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The 1999 Columbine massacre was televised live for the country to see in real time. Students inside the high school watched their own tragedy on CNN as they searched for answers to what was happening. To watch oneself, by oneself is the hopelessness of American despair. The fuel for this American despair is the reigning ideology of hyper-individualism: constructing an Empire of the Self. This requires the forever updating and remodeling of the self: Me Inc. Both Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had absences of hope: neither had found love and both wrestled with ideas about god and death. Eric’s sense of God-like superiority was paired with sadistic nihilism (absence of god), while Dylan’s sense of inferiority and depression was one of hopelessness. They could not see themselves or the world as ever changing. They took an absolutist reading of social Darwinian logic to legitimize their actions and it was meant to be televised for the whole world to see. Their despair manifested as powerlessness and agitation. They relinquished any responsibility for their actions and transformed themselves into violence (murder) and incapacitation (suicide) for self-aggrandizement. They were building a sadistic brand and media empire in order to fulfill the Top Gun script (to be the Best of the Best). The scripting was promoted through Games they played: Kick Me, Cops N Robbers, Now I’ve Got You, You SOB!, I Can’t Stand It, etc. In the moment, Columbine was a personalized form of colonialism, Fascism, and imperialism. Harris and Klebold forced a symbiotic relationship with the people of the U.S. in order to dominate space-time (on the airwaves) through an act of revenge. This was performative crime exhibited on TV for the masses in order to instill fear and impotence.
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