Dear Joe,
I am an avid reader of your website and have read your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, many times. I feel that yours is one of the most truthful voices in our land and wish I would have stumbled upon you long ago. Your words are truly life changing.
The shooting in Omaha struck me so close to my heart, and before I go on my rant, my sympathy for those whose lives were taken is great, and I wish their families the utmost support to pull through their dark days ahead.
Yet on the spiritual level I do not feel the connection with them, as I do for the gunman, Robert Hawkins. I hail from that area, graduated from his high school, ran the same streets. Hell, I even worked at the same pitiful job. If I had been born a few years later, the chances of Hawkins and I passing around the doobage would have been high. The ones who knew this lost kindred spirit speak highly of him in the respect for his decency as a human being, but stress that he was an outcast, a "lost puppy without at home". Or in my opinion, A PRODUCT OF HIS ENVIRONMENT. Period.
He did not wish to burden his family anymore. He could not take his "meaningless existence" anymore. Why? Hummm ... let me take a stab in the dark. Money perhaps? What family can longer afford to give the necessities in life as of late. Health care is an inexcusable disaster in the land. If I remember correctly, every single one of the mass public shootings in America has been done by a young male on anti-depressants. So what does the media take from that? "Oh, I see, they were all depressed." Not exactly. We all get depressed, yet we all do not take psychoactive drugs to treat that depression, drugs that the FDA warns should not be taken for "psychotic or aggressive behavior" right on the label.
How bout paying for higher education? Right, uh huh. Mom and/or dad, grandma, state appointed nanny, or whoever assumes the role of our parents these days are so pushed by the worries of losing the house, paying for grandma's nursing home, or the 60 dollar co-pay of the "hey, lets give this one a shot" antibiotics pushed by the new age drug lords that the prospect of paying 10K a year for school is better left outside in the dumpster alongside our personal freedoms and cleanly licked fast-food packaging. "Tooth and Nail" capitalism has edged its way into every aspect of our lives. In our society a child immediately becomes a burden instead of a gift to the average family, despite the Fundamentalist rhetoric unleashed when we step a foot near an abortion clinic. We are closed as a community, especially to those who choose not to conform to the ideological Americana or just those of a alien culture. Solution? Off with his own head. And since we are so twisted around the idea that even negative exposure and any kind of celebrity are desirable characteristics of America, he stole the community of a few others so that his prediction would be accurate. Ah Stardom! We are constantly stuffing the limelight with these beautiful monsters.
Why is that? How can the morons consuming all this even believe they live meaningful lives? Our children cannot understand fractions or locate the UK on a globe, but they know what Viagra is for! Do they know who Gore Vidal is? Nope. But they do know who Fidel Castro is, and they sure do hate his commy guts! Yet they sure do love to wear his hat. Strange.
I see how our society wishes to mold us. Into a shape that few of us understand and even fewer of us rebel against. The truth is when we do not choose the form, or even the processes of our society, the system collapses upon us. Options fade away and become unattainable. We look toward jobs to sustain our lives, and when we fail to fit the mold they necessitate and are cast aside. All good and decent parts of us mean nothing if we cannot conform to the system's job description. We are left with the emptiness of the feeling that we are failures. We are alone with this and no help is in sight.
This is a widespread problem with society. We are, in fact, doing something horribly wrong. We are destroying our youth, and in turn, they will destroy us.
With failing hope of a new America,
Greg
Council Bluffs, Iowa
------
Greg,
Every now and then I get a letter that illuminates our national condition in such a concise manner I can add nothing. Yours is one.
In art and labor,
Joe
