From an interview Michael Moore gave to DemocracyNow he explains the connection pretty well, I think. America is a violent country and it makes violent people.
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the Columbine shootings occurred on the same day as the heaviest United States bombing of the Kosovo war,
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the number one private employer in Littleton is Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons maker
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Rocky Flats, the largest plutonium-making place in the world, is just down the road
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NORAD is just up the road.
But you don’t think children with a childhood steeped in violence and families steeped in violence are going to grow up thinking about this? All of this militarization and violence are a cultural miasma and children absorb the lessons taught to them by America.
Kill your enemies, make them fear you, rule the world, Be a Man!
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 months ago
No, quite the opposite. But what I think is that when a country rallies violence and presents it as something normal, all of the citizens, children included, will be affected. Maybe the fact that those violence factories are near had influence, but I would guess that this influence only added a bit to what everyone got already.
Except maybe if the workers viewed working for military as a cornerstone for their self-identity, maybe that would become a greater factor.
queermunist@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Well remember, this was the 90s. Today we’re all disembodied digital nomads so it doesn’t matter what is near or far, but back then there was still a sense of place that meant having a bunch of military-industrial institutions nearby would effect the local culture.
And maybe that’s why shootings get worse every year. The physical location doesn’t matter anymore.
sukhmel@programming.dev 2 months ago
Yeah, that’s probably true, now 90s seem like a different reality altogether