Mark Ames Quotes

The shootings are a direct assault on the American Dream- which is why they are so disturbing. The fear reflects how unsettling and piercing the crime is. And the fear reflects a still-censored recognition that the shootings have widespread sympathy among students, and that any student, at any school, could be next.

The whole country is infested with this meanness and coldness, and no one is allowed to admit it. Only the crazy ones sense that it is wrong- that what is "normal" is not at all normal- and some of them, adults and kids alike, fight back with everything they have.

As the Economic Policy Institute reported, "What income growth there was over the 1979-1989 period was driven primarily by more work at lower wages".

Cruel and callous when on top, afraid and smiling all the way to the grave when not- that pretty much sums up the post-Reagan zeitgeist. And if you're not just as cheerful as the rest, "you've got some personal problems." You're a weirdo if you complain. It's your own fault if you're traumatized by a massacre. It's your own fault if you're poor. It's your own fault if you get downsized, overworked, bullied, and fail. Get over it.

Just as the American colonials' consciousness expanded from rebelling against unfair taxation in the 1760s to wide noble revolutionary goals touching on the inherent rights of mankind, so the Whiskey Rebellion guerrillas took on broader themes as injustice increasingly framed their consciousness. Once you start seeing injustice in one place, it's like taking off blinders- you start to see injustice everywhere, and how it is all connected.

Just as some survivors of the Standard Gravure massacre expressed sympathy with Joseph Wesbecker, [Robert] Mack was, to many, a kind of hero. This is a crucial point, because in the case of real random murderers like serial murders, survivors never express sympathy with the murderer. However, in rebellions, survivors often do sympathize, particularly if the rebel belongs to the same oppressed group as they do.

If a rebellion is small and just starting, it looks crazy; but if it begins to succeed, lasts, and builds up momentum, it inevitably legitimizes itself.

Stress: the word comes up often in the study of rage murders. The problem is that even in spite of the awful effects of stress- from mental and physical health ailments to provoking massacres- we, the ones who suffer stress, are ourselves loath to describe our own stressed condition with language that might match the suffering it produces, for fear of sounding melodramatic, whiny- of not being able to tough it out. A little light goes on in most "normal" people's heads warning them not to complain about cracking under stress and risk being marked as a loser.

Petty malice is now the major premise of American life. This meanness has become so common that it even dominates our leisure time, with Americans worshipping mega-millionaire assholes like Bill O'Reilly and Donald Trump. It's an utterly masochistic addiction- and no wonder, since Middle America has taken so much shit over the past 30 years, we've grown not only used to the meanness, but we can even get a rush off it. America is now Zed Nation: addicted to the pain that our masters so lovingly deliver to us, rewarding them not only with greater incomes, but with our admiration, our leisure time, and our souls.

Americans wanted to blame everything but Columbine High for the massacre- they blamed a violent media, Marilyn Manson, Goth culture, the Internet, the Trench Coat Mafia, video games, lax gun control laws, and liberal values. And still skipping over the school, they peered into the opposite direction, blaming the moral and/or mental sickness, or alleged homosexuality, of these two boys, as if they were exceptional freaks in a school of otherwise happy kids. They searched all over the world for a motive, except for one place: the scene of the crime.

Another journalist, Joanne Jacobs, summed it up even more simply: "Evil, not rage" inspired the Columbine killers, she wrote. Well, that settles that!

When Reagan fired the striking air traffic controllers in 1981, he told America he was literally willing to kill us all if we didn't give in to his wealth-transfer plan. It was so shocking that it worked. The air controller's union broke- and so did a whole way of life. Thanks to Ronald Reagan, we are all miserable wage slaves, or schoolyard wretches being pressed and prepared for life in the office world. There is no other choice but that, or death. The way this country supplicated before Reagan's corpse, elevating him to a kind of Khomeini status with the seven-day funeral and the endless orations about his humanity, his intelligence, and how wonderfully simple life was under his reign, only reinforced the most disturbing conclusion that I was reaching as I wrote this book: that Americans have become the perfect slaves, fools and suckers, while a small elite is cackling all the way to the offshore bank.

It's widely accepted today that high schools are miserable, nerve-pinching stress machines. They are governed by dim hypocrites; the climate favors the cruelest and shallowest students, and many, if not most students, are constantly suppressing a burning sense of injustice, shame, and powerlessness.

Zero tolerance policies, heavy police responses to what would have once been considered empty boy boasting, and the increased fear and suspicion that they inspire only fuel more rage. The toxic school culture is only reinforced by repressive measures.

It was hard to imagine that Natasha had squatted out a baby. Her cunt was as tight as a cat's ass...