The Kids Aren't All Right

I'll freely admit that while there's a lot of cruelty and injustice that I let roll off my back -- because I firmly believe that you can't allow everything to get to you otherwise you lose the ability to function -- the things that eat at me really eat at me. We are who we are, we feel what we feel and we're affected by what we're affected by. That's just how it works.

So while I don't let myself get too outraged over, say, the desperation of all those political prisoners and refugees overseas, the plight of every single homeless person in America or the pain that some animals suffer before winding up on my dinner plate, I admit that I can be moved to the point of righteous fury over a ten-minute video recording of a bunch of asshole middle-school kids bullying, verbally abusing and essentially torturing with ridicule an elderly widow on a school bus until she cries. It happened recently in upstate New York -- and it makes me want to beat the living shit out of every one of the little bastards seen and heard in the clip.

The good news: The internet is already rising up in support of this woman and to condemn her tormentors.

I confess that I often wonder what would have happened to me and my friends in high school had we grown up in the kind of self-perpetuated Panopticon that society today has become; did our crimes against decency rise to the level of what these kids do but we were simply lucky enough for no one to ever get it on video and beam it out around the world?

God, I really hope not. Because if we were this cruel at any point, I'm not sure I could ever forgive myself.

The Huffington Post: School Bus Bullying Video Draws Outrage/6.20.12