by Robert Anthony
September 5th 2024
I think, more than any group on earth, I grieve most for the children. I'm serious. Many of you reading this are well-grown, many of you your kids are full grown and you are now grandparents. How can we really understand what our youth are going thru living in times like these!? It's so hard to understand that school shootings are actually a thing. Teachers, Principals, School Administration literally have to go thru training now so they know what to do in case of a school shooting. It's appalling to me that this is our reality - and yet there is not one ounce of my heart angry towards these children.
The one thing NO ONE said, and when I say NO ONE, I mean not one article, opinion piece, op-ed, news clip, etc. NO ONE mentioned that President Trump's shooters was only 20 years old and hardly an adult! Quite literally a couple years ago the very young men that took a shot at President Trump, killed two others in attendance and wounded several others, was in high school! Therefore Trump's assassination attempt is almost comparable with a school shooting. Although no politician wants to speak to this. It scores everyone more political points if Thomas Matthew Crooks was a full grown, complex-man filled with some political grievances and other mysterious psychology. In my opinion the story quickly went away because it was just so sad, the reality of what actually happened. What was this young man so upset about? What drove him to such extremes to try and kill President Trump, even willing to shoot and kill others!? But this, in our world, is not newsworthy. The last thing our news organizations want to do is actually look at themselves with honest eyes, taking an account, saying to themselves, "Maybe we did something to contribute to this? Maybe our hateful and hurtful rhetoric and non-stop divisive and hateful language is weary on the morale of the nation!?" And... "Maybe we need to make a change... for the sake of the children!" But no. That's not going to happen anytime soon.
As much as I hope this article finds its way before key decision makers and rapidly influences political campaigns, news cycles and America as we know it - I am not a very fantastical person, I tend to be hopeful but I'm well aware that these power hungry people running the world are not much known to repent. So the children continue to cry out!! They continue to shoot each other and worse. This most recent school shooting is merely another event in a long line of mass shootings and school shootings that have hit national headlines. And how many tragedies among our children are happening daily but without being newsworthy? Spend some time at juvenile hall, or within the halls of children's court throughout any major city in America and you will get a quick education. Children are killing children basically daily in our 1st world, wealthy, "advanced" nation. I used to work with juvenile kids as a minister and mentor. I have actually had much experience with this over the years. When most of us were kids the most horrible thing to happen would be maybe a knife fight, or maybe someone was accidentally killed during our high school years? But over the past thirty or forty years, our nation has changed dramatically.
Gangs are no longer made up of eighteen to twenty five year old young men, fighting for seniority and power within their neighborhoods. Today's gangs are 10-year-olds, sometimes even 8 or 9 year olds, and they are getting guns and using them younger than ever! While I was working in Juvenile hall I met many young gangs kids who fit this description: 8, 9 and 10 year olds willing to go to war with a rival gang and even kill other children! What on earth happened to our country!? (But the divisive and hateful political leaders will rage on....)
I met one young man in Juvenile Hall who was about 14. He was going away for at least 1 year for stealing a car, loading up the trunk full of stolen guns and ammo and cruising around Las Vegas to sell it to his friends and fellow gang members!? He ended up in a high speed chase throughout the streets of Las Vegas before he crashed and killed his best friend. He wept bitterly as he told me about his regret and shame. I can still remember meeting his dad like it was yesterday - I went to court on his behalf to testify of how great he had been doing in Juvy. His dad was totally stoic, he seemed totally and completely uninterested in taking any ownership of this as his failures as a father, his heart was so hard, standing next to me angry towards his first born boy. The judge actually called him out for it in court. (His father was obviously an ex-con himself. Probably an ex or even current "Neo-Nazi" or "White Power" affiliate by the way he was tattooed and dressed.)
In Juvy none of these kids had dads around. I would estimate 1 in 20 had a father or father figure living at home. But do a study about all the other troubled-youth. Do a study about many the school shooters in our nation. They all have about the same general story: no parents or uninterested parents, in and out of the foster-care system, drugs, almost all of them are diagnosed with something very early on in life and taking very powerful psych-med's!! (Oh that is another issue!! The Psych-Med's are a Huge Issue that no one wants to talk about!!) And how many of these school shooters are on very powerful Psych-Med's!? Has anyone looked into this about President Trump's shooter?? I'll bet $1,000 he was diagnosed something and on some very potent and mind-warping psych-meds. If these drugs were working, I promise I wouldn't be so upset about it writing to you today. Certainly you can feel my emotion in what I am writing. I was there several times in Juvy, when the drug lady came in and passed out psych-pills as if they were candy. And then, if the kids didnt take their drugs!? They were in a lot of trouble. The prison guards would literally stand there watching them to make sure they swallowed!!
I wonder how Big Pharma would respond to such a case study!? What if we found out that the overwhelming majority of these school shooters and kids who are killing each other are all diagnosed with a supposed "mental disorder" and pumped up with some of the strongest medications ever given to kids in the history of the world!! How would it go for Big Pharma if our Congress cared enough to look into this - to open the books and actually take an account to what they are doing to our hurting children in foster care, juvenile hall, Department of Human Services, impoverished inner cities and broken families throughout the US!? I'm going to save you the suspense, What Congress would find is that these powerful mind-drugs are destroying our children - especially the most vulnerable among us...
I have looked into this some and know for a fact that many of these kids were on heavy psych-meds when they performed their school shootings. I have written about it in the past. Many of these kids had various "mental health" diagnosis' and many of them were on Big Pharma's psych meds. (But no one wants to let that fact leak out!!)
Even since Trump's attempted assassination I have been following the news cycles waiting for one single article grieving for this young man, a young man who was merely a child just a short couple years earlier, wondering what on earth was the matter with him that drove him to do something so terrible. But the article, the empathy, the love for our hurting children doesn't show up.... ANYWHERE! And it breaks my heart.
What do the kids need to do!? They are crying out, especially for the past 20-30 years! Like shouting with the biggest mega-phone they can find, "Someone help us!! We are so scared and alone, hopeless and afraid... but all our leaders seem to only want to fight. We don't know where to go, we dont know anywhere in the world that is safe or beautiful. Our parents want nothing to do with us. Our parents, the school and all our teachers have convinced us that there is no God. Is there any Hope? Who will save us from this broken and ugly world!?" And this is exactly what is inside their precious and broken hearts just before the shoot up a school or try to assassinate a US President.
At the rate we are going it's going to get much worse. Trust me, we haven't seen the worst of what our children are capable of doing! (And taking their guns away won't change a thing. They will go to all sorts of trouble to get our attention with or without the guns.) As we, adults and leaders and mentors and teachers and celebrities and politicians, all choose to fight and hate and rage and war against each other, as the rhetoric devolves further into only vengeance and disgust - the kids will react, in great desperation and despair. And Why? Simply because they don't know what else to do.... They are just that hopeless.
We aren't losing the heart and soul of the nation - we lost it a while ago.
The question that remains is, can we revive the little bit of light that remains in America? Can we awaken something to beauty and light and splendor that is so far gone!? God knows. I have hope when I see the very few out among us who are giving all they have to love. And it is a very few... But their light does shine!! Love them, friends. It's not that hard to love, it often even feels good. When your heart starts to get angry or afraid, pay attention. Forgive those you need to forgive, learn to empty out your anger in a healthier and more constructive manner. We all get angry but we can not live in anger, it will kill us. We have to save this nation. We have to. For our children's sake. For our children's children's sake. And if we don't save the nation? Who will...?
And Saving America won't come from politics. Politics could help along the way but the politics seems to follow more honest and truer forms of leadership. Have we learned nothing over the past 20-30 years!? We must win the heart and soul of the nation... and I have never found anything else that works for saving the soul, but to Love. And what's so bad about love? Why do we refuse it with such contempt and apathy?
We must reconsider our unique and individual role in all of this....
For sake of the children... Prayerfully.
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