Parkland

“There must be progress, certainly. But we must ask ourselves what kind of progress we want, and what price we want to pay for it. If, in the name of progress, we want to destroy everything beautiful in our world, and contaminate the air we breathe, and the water we drink, then we are in trouble.”
-- Marjory Stoneman Douglas

I recently expressed my hatred for The Matrix and its culpability in mass murder shootings at schools (and other places) in America. It's true that there are many factors that compel a psychopath to indiscriminately kill people who are simply going about their business and posing no imminent threat to the gunman. Those factors include personality disorder and the prescribed medication to "solve" that problem, easy access to firearms, incompetence on the part of law enforcement or security guards and moral/cultural rot endemic in modern society that is exploited and exacerbated by a soulless and corrupt political/media class who live in a world completely removed from the people they represent and inform. These "factors" or reasons are what reformers call out and debate when some kook loads a clip into his (is it ever a her?) semi-automatic weapon and starts killing innocents. These victims can't say a word because they're dead, but their friends feel free to speak and, speaking as sympathetic survivors, common decency and human curiosity allows for an audience which #FakeNews corporations are eager to exploit.

Sunrise, Florida (CNN) - They were angry and frustrated. And given the chance to face the lawmakers and others who can make their lives safer, high school students who a week ago were running from gunfire pointedly demanded change Wednesday night from Washington and the National Rifle Association.

Classmates

Faced with the shocking news of the (seemingly) indiscriminate killing of high school students it's only natural that America (the Idea) should collectively ask itself why and assign blame anywhere it can. The natural culprits are the shooter, Nick Cruz, and his guns, mental illness, the NRA, politicians, law enforcement, school administrators, movies and video games - there's so many people, places and things to hold responsible that you almost don't know where to start. However, as I watch the Parkland high school students talking, explaining and confronting their sad experience a stark and comparatively banal Occam's razor, point A to point B, straight line reason for the shooting has been oozing into my consciousness  - The guy simply wanted to kill as many of these people as fast as he possibly could so shooting them at school, where they were all trapped in one building, was the most logical place to do it. I'm not one who defaults to blaming the victim but watching these smug, precocious teenage twits lecture their elders about guns or anything else gives me an idea of what they must be like in class and that, given where they come from, would be insufferable. Heavy.com compiles 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know about Nikolas Cruz and included under Fact #3 (He Posted Photos of Guns & Knives on Instagram, Called His Weapons an ‘Arsenal,’ & Appears to Have Left Threatening YouTube Comments) was this gem related by a schoolmate named Ocean:

Ocean Parodie, a 17-year-old student at Broward County school, told The Daily Beast, “I knew him to be passive aggressive but not violent. He was rude to people. He had an act up like he was tough. He never got into, like, physical fights with anyone, but he did get into verbal arguments. I just thought he dropped out of school, I didn’t think he would do anything. He always kept a low profile.”
Parodie added, “He was definitely not accepted at our school socially. People saw him as someone who was different than the normal people at our school.” She said he wore “patriotic” shirts that “seemed really extreme, like hating on” Islam, making offensive jokes and deriding Muslims as “terrorists and bombers.” She added that she had seen him wearing a Trump hat.

So here are the KOTCB.com facts you need to know about Nick Cruz:

He lived in Parkland, Florida

Hell on Earth

In 1980 the population of Parkland, FL was 545 people and in less than 25 years it grew to 24,000 which is pretty impressive but unnatural and results from a mass migration of affluent Broward county residents escaping older, more established neighborhoods to something new and protected like a 10 square mile gated community. It was never developed before the 80's because A. it was uninhabitable marshland bordering the Everglades and B. nobody in their right mind would live there, but as the beach communities started to deteriorate with an influx of undesirables the citizens that could move did pack up and drive inland. Also a bunch of snowbirds from New England decided to leave the flinty puritanism of their home town and move south which is how Nick Cruz landed in Parkland. This McCommunity is rich, godless, liberal and environmentally proud which is a wonderful thing if you're one of the citizens who feels exactly that way, but if you've got a different view (or opposing view) from the majority then members of that majority will make it their business to ruin your life.

He was expelled from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School

Model Citizen

What the #FakeNews media commonly calls the "Parkland High School" is actually called the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and who was Marjory Stoneman Douglas? She was a feminist, conservationist who lived in the plush Coconut Grove neighborhood near Miami (which is the cosmic opposite of Parkland). She was also the daughter of Frank Bryant Stoneman who founded the Miami Harald news paper serving as it's vice president, was a lawyer and judge, a big wheel in the Democrat party and an honorable Freemason - the kind of civic leader people used to name schools after to honor great achievement. Marjory certainly thought him to be a great man, but she would. The fact that the town elders of Parkland chose to name their new, gigantic high school in honor of Marjory instead of Frank must have been some kind of sick, cynical joke when you consider how much the conservationist must have hated the presto-city they were creating to fill the school. It is a problem nation wide, but naming these public buildings in honor of mentally unstable writers and do-good social activists instead of men or women who actually build something, create something or achieve something has a corrosive effect on the social order and lifetime goals of the students. America (and certainly Parkland) needs more Frank Stoneman and less Marjory Douglas but for the last 40 years we've been getting more of what we need less of.

His girlfriend dumped him in the Spring of 2016

Shooters

There is a girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or girl that Nick Cruz was obsessed with at the dead center bullseye of this school shooting. Who she is or what she knows or how she was involved or what number of the shooting victims were associated with her is a complete mystery to me. The #FakeNews has paraded out students who hardly know the shooter and others, because the high school houses thousands of teenagers, who didn't know Cruz at all, but they can't find the one person who knows him intimately and, because the shooting happened on Valentines Day, probably has a lot to do with his mental breakdown and violent outbursts over the past year culminating in the massacre. Who the fuck is she and what does she know?

His mother died in Autumn of 2017

Lynda Cruz adopted Nick and his younger brother in New England and then emigrated from the Angry Lands to Americas Flaccid Penis where her husband promptly died leaving her to raise the boys single mother style with all too predictable results. Angry boys with no father figure to administer love and discipline are a danger and when Cruz's mother, who by all accounts coddled and enabled the boy, kicked the bucket there were no restraints on his behavior. Not that Cruz was an obvious psycho - 'We had this monster living under our roof and we didn’t know.' said James and Kimberly Snead who were letting the "monster" crash at their house upon their son's request. “I told him there’d be rules and he followed every rule to the T,” James said. Does this sound like the attitude of a homicidal maniac to anyone reading this blog post? No, it doesn't because Nick Cruz is not some Charles Manson or Eric Harris (Columbine) but he is a heartbroken and isolated "loser" living in an enclave of winners who let him know exactly how much of a loser he is every day at school.

His ex-girlfriend started dating a dude named Enea Sabadini

Yeah, this guy...

When this guy popped up on my Google search I knew I hit pay-dirt and even though #FakeNews ABC edited the hell out of his interview a big fat puzzle piece fell right onto the table as anyone who's ever been in high school can tell you. Student says Nikolas Cruz threatened to 'kill' him, sent photo of guns months before school shooting - I wonder why? Enea couldn't figure it out at first either - "I was confused why, because I hadn’t had any prior problems with this person," he said. "At first, I didn’t answer back at all." Like, hey, all I was doing was fucking his girlfriend and I can't understand why that would be a problem so I gave him the brush off because, well, he's a loser and I wanted him to know that. Nick and Enea fought at school, over what is not too hard to imagine, and both got suspended but eventually Cruz got permanently kicked out by the high school administrators - no white privilege in Parkland. Distance imposed by the Broward school district did not prevent the two lads from communicating, so to speak, and making plans about the future but honest engagement and dialog were a decidedly one sided affair.

"Most of Sabadini’s responses appear nonchalant with a sarcastic tone. He writes, 'Hey man you should take a cold shower to calm down, I here (sic) they are refreshing.'"

Note: When someone threatens to kill you the least you can do is take it seriously - if not the threat itself then just acknowledge the pain and inner turmoil going on inside the plotting murderers mind. Also, take a moment to humbly look at yourself and ponder the possibility that your adversary has just cause to wish you dead.

"Sabadini said he personally knew three of the students who were killed, and that he feels lucky to be alive."

Who's laughing now Enea? "Lucky to be alive" you are and, by the way, where were you during the shooting? You knew some of the dead students? I'm not surprised - how well did you know them?

I'd like to know how many of the dead students knew or were friends with Cruz's ex-girlfriend or E. Sabadini because my suspicion is (and this is pure speculation) that this killing spree targeted very specific students at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who were tightly aligned with the principle actors in this love triangle. It's going to make a heck of a movie and it makes you wonder, if school shootings are so bad (and they are bad) why does Hollywood keep on making movies about them or other teen revenge flicks set at high school?

I'll tell you why - because they're scary as hell and given what goes on in your everyday high school it's frigg'n amazing that we don't have at least one school shooting every day. It's a testament to human endurance and blind faith in a better tomorrow that the Nick Cruz's of this world almost always suck it up and turn the other cheek.

Perhaps the NRA will cave and let the government take away the 2nd Amendment protections to own fire arms - but I doubt it.

Perhaps the elected representatives of Broward County will design a solution to school violence that can be legislated from on high - but I doubt it.

Keeping weapons of war off our streets will help save lives. Recycling bad, untested NRA ideas is a waste of time.
https://t.co/cAUobHrCDa

— Debbie Wasserman Schultz (@DWStweets) February 23, 2018

Perhaps the Broward County police will step up and do their job - but I doubt it.

Maybe better employee vetting could have been done with the money spent for this? pic.twitter.com/uzJNtZqVQJ

— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) February 26, 2018

I think the answer is to completely change our current education system starting with the dismantling and destruction of these huge high schools where a child can get eaten up and spat out like a faulty product getting ejected from some demonic machine. Teenagers are human beings, but unformed and impressionable in the extreme and they need attention from their teachers. Not all of these teenagers belong in school as currently designed and I have no doubt that at least 20% of the student body would jump at the chance to get out and do something else. For those who do participate in scholarly instruction a religious or spiritual component is absolutely necessary to concentrate the mind and instill empathy and companionship for their fellows. Daily prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance to the American Republic and it's flag, a proper and circumspect dress code and, most importantly, a ridged code of conduct should be implemented. For those who can't or won't participate in these requirements the option of a trade school, urban development project or farm/forestry work should be mandatory. Parkland could fill 4 right sized high schools which could share a common physical plant for athletics and special events (theater, art exhibits, etc). No loving parent could feel good about sending their kid to a high school like the one they have in Parkland and no one should be surprised that one of its former students came back with revenge on his mind.