DICK BAYNTON: Profusion of Confusion

Dick Baynton

Wednesday, February 14th, 2018 was Valentine’s Day and to many Christians, Ash Wednesday. Christians consider the day a tribute to peace and the first day of Lent that extends six weeks (of repentance) before Easter. For unknown reasons, this was the day that a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in Broward County, FL. chose to kill 17 and injure at least 15 others. One of the motives of the attacks at the school may have been related to his expulsion from that school.

TV channels loaded up their programming with repeated photos of Nikolas Cruz being escorted from a police car into a building where presumably he would be confined. Every program for hours was staffed with TV hosts asking questions of teachers and other spectators about what they saw, what they heard, what random comments they could contribute and other time-consuming questions. Comments were not news but theories about gun violence, the need for additional protection at schools, the need for better psychological counseling, whether teachers should be armed and vocal hand-wringing regarding the terrible tragedy.

The current trend of school shootings probably started in earnest on April 20th, 1999; the date of the Columbine HS shootings in Littleton, CO. Since then, there have been many school shootings including the tragic Virginia Tech slaughter of 32 students and faculty members on April 16th, 2007 and the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut of 14 elementary pupils and six staff members on December 12th, 2012.

Journalists, faux journalists, commentators, critics, radio and TV hosts and leaders from around the nation have commented on the most recent shootings in Florida. The topics repeated over and over are such comments as, ‘we need new gun legislation’, ‘more security guards are needed at schools, ‘more and better intelligence is needed’ and ‘we’ve got to have better psychological counseling.’ The problem is that nobody knows what to do and so we fumble around with comments that have been made following every school shooting.

Here’s an example of reflexive logic; more psychological counseling (psychoanalysis) is needed. Psychology is an objective profession, but it is also subjective. In court hearings where crimes and felonies have been committed, the defendant is frequently considered to be unable to stand trial and punishment due to mental disorder, temporary or permanent. If psychological analysis is totally objective why is it that both the defense and the prosecution have psychologists and psychiatrists whose testimony is often 180 degrees different? School therapists and other specialists that deal with mental illness and other defects of the mind can help; but to think that the solution to school homicides will be solved by psychological testing results is a hopeless diversion.

In the U.S. there are about as many divorces as marriages; there have been 116,000 abortions so far in 2018 and almost 1.5 billion abortions worldwide since 1980. Of the nearly four million child births annually in the U.S., 1.7 million babies are born to single mothers. Drug overdose deaths were 64,000 in 2016.

It is clear that our ‘foundation families’ are collapsing. Words that were missing in all reports by law enforcement, talk-show hosts and commentators are words like mother, father, family and siblings regarding shooter Nikolas Cruz. Here are some details; Lynda Cruz, Nikolas’ adoptive mother died in November, his adoptive father died years ago from a heart attack. Nikolas and his brother took refuge at the home of one of Nikolas’ friends recently. The shooter’s best friend became an AR-15 semiautomatic weapon that he used to kill students who were probably his demons by proxy in a world where he may have felt abandoned.

Our government is a facilitator of the family wrecking ball by funding child births by single mothers bringing babies into fatherless homes where mothers may be on welfare or carving out a living in menial occupations. As youths emerge from puberty without fathers and with part-time mothers, they join gangs and weather the vagaries of pregnancy and/or abortion with no experience in common sense decision-making.

While legislators and law enforcement seek cause, effect and cure for school shootings, our essential family formations and discipline are falling apart. We promote quack solutions and ignore our societal disintegration.  It’s that fundamental.

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