Well, what do we make of these shenanigans on the bus in Wilson. This is a new take on the “object of my affection.” It’s a good thing they didn’t have any baseball bats in the back of that bus. I guess there are all kinds of bats and balls, uses of bats and ball, meanings of bats and balls. “Base” and “homerun” take on new meanings too. Base-ball!!
Ok, enough attempts at humor. It’s obviously not a funny situation. But how seriously are we going to take it? There will be and already are various attempts to deal with this “situation” in short “shrift.” But I’m not sure the priest is the one to be shriving to in this situation, if you know what I mean. Of course you do. (If you don’t, just look up ‘shrift’ or ‘shrive’ in the dictionary and you’ll get the joke.)
Ok, I’ll get serious. The short shrift crowd won’t really want to try to understand what happened on the bus in Wilson. There will be various rationalizations such as “this has been going on for a long time.” Or, “it’s a tradition.” Or, some will say that this was a fluke and such things never happen around here, implying it won’t happen again. So there’s really nothing to really worry about let alone understand. Some will look for the failure in ’supervision,” that is, the “cause” of the situation in failed “management.” Others will blame the students who should thusly be treated as “adults,” whatever that is these days. As if just arbitrarily assigning a number to determine when adulthood starts solves the problem of ‘adult’ mature behavior. As if heinous behavior could automatically catapult a minor into the category of “adult” for legal purposes. Silly, no? The quest for the “cause” in the administrative structure may go to the top: Principal, Superintendent, Commissioner… maybe the whole to blaming God? How about just dealing with it legally and then tightening the screws on behavior. More discipline! Throw them in jail and set an example! How about police in the schools? On the bus? In the bathroom? We’re good at quick, easy, pragmatic answers and then we can forget about it.
By the way, the lawyers are enjoying this, aren’t they!? It won’t be the windfall it was down Texas way. Hundreds of lawyers descended on the FLDS trial. More lawyers than defendants. Nevertheless the Niagara County lawyers should do well here.
Well, back to perversion in Wilson. No one really wants to anal-yze this do they? No one really wants to understand this phenomenon. Why? The rational attitude is that all we need to do is anal-yze the “facts” and then make legal and administrative judgments. Just get things under control and do damage control of course such that no one gets suspicious that just maybe the moral and social fiber and fabric of the communities is going to hell. We want immediate explanation that is somehow satisfying such that it comforts or explains away the phenomenon as any kind of a really serious problem or symptom of a serious problem.
Someone such as myself will always be accused of making a mountain out of a mole hill. People actually believe that the surface “facts” of the immediate issue will explain and help us understand it. But can we understand this event such that we can do something about it or about the real problem? Unfortunately most all of us will see the real problem as this event itself rather than what this event –sodomy—is a sign or symptom of. The real fact is that this act of perverse violence is one variation on the theme of violence, cruelty, indifference and defensiveness that permeate the schools, especially junior and senior high schools. How is it that such crass, vulgar, tasteless and ignorant behavior can take root and thrive in our schools? Is social and intellectual refinement a lost cause? Can we pretend that such “extracurricular” activities are only marginal and minority behaviors and are not a function of the cultural bankruptcy at the very heart of the educational system? Why is such barbaric behavior considered merely a matter of immaturity as opposed to a reflection of the incivility that thrives at the center of adult behavior? In fact the inability of the schools to maintain and nurture civility, some semblance of refinement and an interest in taking the high road regarding human self-fufillment, is a reflection of the inability of the communities to do the same.
Why is degrading another human being the price of gaining access to belonging to certain groups? Why now is a baseball team mimicking the initiation rites of some of the most murderous street gangs in LA? It seems to me that such rites of initiation are required by groups that in some sense conceive themselves as being at war with the world around them. They require absolute loyalty. Is it that they know that you must really want to be a loyal part of them if you are willing to be abused in order to be a member?
There may be a positive aspect to this. Given that the communities we live in are less than desireable, failing to have a common value system or common vision even, such trials required for membership may well indicate an instinctual recognition, even if unconscious, of the primacy of the group and even the sacredness of the group. We all know that the “community” is filled with parasites, lone wolves, exploiters, loan sharks, con artists, etc. Thieves, rapists, robbers, murderers, drug dealers, addicts, pedophiles, hate-mongerers, mentally ill souls, etc. The center of communities may not hold very well or at all especially without police forces, media mediated identities and hopes for futures the likelihood of achieving is less and less realistic. Apparently the aspirations and standard of living of this generation is lower than the last. When joining the military and fighting a meaningless and barbaric war in order to find a way out of the cul de sac of your life and to thus buy a possible future is actually attractive if not reasonable, then the culture of main street, small town America and the middle class is lost. Maybe these sodomistic students are just trying to guarantee a solidarity, a sense of belonging, an integrity of the group that they can't find in their family, school, community or church.
Why is sensitivity, civility, intelligent activities of learning and creativity, camaraderie and socially festive celebration less attractive than violent sports, tire burning events, barbaric imperialistic wars, loud noisy machines roaring around in circles and other absurdities? Why are we eating ourselves to death on foods that taste like shit and fail to have any taste for good foods, the art of cooking. What happened to the art and science of gastronomy? What happened to singing songs on the bus and celebrating a victory? Why is humiliation of our peers a celebration, an initiation, a condition of belonging and sociality?
Is it surprising that a dying culture —if we ever were a culture-- cultivates child psychologies that are violent, narcissistically self-absorbed and indifferent to the meaning, feeling and value of their actions?
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