From Lions to Jackals

Sometimes I like watching the old television shows from days gone by.  I like to watch the way people treated each other back then.  At least I like the way they were portrayed.   

One of my favorite episodes from “Little House on the Prairie,” aside from the one where the townspeople blew up their entire town rather than hand it over to a legalized land grabber, was about a bully at school. 

The bully was older and bigger than the other kids in the classroom.  He kept picking on the other students, taking whatever they had and pushing them around.  As his arrogance grew, he eventually started intimidating his teacher.

Well, that was enough for the kids.  The next recess when they went outside, all the girls and boys in the class jumped on the bully and beat the hell out of him.  The bully, now seeing the error of his ways, then made an apology to his teacher when they returned to class.

In my opinion, most of the problems we suffer from today would soon go away if we would take the advice of these lions who would not bow down to the tyrant.

Last December, a 14-year-old kid at a high school in Nevada pulled out two large knives and started swinging them around the other students at the bus stop.  Apparently, the kid had suffered greatly from bullying at his school and was being picked on by another kid just before he drew the knives.  There’s a video out there if you want to see it.  A cop shot him in the shoulder.  I’m not sure if he survived. 

The news stories made it about the cop and whether he should have shot the kid who was surrounded by a crowd of other students.    But that’s not what the story was about to me.  It was about how the other kids were recording all this on their cellphones while it occurred.  I assume that it wasn’t the first time this kid was on camera while being bullied. 

So, we go from the kids getting together to overcome the bully to the kids encouraging the bully while filming the debasement of their fellow student.  And the kid finally snaps.   

Is this the quality of our youth today?  Their kind would turn upon each other without hesitation if it benefitted them.  But then again, so would most of their parents. 

In this sorry example, we get a snapshot of the next batch of cops, politicians, businessmen, doctors, lawyers, journalists or whatever else these videographers end up doing. 

But whatever their profession, they’ll still be jackals.   

This does not bode well for our future.