It's 4:31 in the morning and I can't sleep.I'm angry I'm just really angry. I'm not sure how this article is going to go but I just know I have to write it. It could go into a million different directions or none at all. I'm so angry I'm on auto pilot. As alot of people have I've been following this Amanda Todd story. A 15 year old girl being bullied into committing suicide. There is no excuse for that there never was at all. I remember when I was 15 and being bullied myself. I wanted to commit suicide. I had to be on medication for a couple years. You see this isn't new it's the same old shit that's always been. With the same old lame ignorant excuses. I've paced the floors this morning and even came close to crying a little because I look at the society we've built and find it disgusting. I think everyone is bullied at one time or another. It surprises people when I tell them I was bullied but it's true. Since then of course I became a martial arts champion, worked as a bouncer and bodyguard for many years, and now I teach police hand to hand combat for a living. But hey we are our own creation and we all started somewhere. I was bullied for simply being a freshman on the football team. I had my food tampered with and poisoned. My tires slit on my car. Several once tried to hold me down and sodomize me with the armrest off a pair of crutches. One of the other players was injured and they actually took his crutches away from him to remove it. For no other reason than they could. They couldn't hold me down thank DNA I'm a pretty big guy and strong as an ox but they sure as hell tried it. This was back in 1988 I believe. The teachers all knew it was going on and did nothing. They like the other students considered it a rite of passage. Schools have always supported bullying that isn't new. Schools support bullying now more than ever. They support it by using a strict no tolerance policy on fighting. In other words if you give a bully what they deserve your going to be kicked out of school. So bullies use that for leverage. Kids have to take that abuse because if they fight back then they are going to be expelled and bullies know it. There is no stand your ground policy against bullying like there should be. If they just tell a teacher they get beat up worse. It gets worse if parents get involved. That is the reality of it. All the teachers will do is have the parents talk to them which is meaningless. There is currently no real punishment for bullying. There is no real deterrent as long as the bullies are slick.
People are so self absorbed these days they aren't going to act on anything unless they are afraid of losing something. People claim they work too much these days and don't have the time to watch their kids. Really? If the parents could be arrested and put in jail for things their children done I'm pretty sure they could find a little time to watch their children and be better parents and make sure their children are on the correct path to becoming good responsible people. If that bully lost something important to them and had to really pay for what they did they may not do it anymore. Fear isn't just a tool for them. Self absorbed adults are producing self absorbed children with no concept of reality, a false sense of entitlement, misplaced priorities, lack of personal responsibility and ethics. You see....we got soft. We got so progressive in our thinking that we out thought ourselves. We listened to and became a society that is nowhere near as smart as it believes. We are failing our most precious asset....our children. We are failing them by not guiding them, by not being there, by not paying attention, not setting boundaries, and not being real parents.
Years ago I remember when President Clinton was in office. He was considering making school uniforms mandatory for all public schools. The reasoning was that many children were being attacked and murdered for a certain brand sneakers and other trivial things. If everyone wore the same thing then they would have to be judged on their merits as a person and not what they wore. I thought it was a great forward thinking idea. I think to some degree that it would have worked. Not completely of course but I think it would've curbed alot of things. The hell that was raised over it was immense. Even though it was just an idea the parents decided the government was going to try to force them to pay for the uniforms. Which no one really knows if that's true one way or another because it never made it to that stage as far as i know but they used that as an excuse and raised hell anyway. The kids railed against it because it supposedly kept them from expressing themselves and all that stuff. It ended up not happening because the kids didn't like it and MTV buckled to the kids and it went downhill from there. It was the lamest excuse I ever heard. Forget the other 16 hours in the damn day. They said it would keep them from expressing who they are. Well first of all your kids so you don't even know who you are yet. Most adults don't know who they are either and if they did they would be horrified. If you don't know who you are then you can't really express it so shut up. The purpose of school is for learning not expressing yourself or socializing. In North America our schools produce some of the dumbest people on earth and they are worried about expression. Asia is destroying us in math and science because our priorities are completely out of order. Your worried about expression? What are you trying to express?...That your a moron that doesn't know what really matters? That your parents don't know how to instill the correct values in you? If that's the case then good job message received.
What happened to Amanda Todd should never happen to any child.She should've been able to go to school and feel safe. When she made mistakes she should've been able to talk to an adult. When she got suckered by a pedophile on webcam where was the investigation then? When someone posted child porn on facebook where were the arrests? She had to move three times so obviously some adults knew about it. Where was the staff at the school when kids from another school came onto school property and assaulted her. There was no teacher around what the hell? We may never know these things. What really bothers me is some of the responses I see from trolls about her death.If this girl's death doesn't rip your heart out then you aren't a real person your just scum. Some of the things I've seen should never be uttered by an adult in reference to a child. To me even worse are the ever pretentious armchair activists.These are the ones that say things like," well your posting all the stuff about this girl that flashed a guy and had sex at 13 but what about the starving kids in Africa." Well here is thing thing with that. You can actually feel bad for both asshole. People that say things like that don't care about children in Africa they do it to attempt to sound intelligent. They fail miserably. They are the people that talk yet do nothing. They are the bystanders... the ones who say someone should have helped but never think of helping themselves then explode with faux outrage when something happens. I have no use for these people.
Now I'm about to say something and bring this to a close. Whenever I say you in these statement I'm including myself as well since I'm a part of this society. There's alot of things wrong with this society but we can fix this one we can fix bullying. We can fix it by modifying existing laws and creating new ones for more accountability. We can give this society a dose of reality and we can hold ourselves accountable for our failings. We can take more time with our children and instill proper values. We need stricter laws for when these values are not upheld. People need to know they will truly pay for what they've done our children must be protected.
Each and everyone of us should mourn the loss of Amanda Todd and every child that suffers the same fate. We should do it because as a society we killed them. We failed to protect her. We built a society that allowed a pedophile( I'm assuming it was an adult or at least a much older kid) to have access to a 13 year old girl and extort her. We built a society that through our tax money helps pay the staff that wasn't around when she was beaten at her school and they still have a job. We built a society that covets things and not people. We built a society that allows television to dictate reality. We built a society that allows our children to be sexualized, We built a society that robs children of their childhood. We built a society that doesn't guide it's children and show them the right path because we are on the wrong path, We built a self centered society that allowed Amanda Todd to be abused and bullied to the point she took her own life to escape from it. Don't just sit around talking about how sad this is or how it's a tragedy. Instead look in the mirror and make a change. We can do better and we've got to do better we have too much at stake.
Finally to Amanda Todd though you aren't here anymore I have some words anyway. I'm so sorry we failed you. As a society we should have been there for you and we failed. We didn't keep the bad people away. We didn't have our priorities right. From the bottom of my heart I feel society owes you an apology and I intend for you to have it. Though you aren't here understand that you are everywhere. I know this tragedy has touched many I only wish you could have known how much you mattered.Though cells may die energy is forever and now you are a part of us all. In a safe place where no one can hurt you anymore.
R.I.P. Amanda Todd
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