Teen Suicide - Don't Do It!

I want to start off by saying that this is going to be a bit of a hodge-podge.  I've been working looong days all week and shorting myself on sleep, so coming up with a really coherent streem of thought is harder today than usual, and so I'm going to go ahead and write the way I'm thinking - more like dumping a bucket than turning on a hose.

1) I'm One Tough Nerd

Thanks in part to the jaded bitterness of my years, and also collaboration with people like the excellent Mr.  Object, I don't think that any politician has a magic pill, or necessarily even has a good solution.  If I were to throw in my lot with Rick Snyder for governor now, I'd just be succumbing to pretty rhetoric and my love of nerd aggrandizement.

 Fuck yeah! 

Be that as it may, the thing that bothers me is the shopworn accusation of "elitism" being thrown around.  Let me pile another stick on the fire of trying to beat this thing down:  Elite means Good.  When you accuse someone of elitism, you are effectively trying to mock them for liking things that are good.  What the fuck?  Do you not want good people (by which I mean excellent, not necessarily virtuous) running the show here?

No, the criticism is always "Well it seems like he thinks he's better than everyone else."

Guess what fuckhead:  he is.  He (or she, not to be exclusive) is educated, aggressive, motivated - he is driven, he wants to get things done, and he applies logic, reason, and skill to the tasks at hand.  He is stronger than you, or faster, or smarter - he is alpha, you are an Epsilon-Minus semi-moron fit only to work an elevator up-and-down at the barked commands of a loud speaker, rejoicing when the elevator reaches the roof, causing you to exclaim "Roof, oh roof!"

That's from Brave New World, by the way - it's a book that elitists like.

Demonstrably better than you.  

2) Baawww....neeeeooowwwww....BOOM!


In the last 2 days I've been hipped twice to the suicide note of Joseph Stack, the guy who flew a plane into an IRS office in Texas, and both times I think I was supposed to read it dumbfounded and agog, in awe of this pecuniary martyr who would throw his own flesh headlong into the grist mill of revolution, possibly snapping myself out of my own complacent stupor and fetching up those firearms I'm so keen on and pointing them against the petty and vulgar tyrants who run this nation.

 All images pertaining to this event have been replaced with pictures of super-sexy pole vaulter Allison Stokke.

That's not what happened.

I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about good writing - Mr. Stack's manifesto-cum-suicide note was not good writing.  Rather, the "Sui-festo" paints a long and rambling picture of a self-pitying narcissist with a martyr complex.  It's seven single-spaced typewritten pages of "I can't do anything because the Gubmint won't let me Baaawwwww" which only ever dares to look past its own self-absorption when it calls the populace at large "zombies" and attempts to goad them into "wak[ing] up" to "revolt."

You command, I obey

And for me, it's about as effective as a neck-bearded basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist calling me a "sheeple" (what's the singular of that?  Sherson?) while horse-laughing around their dim generalities about "power" and "control."  It's a condescending insult from a low position - inverted irony, being talked down to from the bottom.

Plus, Mr. Stack, did you really have to go there with the Catholic church?  Dude, there's like a billion of us.  Who did you think was going to do the uprising, baptists? They consider you an elitist what with your fancy college degrees and book learning.  The protestants?  Who do you think built "the system?"  Nope, best thing you could have done is appeal to the Catholics - we go in for martyrdom.

Worth living for, probably not worth flying a plane into a building for.

Now out of my own sense of guilt and propriety, I feel I have to say something like:  Kids, don't kill yourself.  it's bad.  Jenny, eat something.  Billy, if your uncle touched you, talk to a teacher, parent, or your rabbi.  

I personally think suicide is vain, selfish, and conceited.  I think people who kill themselves imagine that they get to get up in some sort of "second act" and fix everything that was wrong with their life.  I think they imagine seeing their own funeral and getting some sort of ghost-chubby as the mourners gather around and say "OMG I love this person sooooooo much, why did they have to die," etc. 

Being Cymmerian, I know that you don't get to watch your own funeral - you just get to go before Crom and answer the riddle of steel, and if you get it right you get to do eternal glorious battle in heaven, and if you get it wrong, he strikes you down to hades.  

Riddle of steel, pending.  Riddle of wood, solved.

But having been to funerals before, I can say that about 5 minutes after the fact, people will start to forget your name. Although he may have had precedent to believe otherwise, the "sheeple" aren't going to rise up over a plane flying into the IRS building in Austin.  I don't really believe that people are going to think too hard about it, and I think the most likely outcome will be a few insensitive jerks on the internet making fun of a poorly written letter capping off a woe-betided life.

Stay alive, lest it happen to you too.