would surely acknowledge that early education has more impact on grammar skills than university? Perhaps you may critise the previous sentence for its length?

'if you're wondering, as many bloggers have, why he'd come back and shoot up NIU rather than his current university, these sentiments are at least worth considering.'

What sentiments? You make no mention of any, you infer that we know what you are talking about.

'Scratching the surface of his life -- a very familiar, flat sort of American Hell -- makes his need for medications a bit more understandable, as is the case for the millions of Americans like him who take psychiatric medication. Indeed, someone who wouldn't turn to antidepressants would, in my opinion, be the sick one.'

You have not provided any evidence that his life was an 'American hell'. You have assumed that his life is hellish, why? Why would not taking medication mean that you are sick? I do not take medication, by default am I sick?

Please, I implore you to rewrite this article with tangible evidence so that your point comes across more strongly. This is not what I expect from AltNews. Don't be as bad as the tabloids.

Regards, Matthew

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We have a narcissistic psyche.
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Posted by: scenery on Feb 16, 2008 10:09 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The attitude that "manager of a chain store" = "loser or societal shit digger" is the kind of pompous elitism infecting our psyches.

Are all who do not have superhuman athletic ability, or are not Hollywood stars supposed to be CEOs, doctors or lawyers?

Look at all of the criminal CEOS, falsely enhanced athletes and immoral movie stars we look up to. They should be considered societies losers.

What is so despicable about the chain store manager who carefully budgets his money in order to provide for his family? Perhaps this just too much of a mediocre character trait to count in the pompous, elite American psychology that rewards cunning manipulation over the humility of a person making an honest living.

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» RE: We have a narcissistic psyche. Posted by: Asses of Evil
The Media bears a LOT of responsibilty for these deaths
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Posted by: AnnCKeirns on Feb 16, 2008 10:09 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Back when the Virginia Tech massacre happened (note the name given by the media) and one could find nothing else on the news for days several folks like me pointed out that this media glorification of a ciminal act by a deranged mind would be exactly the sort of thing that would get other deranged minds who figured they weren't being listened to a new option for getting their voices heard. This is a despicable act, glorified by our irresponsible spectator media and they are complicit in these deaths. I hope their families sue them for beaucoup bucks!!!!!

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Umm, so killers are expected among the lower classes?
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Posted by: upperaccess on Feb 16, 2008 10:09 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I thought the author has some genuine insights but loses credibility with his elitism. So the college is in a rural area where job opportunities are limited? And, horrors, there's a nearby pig farm? What, not many grads become CEOs of Fortune 500 Companies? Ooh, no wonder it spawns mass murderers!

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» It's not elitism. Posted by: heid
Kernel of Truth
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Posted by: Drume on Feb 16, 2008 10:10 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
We are sick of this, we are disgusted by it. We are angry about it. This article is impersonal in tone. I can only hope that it was written in part out of anger and in part with the intention to provoke, even provoke comments that are more eloquent and insightful than the article itself.

So, having said that, I am glad the article was written, as general, as strident, and as inflammatory as it is. The reason I am glad is that there is a very strong kernel of truth to it. That the masses of non-elites frequently lack artistic, scientific, intellectual, aesthetic connections to life leaves us adrift, vulnerable to a terrible blankness. That blankness takes many forms, but predominating might be a kind of carelessness.

The article generated a lot of discussion. It does not have to be the holy grail. It does not even have to be correct.

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» RE: Kernel of Truth Posted by: Asses of Evil
» RE: Kernel of Truth Posted by: thealltheone
» thealltheone Posted by: Sojourner
» RE: Kernel of Truth Posted by: Drume
» RE: mick3 Posted by: g50
» historically inaccurate Posted by: Zenobia
» RE: mick3 Posted by: babs
» RE: mick3 Posted by: Asses of Evil
» Yes! Posted by: SalB
» RE: mick3 Posted by: thealltheone
» Industry v. iscolation Posted by: Lycas7x
» RE: mick3 Posted by: babs
sorry, moms and dads,but
[Report this comment]
Posted by: pacto on Feb 16, 2008 10:34 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
the Bully theme that exists in schools is unbearable.when bussing started, the children were forced to clump together in groups. Without the friendlyness of their own niegherhood to back them up,add the peer pressure to conform to the group. Then add in the fact of the abscence of parents influence because of economic needs, and you have these children twisting in the wind,trying to keep themselves from being the target,by going along with the leader of the pack. so what you have is children raising children,so sad.

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What a world!
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Posted by: donl51 on Feb 16, 2008 10:41 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm 63,and happy for that part ,looking back as we generally do ,I'd never want to go back and do it all over again,I had a good healthy life,worked hard, played outside! got myself out of the god cult,traveled often as poss. talked to/taught many a young person,decided we'd never have any ourselves ,man! what a fucked up world,tv,those terrible games,kids don't play anymore,they owe a fortune at a young age out of college for what exactly?corporate greed,Gov. greed ,power hungry bastards,no family values at all!whew!!what a mess,and this drug war,er war on people!Man what a violent race of beings we all are!!

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» RE: What a world! Posted by: donl51
you're right about one thing...
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Posted by: barnettb on Feb 16, 2008 10:56 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
it's true that the given explanations about meds and heartbreak are inadequate, but the thesis of this story is only partially true, too.

we (the mediocres) ARE struggling to figure out who we are, in a world where we're told by our motivational speakers that we're all 'special,' but we see every day that that's a grand lie. what the hell is specialness anyway?

first, it does happen to brilliant people, and people at "first class" academic institutions: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Lu

i think we're all feeling the pressure of the big lie: we're supposed to be special, to stand out, to be famous. if not, then we don't matter.

second, gloria steinem has written a great article on the subject. no one is mentioning that the VAST majority of these shootings are completed by white, middle class men. (the very fact of their race and sex renders these characteristics about them invisible because "male" and "white" are the standard categories, compared to which anything else is a deviation. so it doesn't get mentioned.)

these people are the ones who have been promised their whole lives that they have a PLACE to BELONG and that they'll MEAN SOMETHING some day. to awake to a reality where you are just another meaningless number (consumer/student/drone) when you have been promised (by implication) entitlement your whole life has got to SUCK.

and if you feel powerless -- when you think you have been BORN with the RIGHT to POWER (i.e., white/male privilege) that can *really* piss you off. it might even be enough to send you over the edge.

so i've typed this quickly and didn't pull it all together, but it's just some more fodder for the conversation.

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USA gun laws a big part of the problem
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Posted by: sofla100 on Feb 16, 2008 10:59 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Once again, because America does not restrict gun ownership, this occurred again. And, it will keep happening, over and over again. Guns are simply too available in America. This is not a problem in Europe or Australia, and its due to the laws. And, by the way, only a 100% national ban will work. Otherwise, people will just buy guns in other states and bring them over. So, Federal law is needed.

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SSRI/Depression medication - the catalyst?
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Posted by: Ghoulman on Feb 16, 2008 11:02 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Reading this article reminds me of the problems Mike Moore had explaining the Columbine massacre. In searching for an answer, as in this article, the dead, lifeless, sprawl of American life is internalized. The landscape so soulless and lonely a psychotic break is bound to happen.

However...

Like Moore's Columbine narrative, the role drugs played with youthful killers isn't explored. The common element in all these mass killings (by youth, I have no knowledge of the postal workers from the 80s nor have I read the book mentioned in this article) is that the killers were taking anti-depressants of some sort. SSRI drugs, in the Columbine case.

Seems American children who become a behavior problem are just drugged. I feel this is a major point regarding these killings. Perhaps separating the 'postal' cases from youthful rampaging as to what caused the killing rage. There might be a real difference. The drugs might be the reason for the killings (urban decay might kill ones soul, but it most likely wouldn't compel a mass killing).

There has to be a catalyst. Right?

The despair of living in middle America isn't explanation enough. Try living in a small port town on an island in the North Atlantic and I'll show you despair pal (that's me rowing frantically against the current).

I am always surprised the MEDICATIONS connected with these killings is ignored, by this article and by Mike Moore (well, both MENTION the drugs but don't see them as being more important than the 'America' around the killers). Really, I think you guys are missing the real catalyst. Or at least, an important trigger.

After all, there's far more to these drugs than we know thanks to corporate lies.

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» Not suprized at all! Posted by: Gravitas
» RE: Not suprized at all! Posted by: Ghoulman
massacre
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Posted by: robbins-sandra on Feb 16, 2008 11:03 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Growing up in poverty and suffering thru school yard bullies and neighbors that didn't like my family because of my drunken step dad, I understand that man's rage. I never killed anyone, but I always felt disliked and hated the way other's enjoyed making fun of my clothes or the projects we lived in. My family was dysfunctional of course, but I grew up, went to college, and am now taking psychiatric medication. I know what a hurtful existence can mean for a kid just trying to make it thru life. I'm 51 now, but feel 81. I hope parents will take a second look at what they're doing to their own kids.

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Paxil
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Posted by: Gravitas on Feb 16, 2008 11:08 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This has hit me fairly close to home. One of my best friend's sons knew one of the victims. Several years ago, I taught at the high school another victim attended. And I am a sociologist, so I usually look for sociological explanations. But I have spent all weekend googling the "dangers of SSRI antidepressants." As it turns out, the Va Tech shooter, the Amish shooter, Andrea Yates, Phil Hartman's wife, and one of the Columbine shooters were all on some type of these drugs. Once again, I saw how scumy Pharma can be. Joseph Westbecker's family sued Glaxo (Paxil maker) after he shot 7 of his coworkers in Kentucky. Glaxo got to the family's lawyer and all the damaging evidence was not presented. The judge had to overturn the jury verdict. And there are so many more stories that never make the headlines of passive people becoming violent only a few days on these drugs. As well as the covering up by Pharma of negative side effects. (Normal mode of business for that evil industry.) We ALL say we would do anything to prevent another tragedy like this one. Well, start by plugging the dangers of Paxil or any of the other SSRI antidepressants in a search engine. You will be shocked and horrifed at what you find out.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/758763.stm

As the the above article, if it wasn't written by some snotnosed neophyte who THINKS he has all the answers, but is really too clueless to know how clueless he is, it was written as an attempt to draw attention from the drug factor. As I have said before, I don't even trust all the intentions by Alternet authors.

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» "snotnosed" indeed Posted by: sausage
» RE: "snotnosed" indeed Posted by: brianct
» RE: Paxil Posted by: YogiBear
» RE: Paxil Posted by: brianct
» RE: Paxil Posted by: YogiBear
» RE: Paxil Posted by: brianct
"An lunatic"...?
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Posted by: fifthworld on Feb 16, 2008 11:41 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Wanted: part-time proofreader or assistant editor for online News publication, preferably with some knowledge of the English language, including basic grammar. Contact Don Hazen at Alternet.org

And God bless America.

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Seeing Red
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Posted by: aquafunkapus on Feb 16, 2008 11:52 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I am deeply offended by this article for many more reasons than I can list. I am a proud graduate of NIU, and many of us have accomplished much more than you give us credit for in the article. You can find negativity about any University in America if you search for it. I have a masters degree in education, and am about to begin work on a PHD. I am a administrative leader at a growing progressive charter school in Southern California. I could list off many other leaders who have came from this University, and who could compete with any student from any college in the world. It's a shame that in a time of deep pain and loss for many families, that you can stoop so low to suggest that this crime was committed due to the fact that these people went to a crappy college in a dirty town.
I am proud to have graduated from NIU. If any one wants to question my abilities or what I have accomplished in this life, bring it on.

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» RE: Seeing Red Posted by: VZEQICVA
» RE: Seeing Red Posted by: allenjhist
» RE: Seeing Red Posted by: Centavo
» RE: Seeing Red Posted by: calvin12
Interesting
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Posted by: Suz on Feb 16, 2008 12:17 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
So far, the blame tally can be summed up thusly:

crappy college campus, rural Hell, prescription drugs, gun-free zones, the death of America's cultural soul, low social status, violence in media, lack of spirituality, gun availability, shitty jobs, lack of help for the mentally ill, the sham of the American dream, media glorification, school bussing, and--lest we forget--the shooter had a dick.

Okay, while I agree that there are valid reasons for concern in most of the mentioned issues, I myself wonder: have we totally surrendered the concept of personal responsibility?

This man made a CHOICE. He knew what he was going to do and he did it. No one else bought the guns. No one else pulled the trigger. No one else is responsible for this man's chosen behavior.

If a person chooses to get behind the wheel of a car when they've been drinking, and then proceeds to kill another carload of people as well as himself, how much time would be spent wondering at the social causes of WHY this person had to drink in the first place? Would we wonder about their social status, whether they were in emotional pain, bullied in their youth, or despondent about their situation in life? I doubt it. That person would be considered a "loser" who made a CHOICE to drink and drive and subsequently kill people.

If this shooter had not killed himself, would there be as much sympathy and attempts at understanding? If he were alive and in custody, would people still be trying to assign blame everywhere but upon the individual? I doubt that, too. I think people would be howling for his blood, not caring about the taint growing up in America had upon him, only wanting him to PAY. But, since we don't have that, well naturally, we must find something or someone else to point at. We must assign blame SOMEWHERE.

Speaking only for myself, I blame the shooter. It was HIS fault.

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» This is just laziness Posted by: SalB
» RE: Interesting Posted by: newtype_alpha
» RE: Interesting Posted by: VZEQICVA
the problem is the antidepressants
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Posted by: geekoid on Feb 16, 2008 12:30 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The real problem is with the side effects of anti depressants and the withdrawal effects. Everyone please look into this! Do your own research. Look up the youube video "Anti Depressants Exposed" and others. People are having psychotic episodes, suicidal and homicidal episodes because of these drugs and the news is not disclosing the names of these drugs. Notice with the the Illinois shooter they do not disclose the name of the drug, but they say he recently stopped taking a medication. These drugs are dangerous people need to know the side effects. This article largely misses the issue. Call your congresspeople and tell them to look into this issue.

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» Excuse me, thealltheone... Posted by: Gungneir
Another 'mass killing' - who is at fault
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Posted by: rewassenich on Feb 16, 2008 1:16 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The fault is with the states and the federal government. There is no gun control in this country. Nobody should be able to buy a gun, it is not necessary to carry arms for selfprotection. In Europe and other countries the number of gun owners is very small, practically nobody owns guns. In the US those who own guns 'for self protection' mostly end up shooting innocent people - or go crazy and shoot indiscriminately scores of people. If nobody owns a gun - nobody gets shot.
It is time for states and the federal government to pass 'no gun' laws and amend the constitution - and put the gun lobby in its place. It can change to manufacture mouse traps instead of guns - or anything else. The government people who accept money from the gun lobby need to be put into prison. No more sales of guns to private persons - nationwide.

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barbfi
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Posted by: barbfi on Feb 16, 2008 2:04 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
are you using psyche meds? i cant think of why you would want to defend them when its so obvious that all the shootings - from the post office to the columbine high school to this - have been done by people who have had their brain chemicals altered by unethical doctors prescribing experimental drugs.

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» RE: barbfi Posted by: Lycas7x
The MSM always places the blame on the perpetrator
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Posted by: sausage on Feb 16, 2008 2:10 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Whatever triggered Steven Kazmierczak's outburst, psychosis or not, I had the same reaction following the Virginia Tech shooting as the author of this op-ed, Mark Ames.

My question then was, why is nobody asking what societial forces drove young Cho Seung-Hui to lash out in such a violent way? It was later revealed that Cho had been bullied and belittled in high school. A lot.

Thusfar nothing of Mr. Kazmierczak's pre-college life has been reported. And there is seemingly little remarkable about his career while at Northern Illinois, but will we ever know if he too was a victim?

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Too much oversimplification
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Posted by: lonl on Feb 16, 2008 2:14 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I agree with those who say this article was rushed onto the site just to have something to say quickly. Too many issues come into situations like this to just say "It was this." or "It was that."

For one thing, rage killings on colleges pre-date the Reagan years. There was Chalres Whitman with a rifle up on a tower at U of Texas some 40 years ago. If I remember correctly 20 or so people died. Wikipedia has a chart of "notable killings" here.

For another, however much one might like to blame the system for every act of violence, the fact is that mental illness can be a precipitating factor and every instance of this isn't directly caused by societal ills. Genetics also seem highly likely to be a factor.

My own suspicion in this case is schizophrenia which can emerge in late adolescence and include paranoid phenomena, voices telling the sick individual to act in any number of horrific ways. Anti-psychotic medications certainly have their downside and staying on them is hard. But staying alive without them can become impossible. Some sort of scenario like this, with the tragic addition of innocents murdered, seems pretty likely to me, if speculative.

If these events argue for anything at all in the way of prevention, it would seem to be better gun control. Should people with a mental health history within certain parameters be allowed to buy guns? I don't think so. Had this individual simply been prevented from doing so, a number of lovely and promising young people would be alive today.

Regarding the writer's disdain for institutions of learning lower than top tier, that is simply his own arrogance. Everybody doesn't get to go to Harvard or Yale, yet any number of people who have not still make immense contributions. Whereas one need only witness our current POTUS to see how awful some grads from top tier institutions can be. This writer is apparently a rather callow person who needs a better editor.

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bloody winterscapes on a hopeless canvas
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Posted by: QCao009 on Feb 16, 2008 2:16 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mark Ames concludes beautifully. We are all responsible and none of us is.

1. The NRA can go on saying guns don't kill and our enforcement criminal justice community can push more guards and guns for professors and students who want them .., for self-protection the way we "protect" our borders from terrorists and illegals.

2. We can blame it from misfits, drug-crazed teens and too much time and not enough sense, except this "killer" remarkably resembles one of our own, white, middle class, leadership qualities, anxious, quick to please, and with good grades to boot.

3. Our pharmaceuticals can recommend a few more antidepressants and our therapists can talk to us for another 50 minutes. After which our interdenominational clergy can absolve us of all sins and our malls can open a little later to accomodate all of us shoppers. The perfect Greenspan/Reagan feelgood prescription: selfishly mortgaging the next generation for another Viagra nanosecond.

Or maybe, just maybe, we can look a little deeper and acknowledge beyond the cacophonia of conservative and liberal spin, that we continue not to understand the seeds our way of life has sown: more guns, more violence, more lust and sex, more Number 1 chestbeating, more Mission accomplished cowboy posing, more Judeo-Christian morality spin on a proselytizing, missionary tear. In the meantime, we all ignore the stressors we have put on our young people, our young soldiers, our young families.

You want to see the face of the culprit? Look at the corporate media mainstream anchors and the stories they peddle each night. Listen to the disconnect and the used car sale spins about unity and hope and a chicken in every pot and a tax cut from the White House and on the campaign trail. And look in the mirror and ask ourselves who the culprit is. It's each candidate spending millions of dollars to feed their ego and to peddle their hoax.

Until we change, we will continue to blame Iraquis, Iranians, Pakistanis, Syrians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and we'll delude ourselves into thinking Saudis and Chinese are our friends.

No, guns don't kill. Leaders who want to send young people to die for another 100 years do. In the name of Mother, Country and Apple Pie, have another burger, pack another gun, and send another bomb somewhere else so we don't have to fight the terrorist here. Everyone else is at fault except us, we the hopeless, we the incompetent, we the impotent who think ourselves important after each tornado, each hurricane, each perfect storm. Is democracy supposed to end this way with the Bush legacy ?

Just another disconnect for another day ? Thanks, Mark, for sounding the alarm. Let's hope we all hear you and it's not another prophet of fear message that falls on deaf ears.

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Sailorman
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Posted by: uforiac@yahoo.com on Feb 16, 2008 2:39 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The most frightening thing for me about this whole incident is that this could have been me 60 years ago...if the weapons were readily available.

I was a four-eyed little guy at Hyde Park High in Chicago. I had no self-esteem (thanks to good ol' Dad), ADD which no one had ever heard of back then, a 148 IQ, but alphabetically always in the back of the room so I couldn't see the blackboard. Also, we swam in the nude and I lacked hair in various significant places.

I was picked upon, bullied, called various names, and laughed at (when I wasn't invisible).

So despite Chicago, despite Dad, despite the worse than normal high school atmosphere, I served 20 years in the Navy, earned an MA at San Diego State,and worked another 22 years as a civil servant.

And all this because I didn't have a gun.

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» RE: Sailorman Posted by: VZEQICVA
» RE: Sailorman Posted by: newtype_alpha
author as ignoramus
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Posted by: wleming on Feb 16, 2008 2:53 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mr. Ames here reveals himself here everything he seems to condemn---at NIU. His blanket condemnation of an area, De Kalb, is supposed to explain the deadness at the center of a confused mind turned killer: instead it describes Mr. Ames sad, sorry, morbid,pathetic reductionism, and his absolute inability to reason. This isn't journalism,nor even typing, its blatant stupidity masked as informed opinion. AlterNet should reconsider its editorial policy. This isn't worth a Klan poster.

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I appreciate your angle
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Posted by: thelostsailor on Feb 16, 2008 3:35 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Being lucky enough to have lived all over the country, I can relate to a lack of imagination in a midwest landscape. A place short on topographical inspiration that must have a lot of inspiration in other ways to make up for it. It sounds like the school and community added to a challenged environment.
So often overlooked by everyone is the importance of good relation with one's natural surroundings. If there are few natural surroundings to spend time in or dwell on, people struggle in many ways. In other words....I see people as being mentally healthier in places with richer natural aesthetics. Yet the irony of most societies: people are forced into urban areas, short on natural elements, to seek out the job and survive (of course centralization of people in cities is an energy practicality).
The further we are removed from our initial natural context, the more difficulties we will have and perhaps the most unforeseen difficulties will be in mental health...

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» RE: I appreciate your angle Posted by: animalleaderisgreat
» RE: I appreciate your angle Posted by: thelostsailor
Bull!
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Posted by: Rod on Feb 16, 2008 4:03 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I live in and love the Midwest. Please do not cut down things you obviously either do not understand, need to move away from or maybe justify moving away from.

This author can stay away, we have to many people now.

We had a loony, it happens. This looney happened to be a horrible worthless coward and does not deserve to have his name printed, picture posted or anything printed about him. Quit glorifying them and glorify the victims.

We will have more. So will every other city.

Let me carry my gun everywhere and the loony will not have much time to shoot people before I stop him. If it happens to kill him too bad.

Now go waste bandwidth on some important subjects like endless violence on TV, media, glorification and excuses for the guilty, lack of effective affordable mental health system along with health care in general. Just stop making excuses for him.

Mean spirited, maybe, but then again, I choose to not go out and shoot people, well, unless they shoot first and miss.

Rod

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» RE: Bull! Posted by: Declan
And the answer is: YES...
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Posted by: Declan on Feb 16, 2008 4:09 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
to both questions posed. This country is diseased and this person and tragedy is but another symptom.
THE FISH ROTS FROM THE HEAD DOWN.

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The killer's extreme rush to judgement
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Posted by: GPFrank on Feb 16, 2008 4:19 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Some comments on the article and related blogs: The first question is about the seller at the
arms store after the "subject " already picked out four pieces: That the seller sold them with a straight face without asking something like, "Are you making a collection". Where there is absence of communication there develops implied consent to doing the unfamiar and bizarre. It is already strange when sales people do not converse with their customers. Maybe I am not familiar with the arms trade but in stores I frequent there is much conversation.
Next question: while there may be lack of public hygiene and sanitation in the campus
surroundings, the unspecific nature of the comments about the horror and ugliness may reflect clinical depression of the writers. Depression is generally treatable when including suitable discussion and advice on how to change oneself and assert self against the environment.
But the threnody of DeKalb just being satified the way things are, strip malls and all may underlie the complaints.
But I am more interested in why there apparently is no sign of any organized student protest or letter writing on specific issues and grievances. After all, that happens even on country club campuses simply from hatching out of the parental egg.
But it should be repeated, even if a bromide, that not all individuals suffering the worst conditions, that is, prison, survive without breaking things or people, but find other ways to compensate.

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When the welfare of the American people
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Posted by: marid on Feb 16, 2008 4:25 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
is based up a rising GDP as an indicator that we are doing well do you really wonder why these things happen. I have read some nice tidbits of common sense above that of course have no place in our society because they make sense.

The elevator that may have existed to give a lucky few a ride to the top if they played by the rules and worked hard doesn't come to the ground anymore. Poverty has increased under Compassionate Conservatism, more people struggle with no health insurance, college tuition has tripled in static dollars, an energy crisis looms on the horizon, we have lost face nearly everywhere on the planet, real wages continue to stagnate or decline, debt is rocketing upward, we base our worth as a nation on our Military might, and we still defend and side with the predators who control our country.

Concentration of wealth is reaching levels seldom if ever seen in this country. Corporate welfare far outstrips personal welfare. Our politicians (prostitutes) are bought and paid for by the monied interests. Big pharma has a pill for all. The comment above about the death of our communities was right on target.

As the culture that big money has created continues to spread, completely ignoring human needs and values, I would expect these occurances to spread. When we start to base the welfare of our people on true indicators of human well being and not GDP we may have a chance.

But right now our Democracy is bought and paid for by big money and their message spread by the Corporate Media.

The Sheep need to look up. Read Joh Brunner's book the Sheep Look Up for a picture of America today and tomorrow.

We are better than what we have now!!! The common people need to quit arguing about religion, bedroom politics, and defending the people who are causing our misery. The rich and corporatists have done a great job of fooling far too many of us. Look behind the curtain!!

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» Excellent post, marid! Posted by: Cathyc
another piece of the puzzle?
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Posted by: steveheeren on Feb 16, 2008 4:26 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
how many of you clicked on the link the author provided, which was a picture of the assassin?

it is quite revealing.

he is wearing a t-shirt with a picture of an air force bomber emblazoned onto an american flag.

i'll let you draw your own conclusions.

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» RE: another piece of the puzzle? Posted by: steveheeren
There is no mystery
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Posted by: inverse_agonist on Feb 16, 2008 4:39 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
For every person wringing their hands about unexplainable evil and prescription drugs and guns and violence in the media, there are other people for whom these events seem perfectly straightforward.

The public's reaction to school shootings often vindicates the shooters, in the sense that their feelings of alienation were completely justified. Some people are awkward, weird, unattractive, bullied as children, and unlikely to ever completely fix these problems. They're acutely aware that they're "losers," and that other people don't feel much sympathy for them.

People seem unable to imagine truly thinking that the future is hopeless. When you really feel that way, and you feel that way because you're socially maladapted, it's easy to see the petty appeal of bringing others with you when you kill yourself.

People are mean. When the nerd gets beat up, people laugh. When people see the Abu Ghraib pictures, they laugh. It's easy to hate people. It's not like everything in life is OK until a gunman appears out of nowhere and starts shooting people.

It's very easy to live in denial of the pain we cause to the people we ignore, the children who make our clothing, the animals we eat, the people we bomb in other countries, the homeless people we walk past, and so forth. Nobody is morally innocent.

I think you have to be willfully obtuse about the ugliness of life to be shocked that shootings happen.

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Isolation, loneliness, a blank future, financial despair...
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Posted by: cozyrose on Feb 16, 2008 4:53 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
As a therapist in a mental health "company", I see people heroically struggling with the above, and many more human dilemmas. The mental health "clinics" of the past, which provided low cost care to anyone needing it, are gone. Remember the guy who took hostages at one of H Clinton's campaign headquarters? He said his actions took place due to being unable to receive the mental health care he needed, due to "insurance problems". I often see people who cannot acquire care at all, because the state-funded care is almost nil these days. WIthout Medicaid or Medicare, it requires extensive begging to get those people any care at all. (Usually it's 2-4 sessions, with group therapy there-after, IF the person is brave enough to venture in to a group). Sometimes I do an "intake assessment" and have to tell someone there's no funding for them to receive any care.
Steve K, as a social work student, was contemplating a future in the human services field. He had been studying people in the most violent and demeaning "society" within our country: the prisons. He was studying "self-harm in prisoners". He must have wanted to understand their pain, what made them become who they are. Many prisoners are isolated for YEARS; the mentally ill sink more deeply into their madness, those who had not been diagnosed with a mental illness are seriously at risk to develop one. Officials high up in the prison system administration in our country state that ninety-five percent of those people will be released back into our "communities". (How rare it is to live in one of those in our times).
There are many who initially go into social work and psychology in an attempt to cope with their own pain. They are sometimes called "wounded healers". Often, due to their struggle to heal, they become effective, gifted helpers. Whatever went horrifically wrong in Steve K's mind, perhaps he was not evil in some way, not a vicious killer? It is clear that there were none of the usual "red flags" which pop up in mind-numbing frequency in accounts of these shooting attacks.
Whether or not Steve K. was receiving counseling, whether he was merely "medicated" and not properly monitored on that medication, is, of course, only part of what we seek to understand. People are prescribed these medications due to seeking help for some kind of pain. There are underlying problems, though meds of course may be prescribed in cases they should not be, by drs. who don't know enough about them. and these meds should be monitored closely, with patients told to IMMEDIATELY call the dr. if negative effects occur. If there were a comprehensive system of mental health care, with close monitoring and follow up of EACH person seen, so much of the problems with psych meds would be dealt with effectively and soon.
I admire all of those who are grappling with these issues on this page. I heartily agree with the critique of our cold, mechanized society, and the effect it has on all humans (no matter how hard we try to act like we're just fine!). I wish I knew what to do, how to take action in some way. Community, anyone?

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There seems to be a deeper issue with collegians
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Posted by: jmonday on Feb 16, 2008 4:56 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Judging by the two students whose descriptions of NIU were included in this piece, the 2006 grad and the psych major, I question the system that decides who attends university in America. They were so poorly written, so lacking in insight or any modicum of understanding as to what is important about higher education it saddens me. I am sure that there are many deserving students who would make the best out of a school like NIU, were they given a chance. The quoted blockhead's disdain for the credentials of their fellow NIU attendees belies a sense of entitlement and understanding that their parents money and the happy circumstances of their birth really decide their future, not their talent or diligence.

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student of history
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Posted by: allenjhist on Feb 16, 2008 5:03 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There is value in examining disturbing trends in mass murders, especially one as shocking as the NIU tragedy, but Mark Ames' piece veers off the tracks many times.
One, it tries to examine the killer -- and a possible motivation for his rampage -- with the assumption that there might have been some rational cause or root for his behavior. It goes a step worse by trying to form a link between the killer's emotions with the feelings of others who complained about their time at NIU.
The quotes that Ames pulled from peeved ex-Huskies might be relevant only if we knew who these people were, how their lives turned out and whether their web-log postings had any connection with the mindset of the killer. Such connections between their thoughts and the killers' are improbable if not impossible. Ames does not offer any links, but be real: these people complaining aren't doing anything a sociopath might do, say, like shooting up a lecture hall.
Next, the suggestion that the mass murder reflected a bitterness with attending a second- or third-tier institution is provably false. The NIU killer had been an officer in a study-based organization at Northern, then was accepted and enrolled to study in a post-graduate program at the U of I, a top-shelf school. (That's notable in another way, which we'll revisit, but let's keep examining the holes in Ames' arguments.)
The killers in Columbine were bitter victims of bullying, but, at a top-shelf high school in a wealthy suburb, living in upper-middle-class homes. They were angry with their tormentors, they expressed that, and their classmates said, yes, these guys were picked on and hated it.
The Virginia Tech killer was the visible psycho who many knew beforehand to have expressed deep anger. His writings expressed more woe with classmates than the status of Virginia Tech.
Next, even though these three mass murders had the seeming commonality of high school and university settings, they are distinguishable and not unique to post-1980s America. It is wrong to assert that mass murders began happening in the 1980s, mostly at post offices. They've been happening for centuries here (and probably millenia around the globe).
Worse, Ames makes an attempt to be poetic in comparing flat terrains, flat horizons (Elk Grove, DeKalb and Florida) and flat hopes. It's psychobabble. The author tries to lump together different locales, when, in fact, Virginia Tech, Columbine, Northern Illinois, Winnetka, the Texas clock tower and dozens of other horror scenes over more than a century cover a wide range of urban, suburban, and rural settings. They differ socioeconomically, culturally, geographically, etc.
These facts undermine Ames ultimate argument: that the crime at NIU reflects an underlying socio-political factor fresh from the 1980s.
Let's look at what mass murders do have in common and then this case. First, the obvious: a deeply disturbed person or persons who are armed to kill a lot of people in a hurry.
Looking beyond that, Jack Levin and James A. Fox wrote more authoritatively on this subject in "Mass Murder: America's Growing Menace." Levin and Fox write of decades upon decades of American mass murders, not Ames' limited scope on three decades.
Levin and Fox write of the common mistake in assuming psychiatric problems at the rot. The mass murderer is more often a sociopath who may have psychiatric issues but otherwise exhibits normal or even nice behavior to most, even good-neighbor or community-leader roles, all the while harboring a seething hatred beneath the surface.
Levin and Fox write of three most common types of mass murder:
(1) family slayings,
(2) mass murder for profit or expediency (think Brown's Chicken or Capone's Valentine's Day massacre, a calendar coincidence);
(3) killing for the sake of sex, sadism or both
(continued in next post)

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More of an elitist view of education than an analysis of madness
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Posted by: amiabledave on Feb 16, 2008 5:12 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Suicidal rage does not confine itself to gangbangers conning their way into community colleges. In fact, maniacal types manifest themselves in all social settings. I doubt there's much causation there.

As for intelligence, we have a not-very bright president who graduated from Harvard, while the Edisons and Ben Franklins of this world were mostly self-educated.

I myself was a poor Chicago gangbanger kicked out of school at age 15, with the caveat of never trying to learn anything technical. That was before I became a field engineer and technical writer at places like JPL and General Dynamics. (I, by the way, never got in my head to go postal).

What may be at the root of these postal rages is a highly inflated idea of one's importance that goes unchecked.

I wonder if the author has personal experience with uncontrolled rage.

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Nice work, Mark
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Posted by: DaBear on Feb 16, 2008 5:58 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Brilliant. That so many here of the 271 comments thus far didn't get your thesis is indicative of the 'Merkaan malaise. Stoopid sheep, farmer-gene culture, the race to the bottom from the middle, the mass tropes of the middlers demonizing those with a brain... all classic.

Until the bottom-feeders who don't get it finally get a clue, there will continue to be shootings in 'Merkuh. No worries, petrocollapse will weed most of the middle-stoopids out.

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» careful Posted by: scenery
» RE: Nice work, Mark Posted by: aquafunkapus
28 School Shootings
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Posted by: Gravitas on Feb 16, 2008 6:03 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Wow! I just came across this site which collects information on SSRI antidepressants. They have over 2100 stories from MSM, scientific journals and Congressional hearings. Included are over 28 school shootings were these drugs were involved. Academics are still arguing over what fell the Roman Empire, but some say the biggest reason was lead in everything!

http://www.ssristories.com/

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Alternet: Is the writer crazy or the magazine hopeless?
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Posted by: shanaza on Feb 16, 2008 6:28 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm hoping for the former but would not be surprised at the latter.

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Virginia Tech a second rate university???
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Posted by: chomsky on Feb 16, 2008 6:34 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I can't believe you called Virginia Tech a second-rate university. Are you kidding? I ask that you retract your statement, as it is unfounded and hurtful.

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Stephen Kazmierczak had been taking Paxil and other antidepressants
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Posted by: brianct on Feb 16, 2008 6:44 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Its happened again. Another bright student with a troubled past having taken an SSRI antidepressant recently, and a taste for guns go berzerk :

Stephen Kazmierczak had been taking Paxil and other antidepressants

Following on from Columbine, Omaha, Finland, Virgina, another victim of antidepressants goes berzerk. When will these SSRI antidepressants be banned? Until they are, expect more mass killings in institutions of highee learning!


Shooter obtained guns legally


DEKALB, Ill. (WLS) -- The gunman was known as a quiet, polite, engaging student at NIU, but a darker side of Stephen Kazmierczak is now coming to light.

Authorities have not figured out what motivated the man, described as a hardworking, award-winning former honor student by NIU faculty, to go on a shooting rampage that killed five students.
Kazmierczak, 27, was treated for mental illness nine years ago. He was considered volatile, according to a staff member who worked at the facility at the time, and violent if he stopped taking the antidepressant and anti-anxiety pills prescribed for him. Including Paxil, it was medication he was supposed to still be taking and apparently stopped a couple of weeks ago. Shortly after Kazmierczak graduated from Elk Grove Village High School in 1998, his parents became unable to handle him, according to a woman who worked as a residential manager at a psychiatric treatment center for mentally and behaviorally troubled teenagers. Kazmierczak lived at the Mary Hill Home, 7356 N. Winchester, on Chicago's Northwest Side and received psychiatric treatment for more than a year after he was diagnosed as mentally ill in the late 1990s. His parents sent him for treatment.

"He was already on medication, but he was not taking it at home and would not follow instructions," said Louise Gbadamashi, former manager of Thresholds, the company that ran the home. She said the first thing she thought when she learned the shooter was Kazmierczak was, "he didn't take his meds. He was kind of quiet, kept to himself. He picked his friends, he was kind of passive aggressive. "He was a cutter," said Gbadamashi. "He would cut himself. Then he would let you discover it. He wouldn't tell you, he would roll up his sleeve and ask you a question, and you'd turn around and see it." She said Kazmierczak's expression rarely changed, so it was hard to tell if he was depressed. "He strikes out, and you have to really know him," said Gbadamashi. "In his eye, you can see it. You can't look at him like, 'I'm angry, you're going to know it.' It's just stoic, just stoic." Officials at Thresholds declined to comment for this report. But a former patient
who lived at the group home with Kazmierczak spoke to the I-Team.
etc

Kazmierczak on Paxil

You can see a video clip of Michael Moore, calling for a investigation of these drugs, as he now admits the evidence is good antidepressants were behind the Columbine killings:
Michael Moore on SSRIS

Douglas Kennedy has a piece on this for Fox news:

Fox News video

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» Soma and other antidepressants Posted by: YogiBear
Take this down
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Posted by: bohemka on Feb 16, 2008 7:07 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This report is awful. No information, but I guess it fired up a lot of posters, so let's keep it up.

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the world is ugly, therefore I kill?
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Posted by: justbeingme on Feb 16, 2008 10:20 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
From Wikipedia:
"Virginia Tech ranked 29th among national public universities and 71st among all national universities.[4] Its College of Engineering undergraduate program was ranked 8th among public engineering schools and 14th in the nation among all accredited engineering schools that offer doctorates."

VT is also located in a beautiful geographical region with trees and mountains. There will most likely be an incident like this at an Ivy League school some day. This kind of horror seems much more likely to be a result of drugs and depression which amplify the violence society touts as entertainment and news. There are depressed and lonely kids on meds at Harvard and Yale too.

It seems pretty shameful to insult a grieving town, a grieving campus and then Virginia Tech as well to try to make a point that has no basis in science or fact. There are some six million plus people who live in and around factories and urban blight in Chicago - how many of them have gone postal?

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How about gun regulations?
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Posted by: texshelters on Feb 16, 2008 10:20 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I agree with many of the comments about this "elitist" article that blames a school or a "loser" student. Whatever the cause of the shootings, a yearly gun registration for all guns, a gun inspection (like our cars get smog checked) for safety, and a psych evaluation for those with past mental problems might prevent some of these shootings, regardless of the underlying cause. And before some cowardly gun nut accuses me of trying to ban guns, read what I said again: I just want guns regulated like other deadly weapons such as cars and marriage.

Joe "Tex Shelters" Callahan

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» RE: How about gun regulations? Posted by: sofla100
» How about civil discourse? Posted by: YogiBear
» No more, thanks. Posted by: ABetterFuture
» RE: How about gun regulations? Posted by: YogiBear
attention
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Posted by: lesterliu on Feb 16, 2008 11:11 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
seems everyone forgot about NRA

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» RE: attention Posted by: VZEQICVA
Spot-on but not far enough
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Posted by: AltB on Feb 16, 2008 11:34 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This article is spot-on but doesn't go far enough, probably because to do so you'd need to write an entire series. In your series you'd have to show how the same issues exist in some of the most urban and even "beautiful" of places.

There is significant isolation, marginalization and competition in not just the suburban but also the urban setting. It's the nature of the beast that we're in.

Also in your series you would have to point out people choose many different fatal methods other than gun masacres for feeling powerful, getting revenge, escaping etc. Teen suicide is high on the list. High drug use is another.

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More than shameful
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Posted by: bessie on Feb 16, 2008 11:34 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There's not much point in tragic situations like this to just bash and dehumanize with the ridiculous notions that the land is flat or the buildings are beige. Obviously, something is very wrong and puzzling as I grew up when the adults were to blame for the state of life, not my peers. I would guess that this writer has spent almost zero time in the Midwest and, more importantly, has no children. The biggest irony, here, is when mentioning a community without a soul or empathy or hope is the glaring fact that this author demonstrates quite clearly the very same qualities that could make life bleak and hopeless. There are many people who have gone to NIU and U of I, who have done quite well in life. So that's the fallacy of this article - while presuming otherwise and then ignoring the big elephant in the room. We want to know why - and the last thing any of us need to read is some article that just throws salt into our wounds and makes an illogical insulting argument about how our children were killed for no reason at all. This is more than shameful.

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geez...
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Posted by: undrgrndgirl on Feb 17, 2008 1:06 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
i could apply many of the comments to oklahoma state university!

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rationalizations for killing
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Posted by: pkinlock on Feb 17, 2008 1:10 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Assuming that students feel that they are not academically challenged enough or that the university they attend is not aesthetically pleasing is not, in and of itself, a rationale for killing other people. That explanation is too simplistic. It might be a contributing factor to dissatisfaction, but it is the norm at many colleges and universities in this country. Aesthetics and academic disatisfaction do not usually add up to a killing spree in the mind of the average student. People who do such things obviously have other underlying contributing mental problems.

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» RE: rationalizations for killing Posted by: newtype_alpha
Please!
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Posted by: bohemka on Feb 17, 2008 4:39 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The "horrors of life in middle America"? This is a joke, right?

This article is the biggest piece of rubbish I've stumbled across in a long time, and it's the reason Alternet will now be removed from my bookmark bar.

I've been visiting this site for years, but this signifies a complete loss of relevance.

This guy's article consists of self promotion and some compiled complaints regarding NIU. Truly insightful. You've got to be embarrassed. So long, Alternet.

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» RE: Please! Posted by: g50
» RE: Please! Posted by: mmg
Mark Ames analysis seems a tad amiss
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Posted by: naryaquid on Feb 17, 2008 7:35 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Frankly, he seems to be saying theat the NIU shooter committed murder and suicide because he was in "a second class university" and found the campus shabby?...Oh please, give me a break!...
I would suggest a more immediate cause -- The deplorable ease with which ANYONE can get a gun in this country.

I would also suggest that being unable to attend a "first class" school with a lovely campus is less than a life and death situation...That it is, in fact, more the exception than the rule -- Not only in America, but in Europe as well. As you may have noticed, Europe isn't experiencing anything like the number of gun massacres that we are and I think the primary reason for this is the obvious -- Europe has far more restrictive gun laws than we have..

Let's keep it real, folks!

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Books I don't have to read
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Posted by: Elmo409 on Feb 17, 2008 7:45 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If this article is any indication of the quality of his books, it's worth reading. No chance I'll be spending a nickel on anything by this clown.

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» RE: Books I don't have to read Posted by: VZEQICVA
It's usually about intolerance
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Posted by: sliver on Feb 17, 2008 9:23 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Whether the quality of life on campus had anything to do with this shooting, there is still a problem with small-minded thinking and intolerance at institutions and within communities.

In my own community, conformity is valued while creativity is shunned. War is promoted on t-shirts and yard signs, while peacemaking efforts are never spoken. Community interests are automatically sacrificed to business interests.

I could go on, but it has all created a culture of intolerance, and I see conservative values as being a big part of the problem. I am only sticking around because there is now an effort to put community first, and I am interested to see how such bold ideas are accepted.

I don't see this situation producing a shooter, but I wouldn't be surprised if one crops up in one of the thousands of communities that suffer the same problems.

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The Other Side of the Coin
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Posted by: Ivann on Feb 17, 2008 9:53 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"Lockwood said Browning had “another side to him away from school where he would beat up his younger brothers really badly, steal from his dad’s liquor cabinet, and steal their car without a permit or license.”

He said Browning was “a spoiled kid” who mocked minorities and people with disabilities.

“He got away with everything and thought he ran the world,” Lockwood said."

These are the comments of a classmate of Nicholas Browning a 15yo who some days ago murdered his parents & two younger brothers while they slept. It is not always young people who have grievances of one type or another who commit crimes of the type under discussion. Where does Nicholas Browning fit into the picture? I don't profess to have the knowledge of many of the erudite posters on this blog, but it seems to me that the society we have developed & are locked into is in large part to blame. The sense of immediate entitlement & the need to claw one's way up the ladder no matter what the cost is bound to have casualties.

And I am sure there are one or two classmates of Nicholas Browning who have been on the receiving end of his taunts who as we speak are smoldering at the injustice of their position. Who knows what that will develop into in a few years time?

And of course there have been many eulogies from the pastor & teachers of Nicholas Browning of what a wonderful boy he is/was. Typical bullshit from people who should know better but have been proven completely wrong.

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The Authors Views Are Incoherent
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Posted by: jaredh on Feb 17, 2008 10:11 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mr Ames does not approve of cheap moral stances nor does he believe in evil. But he is far from non-judgmental. He apparently believes that living in middle "flat" America is Hell, and that anyone living there not on antidepressants is sick.

Not that he is making any effort to be balanced. There are 25,000 students at NIU and Mr Ames goes back three years to give us five quotations from disgruntled students, who complain about important things like the weather or flourescent lights. Are these comments representative? If there is anyone there who likes it, Mr Ames does not bother to tell us.

He begins his article by saying you must look at the crime and the genealogy of the crime, and then proceeds to ignore this. By all accounts, the shooter was successful by NIU standards. Mr Ames has no idea why the shooter did what he did, the article is simply an excuse for Mr Ames to say that living in America is awful.

It is not news that life is unfair. All of the world's major religions are premised on understanding that life is cruel and unfair and they focus on teaching us how to behave in spite of it. People who live in boring places and manage to soldier on are called grown-ups; those who transcend their circumstances are called saints or poets. Mr Ames' point seems to be that if you are mad enough, it is okay to shoot innocent people. There may be places where evil is difficult to define, but this is not one of them. Killing innocents because you are in a bad mood is evil.

Mr Ames' principle complaint is that the mainstream media ignore his pet theory that schoolyard shootings are a justifiable response to living in this lousy country. It is unlikely that there is any conspiracy at work. The mainstream media ignores Mr Ames because he is a poor writer whose points--whatever they turn out to be--are made so elliptically that they do not justify public discussion. AlterNet is demeaned by giving such an insipid discussion headline treatment on its site.

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"Uniquely American and post-Reagan???
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Posted by: JJohnson on Feb 17, 2008 10:21 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Where did you get THAT?

People have been nutting-up for a long time, and not just here and not just with guns. There have been knife and machete massacres just as deadily as this one - and all around the world.

So, beginning with that as part of the thesis sort-of blows-out any credibility for the rest - which, so far as I can tell is about the middle America "hell" of the opportunity for a college education.

It's apparently about spoiled brat silver-spoon babies throwing tantrums with weapons because the rest of the world isn't the same as life with mommy - and that makes life "not worth living" anymore.

Makes a peacenick like myself yearn for the draft - or at least for drafting them into the Peace Corps, where they'll learn a tiny bit about what actually makes life worth living - and it isn't automatic inclusion in the trendiest clique or a ticket-punched version of a free latte-sipping, large-pollution-footprint lifestyle as another fat arrogant loud rude obnoxious American whiner - raising more of the same.

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Responsibility
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Posted by: EJW on Feb 17, 2008 10:30 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
We are all responsible for this. Our society creates these 'monsters' . I think the underlying cause is a lack of healthy attachment to another human being (i.e. parent, grandparent, etc.). In our society we teach that it is 'Stuff' that is important not people or relationships. If all you value is 'stuff' and you don't have or can't get the 'right stuff' what recourse do you have, except violence. This endless need for 'stuff' causes us to look at and relate to other BEINGS as if they were just stuff. Most parents act as if their children are 'stuff' and don't honestly put any time or attention into them. This worship of the all-mightly dollar is destroying us. What are our values as a country? Any behavior is all right as long as you have the right car, shoes, wife.....
Christian values? Naw..... We deserve this world we have created.

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Social poverty of US is worst in developed world
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Posted by: logansafi on Feb 17, 2008 10:54 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The author of the article was absolutely correct to center on the 'butt ugly' aspect of life in much of the US lower level suburban and rural areas. That certainly had to be part of the Columbine killings, too, because much of Denver's suburban communities are depressing and destructive social environments to live in.

This level of violence is true about other countries, too. Rural Mexico is an even more violent place than rural/ lower class suburban US.

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Outlawing guns
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Posted by: pkinlock on Feb 17, 2008 11:10 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Yet another reason why it makes sense to outlaw the possession/carrying of firearms by anyone other than police, military, and first responders. When is the amount of gun violence in this country going to be considered too much? If people want to hunt or otherwise shoot guns for recreation, they should go to a business set up for that sole purpose and rent a gun by the hour, used only on the premises. As for the argument that criminals will always obtain guns by illegal means, if guns were better regulated there would be fewer available, period.

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» RE: Outlawing guns Posted by: VZEQICVA
» RE: Outlawing guns Posted by: YogiBear
Sad
[Report this comment]
Posted by: rigpa44 on Feb 17, 2008 11:31 AM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
From personal experience of having a daughter who nearly committed suicide after being misdiagnosed and prescribed an anti-depressant (she went cold-turkey off of the drug as soon as she realized it was screwing her up; spent hours screaming in her room until it passed; the doctor was no help whatsoever and wanted to wash his hands of responsibility as soon as difficulties arose for fear of a law-suit), my suspicion is that this chemically induced brain-imbalance is what drove Steve K. to do what he did. If they did an autopsy and examined his brain, I suspect they would find a chemical imbalance in certain critical cognitive parts of his brain that would indicate the potential for abnormal behavior. At this point we'll never know. My point is: anyone who's on ANY kind of psycho-therapeutic drug MUST be monitored by SOMEONE, EVERY DAY that they're on them, and reports of ANY kind of difficulty MUST be taken extremely SERIOUSLY, and something must done IMMEDIATELY. These kinds of prescriptive difficulties should NEVER be ignored or marginalized. If we had not been vigilant, its no telling what would have happened to our daughter. Don't let it happen to anyone else.

One other point: as impractical as it may sound, I would humbly suggest that all school classrooms should go into lock-down mode when the beginning of the class starts. If someone is late, then they will NOT be able to get in, and neither would anyone else, without forcing their way in, which would give people a chance to protect themselves. People must be held accountable and responsible for attending class ON TIME, especially if the rules are clear and the expectations are in place. It's up to each and every instructor to do a simple lock-down function to protect their students and themselves. If this would have been done, it would have blocked the initial entry and possibly have saved lives. Thank you and God bless.

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» Pharmies are winning the drug war Posted by: timemachinist
It will always be a mystery....
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Posted by: Reyo on Feb 17, 2008 11:38 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
No one will ever know why the hell he did that. He took that with him when he killed himself. Surely he didn't fit the profile for a classic serial killer, but he is less confusing to me than John Wayne Gacy, who was described by psychiatrists as having "no definable disorders" and having the "emotional make-up of a child." But one thing is for sure, this guy was hurting really really bad, and was excellent at hiding it. Considering he had no final notes or confessions, I think he wanted to leave all of us dazed and confused, because he had an unbearable hatred for this world and everything in it. I think we shouldn't think about it too much, because even if we make a correct prediction we'll never know it was actually right. The author's primary reason for saying that it was social darwinism that triggered his attack was because he did it at his previous school, but I think his real reasons ran deeper. Well I'll just stop thinking about it.

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I liked NIU
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Posted by: timemachinist on Feb 17, 2008 2:24 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I liked the campus, the people and the faculty when I was there. The author of this article could find gripes about any school or employer, and is cherry-picking them to present a one-sided view of the school. I resent the way he has attempted to trash a fine school.

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School shooting, another distraction by zioni$t media
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Posted by: Reader11722 on Feb 17, 2008 3:45 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
School shootings, Britney's rehab (which will be covered more than the NIU shooting), OJ jailed, Paris Hilton, Whoopi and the View, all distractions. While mainstream media creates illusions, the gov't steps on our throats by opening our mail, suspending habeas corpus, stealing private lands, banning books like America Deceived (book) from Amazon, conducting warrantless wiretaps and starting wars for a foriegn gov't. Keep watching the TV, sheeple.

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Dismal Insight
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Posted by: Prairie Hawk on Feb 17, 2008 4:47 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Mark Ames said: “Scratching the surface of his life -- a very familiar, flat sort of American Hell -- makes his need for medications a bit more understandable, as is the case for the millions of Americans like him who take psychiatric medication. Indeed, someone who wouldn't turn to antidepressants would, in my opinion, be the sick one.”

Stunning. To me this article is the work of a snob attacking the life of the ”salt of the earth” . Perhaps he would choose the drug culture of George Orwell’s “1984”, so that the wokers are kept happy and productive. Go to NIU, manage a retail store, and take antidepressants, while the fortunate ones, like the author, who attend schools like U Cal Berkeley, are the only ones who can truly experience any real quality of life. His apparent thesis is that you must be bright, well educated and then wealthy or you will need drugs to numb your dismal life.

As we learn more about Stephen Kazmierczak, and his Valentine’s Day Massacre, I suspect we will learn more about his real illness and not ponder Mark Ames’ alleged political insurgency. Mark Ames reflects on the human condition, but offers no enlightening insight into this tragedy.

Mental illness is a sad fact of life. It did not begin with the American Culture, is not unique to America, nor is it new with this generation. We don’t yet know how to treat it or what causes it. It is a sad struggle.

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USA: The Ornery Cuss that you dare not mess with!
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Posted by: mrcentrist on Feb 17, 2008 6:03 PM   
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Although it may be reasonably be argued that the United States is a violent and unhappy society, why is it that we are subsidized by the central banks of China and Japan to the tune of $1 billion per day? It is because -- no matter how much the rest of the world may be repulsed by American violence -- they are afraid to pull the plug on the most ornery, mean cuss in town (a mean cuss that has 10,000 nuclear weapons.) The fact is that the world is afraid to estrange the United States, as every massacre in an office or on a campus displays the American propensity for violence, and makes the world too scared to deny lunch money to the bully.

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therapydoc
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Posted by: therapydoc on Feb 17, 2008 6:45 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm very surprised that even after Cho, people still don't understand that this is schizophrenia, a difficult, dangerous, insidious disorder that sneaks up on people. The voices in the head are quiet at first, then they become louder, more demanding. Kill Them is a typical order, Kill Yourself, more typical. This poor man followed orders. At some point you just can't keep them down, the voices, and when they win, everyone loses. What a tragedy.

EveryoneNeedsTherapy

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MEDS
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Posted by: RedNeckRed on Feb 17, 2008 7:16 PM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Meds is part of the symptoms, not the cause. Everybody needs some first hand experience here.
I work in the oil/gas industry. Everybody I work for are Dick Chaney Clones. A normal person would have to be on meds to work here. Yea, I have had my fantasies.
Violent deaths will continue until people are treated with respect and dignity. This person should not have worked in the prison industry. He quit his med because they quit working. The meds can only fix so much. Our whole society rewards people who treat others like shit. If we don't stop that on the local, and international level, the violence will continue.
You want to do something about it. Be nice to people. I had to call a crises hot line to keep from killing my boss. Be nice to people.
Be kind. Treat people with respect and dignity, or it will continue. Vote for people that respects people. Be a better person and make a better world.

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Investigate full autopsy of subject
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Posted by: GPFrank on Feb 17, 2008 9:24 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Please do not leave the possibility of organic brain disease unturned. Possibility of tumor or abscess.

One incident, a very loving wife of a minister, also a very loving person, suddenly turned on the man and slugged him. Had a hidden clot from a stroke.

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There's more to the environmental factor than you might believe
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Posted by: Farasien on Feb 18, 2008 6:26 AM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
After reading this article and the posts relating to it, I think there is something to the geography angle, but its not just DeKalb that is an issue- it’s the entire state. I attended and graduated from NIU back in 1999, and I have to agree with the descriptions of the campus and the town. The campus is disorganized, often dirty and the concept of artistic architecture is all but lost on it. I lived in Stevenson towers, the northernmost and oldest of the NIU dorms and, as anyone who may have been unfortunate enough to visit the school might have noticed, they resemble the infamous Caprini Greene projects of Chicago inside and out. The college is, as many said, circled by corn fields for literally dozens of miles in every single direction-which is all there is to stop the scathing, screeching, straight-out-of-hell sounding wind the school, and area, are famous for. The town itself is very much a typical white-bread, pointless, hopeless nobody/nowhere nasty little rural semi-farming community with no culture to speak of or jobs worth talking about. The problem is, the town is fairly typical of Illinois, specifically the northern end of it. I am (very unfortunately) a nearly life-long resident of the travesty called the Land of Lincoln, and from my 33 years here, I can understand the angst about the area. I've visited the almost every region of the USA at one point or another through my life, and from what I've seen, Illinois represents the worst America has to offer in many different ways. I've heard many people comment that they know they’ve crossed into Illinois when the road turns into a buffalo trail and the people turn suddenly, unexplainably rude. There is an old joke I've heard my entire life about Chicago, and it goes like this… The people of New York looked around in the middle of winter and said “Gee, I love the area, but NY just isn’t cold or rude enough” so they packed up and moved west and established Chicago. It’s a pretty apt description. I’ve been to NYC and it pales in comparison to the nastiness of Chicago. Our entire state, as well as its unofficial capitol (Chicago) are ruled by mob-like oligarchs and obviously nasty business interests who see us little people as little more than inconveniences they have yet to outsource. Job security here is a literal joke-if you can find a living-wage job at all, the weather is just short of the arctic in the winter and Alabama in the summer. Individual opportunity for business creation is damn near non-existent. I guess there is a reason that people out here are fanatic about the horrible sports of the area- it all they really have. Illinois offers its residents nothing to be proud of, nothing to hope for and nothing to be happy about as a whole. In an environment such as this, its little surprise people are shooting each other, in my opinion. If there is a surprise here at all, its that it isn’t happening a hell of a lot more.

Do yourselves a favor- if you’re ever, in the very least, tempted to move to the Midwest, seek psychiatric help. If you don’t need it before you come here, you'll certainly need it afterwards.

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Mark Ames' new project
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Posted by: blank on Feb 18, 2008 6:31 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Assessing the state of higher education in the US. His main source of evidence: ratemyprofessor.com.

Yes, there are problems in American society. But this was more judgmental and mean-spirited than illuminating. Next time, think a little more before publishing, and avoid logic like: OMG it's so awful there - I'd totally shoot up my classroom if I had to deal with it.

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a pattern of wrong thinking
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Posted by: brintogordon on Feb 18, 2008 7:35 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I had to come back to comment on this article after reading it over the weekend. It's just so...bad, insipid, silly, unhelpful to the broader debate, self-centered...did I say silly?

I can certainly understand the drive to identify broader trends underlying topical events, however, the author has several articles and a book all based around the premise that the cause of school shootings are due to bullying, and to a lesser extent bad architecture.

So what to make of a shooter with no obvious warning signs, a girlfriend, etc. Just a "normal" guy who's had a couple bumps in the road. It must be the architecture, stupid! Of course, that's my own insipid analysis for comic effect, but it's not far from the mark. There are ugly and unfriendly schools in this country. These places, most likely, attract second-tier students who are trained to move into lower-level technical and administrative jobs at which they'll have to compete with all the other second-tier students from other ugly schools for an ever-dwindling supply of good jobs. Grim, yes.

But what of the pity? I'd hazard to say there are a lot of fulfilled, hard-working kids on these campuses who have modest aspirations and are just trying to squeak out that BA or BS and get on with their lives. If anything, keep the unfriendly buildings and add some top-flight teachers! (by the way, there are LOTS of second-tier universities with lovely campuses out there. May not be nice commuting distance from Chicago, but sometimes you have to sacrifice)

I can't say this article lowers the level of discourse on Alternet, unfortunately, I've contemplated removing my RSS feed because so much of the content here is substandard. I couldn't let this one go by, though. The article was so obviously wrongheaded, so childishly simple in it's analysis, such a disservice to the broader community trying to come to grips with what school shootings mean, I had to comment.

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Wow. How very insightful. You won't find the same bashings of other colleges, ANYWHERE, will you?
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Posted by: rickiey on Feb 18, 2008 8:07 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Here's a hint: If you look in the right place, you will find the identical writings about every other college on the planet.

Even Harvard and Yale are criticized for "not being Harvard and Yale".

To take the anonymous postings and use them as an excuse to blame everyone for the shootings, except for the person who actually committed the crime, is ludicrous.

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TFA is F WRONG.
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Posted by: mbruton on Feb 18, 2008 8:11 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Who cares what the goddamn article says. It's just an opinion and a lame one at that. The evidence is in and psych drugs are killers and WAY over-prescribed. I've personally had anti-depressants completely screw up my head when they were prescribed to me to simply help me quit smoking. Those things are pure poison and anyone who sees shooter after shooter on or comming off these things EVERY single time and then doubts that the drugs have anything to do with it is a freakin moron.

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I'd like to know where the author grew up.
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Posted by: Longdream on Feb 18, 2008 8:43 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'd also like to know where he spends most of his time.

People who are from the Midwest, who grew up in small towns there, have a comfort level for the rural quiet the same as mine is for big city chaos. Some may have an impetus to see the wide world, want to make more money, etc., so they leave. But most people that I know in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin consider me a nice, sweet, but foreign-born thing from "away", who needs lessons in how people behave.

My point is that rural life, for the people who live it, has compensations the same as urban life has for city-dwellers. Making a value judgment that rural life is a horror that breeds crazy killers because there isn't a Borders on every corner is pretty simple-minded. But what should we expect from someone who thinks mass rage killings began in the 80's?

Kazmierczak. We've said a lot about him.

He was unloved in his infancy. He may have been made violent by his medication, or by the withdrawal of his medication, or neither.

He may have been well-loved in his infancy and his boyhood, or he may have been a victim of "failure to thrive", which is the extreme level of infant neglect, most often seen in orphanages in poor or war-torn countries.

Psychologists who specialize in children know that environmental stress factors meet the innate personality, and behavior patterns are formed at that junction. There are resilient children who overcome enormous deficits in their early lives to become self-sufficient achievers, and others who crumble and fall, irrespective of the help given later, and the fact is that such things can't be quantified. We don't know why.

Someone can be well-maintained on medicine for years, and then has a feeling that he needs to stop taking it. We don't know why. Sometimes a medication stops working, and we can make guesses, but again, we can't know.

We're really unable to predict when a member of "the walking wounded"--the people like Kazmierczak keeping themselves together day to day while fighting serious mental problems--will erupt under extreme stress to violence against others. It's usually only themselves that they hurt or kill.

Kazmierczak was a cutter. There's no pat generalization to characterize people who do that, either, but very often self-injury is a way to control or get release from pressures, intense negative feelings of loss, rejection or emptiness when a person doesn't have more mature coping skills. Sometimes it's a person's only way of expressing those overpowering emotions, or the only way he can see out of a situation in which he feels helpless.

The truth is, we don't know enough about the workings of the human mind to be able to predict violent behavior. And as astute as we think we are, unless Kazmierczak could tell us or left us a message, we will really never know why he took up guns and killed strangers.

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For all you Virginia Tech fans out there ...
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Posted by: GEM-592 on Feb 18, 2008 10:19 AM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Over the past few years, the killings leapt from the K-12 schools to universities. Not the top universities, which seems significant to me, but rather to obviously-second-rate universities , as well as the third-rate "vocational" schools.

Ha! It must take someone from 'a top university' to rationalize the problem as being only among those of lesser stock.

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Florida Reader
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Posted by: Don G on Feb 18, 2008 11:37 AM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This story is just as pathetic as the shooter. It's nothing more than another rant on "decadent America" from a hardcore leftist employing creative writing with a lot of innuendo. I'd like to hear the writers suggestions as to what the ideal America that would prevent such incidents from occuring would be like. It's incredible that he would suggest that the Reagan era may be responsible, in some way, for the shooter's insanity. At least the article could have been consistent with current leftist genre; Blame it on George Bush. Of course, it makes as much sense as blaming it on socialism, Mao, Vlad Putin... What a wacky world we live in.

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This is what gives journalism a bad name
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Posted by: JesseBC on Feb 18, 2008 1:21 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Jesus...you carrion-feeding bottom-dweller...

If you're that desperate for a Hot New Angle on "Ennui in the Exurbs," couldn't you at least give DeKalb a chance to bury their dead before you bash on their town?

Have you ever even BEEN to DeKalb? Because I have. I used to live there.

Yes, it's a small town in a corn field. Just like many other small Midwestern towns.

And, like any other small town, some of the people are nice and some of them are...well...people like you!

In your haste to find a new angle, you've fallen into the trap school shooters have laid for the media. Kazmierczak apparently understood the media far more than you do and he manipulated it quite effectively.

Mass shootings are a fad. The latest new way to kill yourself is to take a dozen people out with you.

And now the only way to get your name in the headlines for it is to add a twist. In this case, the twist is that there was no twist -- far more enticing than blaming video games, rock music, guns, parents, or mental illness.

A perversely ingenious ploy, if you think about it. Kazmierczak has managed to drive journalists right up the wall because there's nothing for them to glom on to, thereby ensuring his posthumous fame while you fall all over yourselves looking for a way to explain the inexplicable.

But bashing on a humble little town while they're already suffering is just disgusting.

Do the entire profession a favor and go chase Britney Spears' ambulance. But leave DeKalb alone.

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Kazmierczak and Psychotropic Drugs
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Posted by: Persephone8 on Feb 18, 2008 2:36 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What he has in common with most school shooters in the US over the past two decades, however, is that he had spent years taking mind-altering psychiatric drugs, which critics say have a dark side.

Kazmierczak reportedly stopped taking anti-anxiety drugs - possibly benzodiazepines - recently and experts say it is not uncommon for users to experience serious withdrawal symptoms, including agitation, hallucinations, hostility, insomnia and feelings of rage.

Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui, who massacred 32 people last year, and Columbine High mastermind Eric Harris had also been taking psychotropic drugs.

Excerpt taken from The Herald Sun.com.au

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The Epidemic
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Posted by: penobscotdziekuje@yahoo.com on Feb 18, 2008 4:01 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Gun violence is a epidemic and it's killing us. Sooner or later, gun deaths may surpass any disease. And we can "cure" this disease by limiting guns, so to speak, but then again there's the Second Amendment..
We're at a loss for words on the latest shooting at an American school. It seems to be happening more frequently than the last one with a higher death toll. And the more deaths the more ghastly the crime. Each campus shooting presents more questions to which each attempt to answer defies logic.
Where does the blame lie? With the parents? On his medication? The university? The harsh Illinois weather? On guns? Was he a societal reject? The monotonous Illinois landscape, as the author duly notes? Was his upbringing responsible or was he nuts? And pelase don't say he was a "nice person."
We don't know. Some people have split personalities where having a gun may or may not reveal much into one's psyche.
But what can we tell those poor schoolgirls in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, or to the cross-dressing teenage boy in Oxnard, CA; or to the students at Virginia Tech, the six-year-old girl in Holland, MI, to those in Jonesboro, AR, Littleton, CO and elsewhere? Any explanation flummoxes doctors and sociologists. And it's too late to do anything when the police arrive. There's nothing they can do.
We have on our war on terror. And it's homegrown! We have a serious epidemic called gun violence on our hands. And the front lines are America's campuses.

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Id,Ego and Superego
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Posted by: macdon1 on Feb 18, 2008 4:19 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Sigmund Freud's theories may be out of style, but he was right on target when he theorized that humans have a three part psyche. Id is the beast bent on survival and the fulfillment of basic animal needs, ego is the self and super-ego is altruistic, beyond the self. Many people, including some I know and even myself at times, feel that we are living in a jungle where we are fighting for survival on the Id level. No one cares if we live or die and altruism is rarely seen. It is do or be done to. People from our highest leadership on down are callous and uncaring of the old, the sick and the disabled. This "every man for himself" selfish, self centered attitude causes some of us to become aloof from society, some of us to become anxious and depressed and some of us to become furious enough to lash out at anyone in our path. Some have all three reactions and they end up snapping and acting out violently. We live in a very very sick and disfunctional society which is floundering without a collective moral compass. What is surprising is not that people go on occasional shooting sprees like this, but that we don't have more of them.

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The Rat Smells Stronger!
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Posted by: Gravitas on Feb 18, 2008 7:13 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I was rereading this article on another board. (Lots of us here in the Chicago area are aghast at its insensitivity.) As I reread it, he really makes a subtle plug for antidepressants. I am convinced more than ever it is pharma's propaganda to ward off a lawsuit. When I read Dispensing With the Truth By Alicia Mundy about the fen-phen crisis, my stomach turned with Pharma's underhandness. They made the elderly parents of a nice Irish Catholic girl who wanted to drop a few pounds for her wedding trudge down to their basement and turn over all the bereavement cards and funeral registry. They wanted to attack her character in court. Why the unnecessary cruelty and emotional attacks in the above article? Because it is pharma's style in trying to defend themselves against suits. Lord knows the evidence is not on their side. I am personally going to regard everything this author does with suspicion. And Pharma, one day, the worm will turn!

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Has Mr. Ames ever been to NIU, DeKalb or, even Chicago?
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Posted by: Northern Illinois grad. on Feb 18, 2008 10:24 PM   
Current rating: 5    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I'm a journalist/editor with two degrees from NIU who grew up in the Chicago area and lived in and near DeKalb for 30 years. I have lived in the Los Angeles area for the last five years. So, I guess you could say I'm qualified to comment.
I worked on the NIU paper, The Northern Star, which during my time there was recipient of the Pacemaker Award (the equivalent of the "Best Picture" Oscar for college papers) and "All American" ratings every semester. Yes, we were competing against Northwestern and Harvard, if you must ask. One of my colleagues received a Pulitzer a few years ago. I write this for all of those readers unfamiliar with NIU who were qiven an inaccurate picture. Other NIU students include Oscar-nominated Joan Allen and director Robert Zemekis. I don't know a single person who attended NIU with the ambition of "...shoveling s***."
Mr. Ames quotes this same anonymous student as stating that NIU had not been in a bowl game since 1983. That's odd. Perhaps I imagined the Silcon Valley Bowl game I attended in 2004 in San Jose, California. Or, wait, I also attended an NIU bowl game in San Diego, California in December 2006. You wrote this story Mr. Ames a couple of days ago and say your sources are up to three years old (that's sad in and of itself).
As a person with a journalistic mindset, I'm aghast at the lack of research, actual sources, cherry-picking of "facts" and bias contained in this piece of dreck. There are quite a few out-and-out inaccuracies in this piece as well. Those who have commented before me have done a pretty thorough job of sharing their wisdom: i.e. noting the author's thinly-veiled self promotion, the advocacy of anti-depressants, the blaming of DeKalb/NIU for the shooter's actions (which, if you read Mr. Ames' story on Virginia Tech, you'll note he used the same angle).
So, I want to share my observations about what is was like living in the Chicago ex-urbs for so many years. Yes, the weather is brutal...and beautiful. Because DeKalb is far enough away from Chicago, at night you can see the stars and the wide, endless sky; the air is crisp in winter, unpolluted; in summer, warm and comforting. Those wide, flat lands? YES! The sunsets are routinely fabulous because you have the whole horizon spread out before you, sort of like watching the sun set into the ocean, only in DeKalb it is the cornfields, which really are lovely to watch grow from tiny seedlings through harvest. One of the nice things about the Midwest is the richness of how quickly plants grow, even on a daily basis. Sometimes you have to mow your lawn three times a week. Here, in Southern California, you might mow three times PER SUMMER at best.
And any student of architecture will tell you that a tour of NIU would reveal an American history from the late 1800s (Altgeld Hall) to the newest: Barsema alumni center. Most of the buildings are practical in nature, which is how the taxpayers like it. One of the commenters here (a mis-informed former student) said that his dorm, Stevenson Towers, was the oldest on campus--no, they are from the 1960s and are the newest. I was last in Stevenson (as in Adlai) a few years ago when my god-daughter was attending an Art Camp. The rooms had been redone into suites and were much more luxurious than when I was a student. As for landscaping, there are thousands of trees, flowers and gardens, which perhaps many of the students do not get to enjoy because of the long winter (often October through April).
Part of me feels saddened that I must respond with these descriptions of NIU/DeKalb life. But Mr. Ames, writing from Moscow, Russia, clearly knows nothing about the Midwest, Chicago, NIU or DeKalb.
As you might guess, the tragedy at NIU has me hurting in ways I never thought possible.
Life is hard. Six people are dead and 20 injured. Our society provides mentally-ill people with unsafe drugs and access to guns. That's the story.

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» Unsafe Drugs??? Posted by: gellero
» RE: Unsafe Drugs??? Posted by: Northern Illinois grad.
So Typical.....
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Posted by: gellero on Feb 18, 2008 10:53 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Type a piece with a deadline, get a few buck for it,try to sell your book and create the illusion you are an 'expert'.

MainStream Media culture all the way. Who cares what his shallow analysis is???

Publish it in USA Today for the hoi poloi. That's where the real $$$are.

My hyperactive brain requires more late night stimulation than this. A 'GirlsGone Wild' infomertial has more depth.

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» That's INFOMERCIAL Posted by: gellero
inknowtime
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Posted by: inknowtime on Feb 20, 2008 10:20 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There is a great deal of ambient anger in our society these days and it is directed at the anonymous faces of our world. This shooter is now a target too. Think of the target logo on everyone we don't take the time to empathize with. However I think the meds are very relevant. For one thing it is a method of convenient anonymous treatment at arms length. But I think people are put on these to become lifelong profit centers(addicts) and that once on them they realize they are becoming zombies except that when they try to stop medication they are worse off than they were to begin with! Psychopharmacology for profit is immoral and at the very least should be well-regulated(there is good reason for govt regulation) and the research and development should be solely by governmental or non-profit agencies! And I believe health care and war for profit also are immoral. I think these issues are much more important to our national security than anything else.

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Channeling the Fat Man... in a good way
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Posted by: ibtrippen on Feb 21, 2008 4:32 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Ames has bashed Democrats in the past for their betrayal of Michael Moore. This article looks a lot like a new version of Bowling for Columbine, but better supported.

Unlike Moore, Ames didn't have to use obviously flawed statistics about violent deaths and flawed US history to make his point. He is clean and concise and I like that.

My only critiques are that statistics about the number of people who hated NIU versus those who loved it would have been more convincing, and his picture of American middle schools as happy-go-lucky places is complete bullshit.

Mine had fences everywhere, even around the admin building and the bike racks; we didn't get lockers because the admin was afraid we'd use them to hide weed; the police would drive by the school several times per day in case we ditched. It looked and felt like a fucking prison.

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why Steven Kazmierczak is on meetstd dotcom
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Posted by: boundjymind on Feb 21, 2008 5:17 PM   
Current rating: 1    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I am not sure the reason. why Steven Kazmierczak join an anonymous herpes dating site, I am not sure the domain, maybe meetstd.com. do you see his profile on this site?

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a perspective
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Posted by: asherie on Feb 23, 2008 1:34 PM   
Current rating: 3    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Anyone read Dean Koontz "Twilight Eyes?" or "Night Chills?" Maybe off point a bit, but... These drugs are dangerous, why is it now "required" to have children "tested" so young?

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get your facts straight
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Posted by: calvin12 on Feb 25, 2008 8:32 AM   
Current rating: 4    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
There aren't 7 dead victims, there are 5, the shooter wasn't a victim and even if you choose to count him, thats still not 7.
Maybe if we stop giving everyone a medal when they do something and start teaching kids that sometimes you actually lose and life tough they won't grow up disillusioned into thinking that everything is supposed to be perfect. This way when things don't go well they will actually realize that it's normal and move on instead of feeling that the world is unfair to them because they think they "deserve" to be handed everything.

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A bit harsh.
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Posted by: Elmo55 on Feb 27, 2008 9:33 PM   
Current rating: 2    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I was a current student at NIU and I honestly didn't like it due some reasons pointed out in studentreview.com, which to a degree are true, but that's irrelevant to the reason of the recent tragedy.

NIU will never be U of I (and U of I is an amazing school - not Harvard, but who wants to be Harvard), but sheesh, this article just bashes and has no respect for those who call NIU their home.

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