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There are as many ways to ruin a kid as there are kids. Everything from permissive, to overly strict, to a complete lack of parenting can wreck the little ones, yet some of the best adults and some of the most interesting high school students, I've known are survivors of incompetent parents. Some kids suffer from parents who never read a parenting tome and others suffer from parents who keep their heads so stuck in the latest and greatest they never see what a little monster they're creating. I know a College prof and an MD who married late in life to start his second family, they actually thought it would be a good idea to raise a child without using the word no. The results were predictable.
The little jughead in the photo (if we assume thats his handwriting) is apparently being raised to think its ok to kill if you are in the right. Unfortunately, he probably won't be taught how subjective that can be. I think it was one of these cellar threads, that started with a graph showing the up-tick in murders following each of our major wars. Every time we decide to Americanize some chunk of the planet we bring part of the violence back home wired into the heads of some of our most patriotic and in this case decorated young people. We expect them to be able to turn off the programming their DI worked so hard to put in their heads. McV did the deed and should pay a penalty for it but lets remember who taught him to kill.
When I was a little kid, I remember seeing my Uncle off to Vietnam. He was a farm kid from a rural school district, pretty well programmed to be a patriot and to trust his government. He got there in time for the Tet offensive. His readjustment to civilian life was not pretty but he is now about as solid a citizen as you can imagine. I think we should all consider how young and impressionable many of our soldiers are when we demand that Washington do something about a civil war, a drug crisis, an oil crisis or some ancient feud. A little cynicism might also be a good thing.
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