August 31, 2003- Another Massacre

A few days ago here in Chicago, we had something happen that is becoming all too familiar a story across America. There was this dude, Salvador Tapia, who had worked in an auto shop on the South Side of the city until he was fired six or so months ago. Last Wednesday, this Tapia fucker returned to the auto shop as it was opening for the day, and this time he had a gun with him. He ended up killing six workers there, including three from the owner's family. He also ended up dead, as is usually the case in scenes like these. Ever since then, there has been much outcry amongst society here over this act. What most people are saying is that the real tragedy of it all is that Tapia was able to get a gun, for without the gun, he never could have done this shit. This has led to a growing chorus amongst the people for stricter gun laws so that this does not ever happen again. The problem is, that this is essentially impossible to do in America, as guns are a very well-entrenched part of society and always have been. There are already laws in place that are meant to keep demented fuckers like Tapia from getting guns, and these laws were circumvented in this case, and that is how Tapia got a gun. So that is not really a viable answer. Well then, what is? Changing the way that America people think about life is the answer, reducing the selfishness especially. The biggest problem that America faces is that its people are just too fuckin' selfish for anyone's good. America is a society in which selfishness is rewarded constantly. The most revered people in America are celebrities, and they are about as shallow and selfish as they come. There are constant reports about how this entertainment star or that one used some selfish tactics to get themselves more money and glory, and that is presented as a good thing. Anyone can see that the average movie or recording or TV star does not know a fuckin' thing about real life at all. They all live in some secluded, privileged world where reality has no place and their every whim is acted upon. Yet, America fervently worships these types, giving them the highest honors that Society has to give. The way that they think and act is presented to the people as the way that all should think and act. No matter how selfish they may be, celebrities are worshipped by Americans. Tapia was born in Mexico, but has lived in America since he was a kid. Like all kids, he wanted to fit into his new surroundings. To do so, he had to look around him and see what America was all about. He saw this culture where selfishness is rewarded and seen as good, and he decided that he had to be that way too in order to succeed in America. After all, everyone else from backgrounds like his was doing it, so why shouldn't he? So Tapia became an increasingly selfish dude. He developed an alcohol habit that made it worse as well. The dude got a reputation for getting fucked up drunk and getting violent, he did it to friends and strangers alike, anyone that he felt had crossed his path. He got himself a rather lengthy criminal record for acting like this too, but it never stopped him. Because he was drunk so much, he lost his driver's license for drunk driving related offenses, but he continued to drive because he wanted to drive, and he did not care what the Pigs had to say about it. The fact that his license had been revoked due to his own behavior meant nothing to him. All that he cared about was getting his way as much as possible, for he saw that as the American way. If he got pissed off at someone over something, it was nothing for him to take a knife or a gun and threaten to do harm to that person, even kill them. None of these incident was over anything serious either, just everyday things that we all encounter in life when dealing with others. Like when his girlfriend pissed him off, he pull shit like this instead of dealing with it logically. He would take a routing spat and turn it into something altogether different. Since he drank so much, he tended to not be the most reliable person, and that made employers unhappy with him. When you have an employee that tends to show up too fucked up to do his job or does not even show up at all on a regular basis, you tend to get unhappy with him. That is what happened to Tapia, including at the auto shop. The owners got tired of his bullshit and they fired him. Obviously, this pissed Tapia off no end, but he did not outwardly show it, all his neighbors and acquaintances said that he seemed to be a regular nice guy that would never do shit like he did. However, these were just casual acquaintances of his. Those that knew him well like his family and friends, saw a different dude. He was a dude that was driven by selfishness and not much more. In America, that made him a regular guy, because no one thinks twice about someone like that, it is considered normal for someone to be selfish in America. So nobody ever did anything about the guy, and his selfishness was allowed to fester and fester until it exploded last week. The story of Salvador Tapia is a story that is, as I said, all too common in America. All across the land there are people that think of no one or nothing but themselves and act accordingly. Most of the incidents do not make head lines like Tapia's did, but they are equally as selfish and harmful. It takes a chain of events to lead up to what we saw here last week, a chain of events that can be broken at any time. Tapia went through that chain of events for years, but no one ever bothered to do anything about it until it was too late. So we had yet another massacre in America, one that could have been stopped not through gun legislation, but through attitude adjustment. Why won't America do anything about this kind of shit before it is too late again?

They won't because the status quo is too profitable for too many in America. The selfishness shit is directly borne out of the fact that America is a capitalist country, in fact, the greatest capitalist country ever. America has taken the essences of the capitalist credo and boiled them down to their purest forms. When it comes to making money, America is the unquestioned champion of the world. Many citizens think that only purpose of existing is to make money, for that is what America preaches. Those that have the most money are revered as the best, no matter how they got it. For many of these people, the way that they got it was through utter selfishness and greed. They did whatever they felt that they had to in order to get the money. There are no rules in capitalism, except to accrue as much money as you can any way that you can. When the average people see this, they figure that selfishness must be good, for that is how these celebrities and other richies got their money, and because they have money they are better, and that selfishness is what makes them better. The aforementioned celebrities are at the forefront of this. Their ridiculously bloated salaries and selfish ways of getting them are held up for constant praise. Since every young person in America is told that they want to be a celebrity more than anything, they feel that they have to be every bit as vaucous and selfish as the celebrities to get there. This selfish attitude is exuded from today's White House too. The whole world has seen exactly how selfish President Bush is in his dealings with Iraq. There was no way that anyone was going to stop him from having his war, and he said and did everything to get it. He flat-out fabricated evidence that scared the shit out of people to get approval for war. He scared everyone so bad that they let him have his way with the war, and now that it is over, virtually every one of the reasons that he gave to justify the war have been proven to be groundless. It is more apparent now than ever before that Bush just wanted this war so that his pals and him could get what they wanted out of it, read oil money, and the hell with everyone else. His foreign policies are riddled with selfishness and greed. This is a President that does whatever the fuck that he feels like doing, and cares about no one else. He has made this so obvious in these last two years that it is scary. In doing so, he has shown the American people that selfishness is the way to go, as it is what got him to the position that he now has, the one that is called "the most powerful man in the world." The most selfish man in the world is more like it. So now that America's run by an administration that values selfishness above all else., it stands to reason that this problem would be getting worse across America. When you add to that mix the easy accessibility to guns that America offers, you have a recipe for a major disaster. Getting rid of the guns is not practical, it can never be done, there are just too many people in America that want their guns and will just not give them up or else make their own, whatever. So, since the guns are here to stay, then the logical solution is to change the attitudes of the American people so that they won't misuse the guns. The first step in this is killing the selfish shit. It does not take an attitude of selfishness to have a society, not by a long shot.If early man had been as selfish as modern-day Americans are, then man would never have survived on this planet, for it was a forbidding and hostile place to him. To make it here like he did, man had to include all men otr else he would not survive. There was no thought of selfishness and greed, despite what 19th Century scientists might have said, they have been proven wrong. Early man was not a selfish brute that did as he pleased, he was a complex man that had to rely on others to make his way in the world. For man did not buy or pray or fight his way out of the caves and into world supremacy, he got there by interacting with other men as well as nature. The idea of grabbing all for one's self was unheard of. For to do that meant the downfall of all men, to share with others was the way out of the predicament that man was in. Once man made himself the dominant life form on the planet, his ego got the better of him and he invented shit like money and capitalism. That was when he started to get selfish and not care about other men, in direct opposition to what got him there in the first place. America has taken that credo and used it par excellence. They have created a society so far removed from that of early man not only in material goods, but in attitude, that it is staggering. Since modern-day society shares one thing with early society in that it is made up of other men, this attitude is causing more and more problems as we go along. No matter how advanced man gets with his society, it will always be made up of men. So to totally abandon the ways of early man are downright foolish. Yet, America insists upon doing so. When they do, they create Salvador Tapias. That does nothing except to fuel the violent vicious circle that becomes these people's lives. A continuation of this will surely destroy America every bit as much as atomic bombs could. Atomic bombs can also be defended against, while the creation of selfish, violent people cannot. Salvador Tapia was so dangerous because he was just part of the fabric of American life, nothing strange or menacing, just way too selfish. If someone ever had sen that selfishness for what it was and what it was doing to him, they could have stopped this tragedy before it ever happened. Instead, the others were all too busy being selfish too, just like America rewards. Because of that, they let a monster be grown right in front of them, a monster that cared only for itself, same as they did. A monster that took the credo of selfishness to the highest degree and decided that even in its hour of death, that it would do one last final, horrible, selfish act. That act made all the papers and TV and radio outlets, and it made Salvador Tapia famous in a way, I have spent almost two hours writing about him, and in some sick fuckin' bizarre way, he has gotten to be famous like he was told to be, and he did it through selfish acts just like the celebrities did too. A loser like Tapia had no other way to accomplish this then by what he did. His selfishness cost innocent people their lives and caused immeasurable grief, and that is all that you ever get from selfishness, you never get anything positive out of it, so America needs to stop so that their society does not fall victim to the only ones that can ever destroy it, themselves.