Possibly the scariest quote I've ever heard

...came on last night's Global National. Kevin Newman was interviewing someone who looked, for all intents and purposes, to be a normal teenage boy on the streets of Toronto. Newman asked the kid whether all the guns on the streets scared him or not. The kid said "No."
Newman: "Why not?"
Kid: "'Cause, like, it's, you know, pretty normal now."
Newman: "It's pretty normal now. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds?"
Kid: "Hey, it's, like, 2005 now."
I have to commend Kevin Newman on his bravery. He basically just told a kid--who probably has many friends with access to guns--that what he said was ridiculous. These days in Toronto, people are murdered for less.
Violent altercations between groups of teens are almost a nightly occurrence at our bus terminal here in Kitchener-Waterloo. Ten years ago, my daily commute took me through that terminal, and I mastered the art of looking totally harmless and yet entirely unworth accosting at the same time. (That takes some doing, by the way.) With every step, I'd be marvelling that teenagers would actually choose to hang out at a bus terminal, of all places. What could possibly be the attraction? I never figured that out. The reputation of that place has only deteriorated since--to the point where I would cheerfully add an hour to my trip if it meant avoiding downtown Kitchener.
What the hell is happening to my world?
There seem to be two schools of thought when it comes to the violent culture we live in. One school says that children are largely unaffected by their cultural surroundings. This contradicts all common sense, and yet we still hear it, often--oddly enough--from the very purveyors of pervosity who stand to make huge profits from their video games, music, and television shows.
The other school of thought suggests that children learn what they live. Lesson one for many kids these days is how to kill and be killed.
Hey, it's, like, 2005 now.