I just finished reading Dave Cullen’s amazing expose Columbine and I am reeling. I knew when I started reading it that I would be digging into some sensitive areas of my psyche but I had no idea how deep those scabs went and how painful it would be when I hit the live tissue.

The first thing I learned reading this book is that I had no fucking clue what really happened at Columbine; I only knew what the media erroneously reported and what became myth had very little to do with reality. The myth of the bullied, video game addicted, death-metal loving, weaklings who huddled together under the shelter of the fabled Trenchcoat Mafia, to target their athletic popular oppressors was, from the beginning, complete and utter bullshit.

The second thing I learned is that the Columbine Incident was not a school shooting; it was a mass murder bombing that failed. The plan, which came nauseously close to succeeding, was for the propane bombs to destroy hundreds of students and teachers, collapsing support columns and killing dozens of others in the resulting implosion. Klebold and Harris would then take up arms outside the school and pick the fleeing off one by one. They would then die in a fiery standoff with police. None of that happened. They killed thirteen human beings and wounded a dozen or so more, then committed suicide; the whole event an escalating series of murders without honor.

The third thing I learned is that the Columbine Massacre was executed by Darth Vader and Lord Voldemort. That sounds crazy, I know so let’s back up. Dylan Klebold was very likely a manic depressive, so in love with the idea of being in love that failure to achieve the impossible gave way to an eruption of rage that spiraled out of control and flamed from the barrel of his Tec-9. The character of Anakin Skywalker also had an ideal of love and security that he fought for, gave everything towards and watched burn before his eyes. When the death of the ideal was stripped clean before him, Anakin lashed out and destroyed everything his puppet master directed him to; from what I read, this was Dylan Klebold and such were his final acts.

Eric Harris, if the book is accurate (and I believe it is), was a complete psychopath; his mind was twisted and incapable of higher emotion. While he functioned and mimed the behavior of the sympathetic, his psyche writhed at the level of the lowest crawling snake. People meant nothing to him, especially those closest to him. Murdering kids was nothing more than the Brahmatic act of tossing logs onto a fire, the ever-burning blood sacrifice. This is Lord Voldemort. This is Emperor Palpatine. This is Sauron. This is Megatron and the Joker. Pick your enemy; any one worth their salt is a psychopath.

I was 24 when Columbine happened, just six years older than Eric Harris and it was not so long ago that I can’t recall the American youth culture prior to September 11, 2001. I was at the tail end of my post-adolescence, well on my way to becoming a husband, a father and building my career, to becoming what Eric and Dylan would very likely have called a “zombie.” American youth was fucked up at the close of the Millennium; so many of us were on a path of self-destructive thought and emotion that it’s amazing that little Columbines didn’t spring up all over the country (this is what the killers believed would happen).

It sounds ridiculous to suggest the literary analogy. Human beings are complex creatures but murder itself is a simple act, one which animals participate in every day. When these two young men began their plan for NBK (“Natural Born Killers” as they referred to it), they assumed the characters of cartoon villains and they did so in an age without mythology. In April of 1999, Star Wars Episode I was still a month away from being released, an act which would relaunch and reframe the mythology of Star Wars to encapsulate the downfall of a boy who grew up too quickly and became consumed with love and rage; just like Dylan Klebold did. In April 1999, there were only two Harry Potter books published and the full development of Voldemort as a born psychopath had yet to be revealed, a sycophantic, sadistic man-boy with a twisted mind hell-bent on bringing the world under his boot heel so he could crush it in one blow; just like Eric Harris.

Just before he died, in 1987 Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers that the human species is in an age of mythological freefall, a wasteland of faith, a terminal moraine where tombstone systems of religious metaphor, systems that once built and sustained entire civilizations, have become wells run dry.  In their dissection, a generation arose that put no value on their lives and held the lives of others even cheaper. But that was all before 9/11/2001. One has to wonder, if Eric Harris had held off another two and a half years, if the events of that clear autumn day would have refocused his madness into a military use to defend the country; he wouldn’t be the first pyschopath to have turned his sickness into a benefit to society through military effort.

And Dylan Klebold is one of the saddest figures in this whole tale. I believe there was love in his future, love that would have paid off dividends if he could have held off. He should have experienced what it is like to love someone and have them reciprocate, to feel the collapse and shudder of a woman in love after orgasm, to know the happiness of a young child exploding with joy as he walked in the door after a hard day at the office.

But none of those things happened. Instead we got boys who refused to grow up and fizzled down into cartoon antagonists, a sad retreat from the true power and godship both claimed to be in possession of over others. Perhaps the greatest lesson we can all take away from the Columbine incident is that the ability to take the life of another person is insignificant next to the power of inspiring others to achieve greatness in their own lives; that is the true power that echoes through the generations, long after we’re gone.

photo credit: My soul in pixel..

I highly recommend you read Dave Cullen’s book Columbine.

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