We Are Teaching Our Kids Violence In America

By Frosty Wooldridge

February 16, 2023

Michigan State University, one of the first Land Grant colleges in America, took a shot to the guts this week. Three coeds died of gunshot wounds while five other students hang on for dear life in their ICU beds. A disturbed lone gunman from off campus, Anthony McRae, walked onto the grounds with his guns blazing. Later, as the police tracked him down, he shot himself. Too bad he didn’t kill himself before killing those kids in cold blood.

Why was it so painful to me and why did I cry my eyes out at reading the news? Those killings brought home the violence accelerating in America because I spent five incredible years learning how to be a journalist at MSU. I love the Spartans. I love “Sparty” the statue that stands proudly on campus near Spartan stadium. It’s where Magic Johnson got his start. It’s where the Red Cedar River flows through our beautiful campus. It’s where the autumn colors from the thousands of maple trees decorate those bucolic surroundings. My youth, my heart and my mind remain on MSU’s campus. But that was 53 years ago! Why would I cry over those deaths of those young people?

That vicious event caused my tears because three young women won’t ever get to live their lives, work, perhaps bring up families, and enjoy the fruits of our magnificent country. Their families weep as you read this column. The five who survived won’t ever forget their brush with death.

But then I look out across America 53 years after my college experience to see violence has become a way of life for thousands of people. In fact, we “teach violence” at mall arcades where every game features blood, guts, killing, mayhem, murder and sickening brutality. Kids fill every seat as they handle the weapons to kill anyone in their sights.

Have you noticed a dozen TV shows where violence dominates? How about Criminal Minds, NCIS Los Angeles, NCIS Miami, NCIS Washington DC, Murder She Wrote, Law and Order: SUV, Hannibal, Killing Eve, Django Unchained, Irreversible, and the list grows ad nauseum.

Watch the graphic violence in the movies! The bloodshed defies imagination. Giant robots killed humans at blinding speed. Blood everywhere!

Every week, you hear about a kid who shot up a grocery store in Buffalo, New York. A kid shot up Sandy Hook Elementary school. Look what happened in Uvalde, Texas! That kid who killed four students in Idaho…what and why? Another kid shot up the King Soopers where I used to shop in Boulder, Colorado. Another kid walked into a movie theater in Denver and shot a dozen people to death as they watched yet another violent movie. It’s nuts out there…and it’s accelerating.

Every weekend in Chicago, Detroit, Denver, New Orleans, New York City, Miami, LA, San Francisco, St. Louis—dozens of kids get killed in drug and turf wars by shooting each other.

What’s the greatest violence being handed to our kids? President Joe Biden subverts the laws of our land by inviting Mexican drug cartels with millions of fentanyl pills to be distributed to our kids. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, Biden allows meth, cocaine, ecstasy, heroin and other deadly drugs to be distributed by MS-13 gangs in every small town and city in America. Over 100,000 drug overdose deaths annually! That’s on Joe Biden who swore to “defend and protect.” With his advancing Alzheimer’s Disease, he couldn’t tell you what day of the week it is let alone who is the president of the United States in 2023.

This latest killing hit close to home.

One MSU friend said, ”The shooter, a 42 year old Lansing resident with no ties to MSU, was charged in Ingham County in 2019 with felony illegal possession of a gun, but let off by the liberal prosecuting attorney, with alleged ties to George Soros, and given a plea bargain which included no jail time and only a year of probation: a phenomenon which diminishes our rule of law, and has allowed in other instances dangerous criminals to get off without bail, a court date pushed far into the future, and an opportunity to commit more crime. Someone once said, ‘you almost always get more of what you subsidize.’”

Another MSU friend said, “We asked ourselves the same questions. We came up with nothing else to ease the pain. Mentally disturbed people do wicked things. Why are they loose among us? The number of state hospital beds shrunk by 94 percent since the 1950’s. State hospitals themselves were often punitive, and in the 1960’s Congress passed a law to replace them with community health centers. But few of those centers were ever built, and the government have failed to put money into programs like crisis response teams or treatment options. Instead, funds have flowed into jail and prison systems, which are now the largest providers of mental health care in the country. So, until a mentally disturbed person executes a heinous act, the majority get no help for their condition. Unassisted, they do the unexplainable! We, through our elected representative, are allowing this to continue. We will hear the clamor for gun controls, but not mental health assistance for the mentally disturbed. We are reaping what we have sown.” BJ

What do I think? Answer: I think America, via the Internet and smart phone age, has lost a sense of community and identity in the big cities. We’ve got teen suicides screaming off the charts. We’ve got drug usage beyond comprehension. We’ve got 14 million drunken drivers on our highways 24/7 according to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving. We’ve got divorces at half of all marriages. Their kids lose “structure and security.” We’ve got 7 out of 10 black kids reared in single family homes with a mother on welfare, living in the ghetto.

We’ve got over 500,000 homeless Americans. And yet, Joe Biden and Congress totally and completely ignore any solutions. In fact, Dementia Joe has invited another 6.6 million homeless refugees into America in the past 25 months. How do you think that’s going to work out in the years to come?

In a few words, I think our country is TOO big, TOO complicated, TOO fast, TOO multiculturalized, TOO crazy and going more insane by the day. And, as this system adds more human misery and humans without purpose or community connection…it can only worsen in the years ahead.

E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com