For those with a deep-seated hatefulness of illegal Mexican immigrants, there's a new Internet video game: players can "shoot" cartooned immigrants, especially pregnant women known as "breeders," as they cross the border, complete with splashing blood.
This isn't germane to the immigration debate. Rather, it points to the growing psychosis of brutality and incivility that increasingly poisons the American culture by inflaming base instincts -- violence, incivility, hate, rage, rudeness, mannerlessness and more.
A TV cameraman captured footage of two teenage girls in a street brawl -- with the mother of one looking on, egging her child to pound harder. How reminiscent of Little League moms and pops beating up referees for disputed calls.
There's also the new fad, "happy slapping," wherein someone assaults an unsuspecting stranger on the street while an accomplice records it on cell phone video.
In Houston, two teen boys improved on common brutality: they kicked, sodomized and poured acid on and into another boy for trying to kiss a 12-year-old girl.
In Florida, an official video camera filmed a literal gaggle of adult uniformed male guards and a female nurse holding and beating a 14-year-old boy in a state-operated "boot camp" for delinquents. They killed him.
Then there are the 13 teenagers arrested in Kansas, Missouri and Alaska almost simultaneously as they plotted to massacre school classmates to celebrate the anniversary of the Columbine High massacre.
The culturally routine -- neighborhood drive-by shootings, spousal murders, whole families wiped out in rage, sexual assault of children, and our nation's world record number of prison and jail inmates -- is hardly worth mentioning.
We teach the young early: In 2003, 5,570 in the 10- to 24-year-old group were murdered, while another 750,000 the same age were treated in 2004 for violence-inflicted injuries.
Senseless brutality has found its way into the military. A group of Marines, including three officers, are the latest to be accused of massacring an untold number of unarmed, innocent Iraqi men, women and children. Torture at Abu Ghraib prison was mild by comparison.
Could troops be learning from superiors? Vice President Dick Cheney pleaded with Congress for statutory right to torture prisoners and detainees, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales ruled that Geneva Conventions on humane treatment could be ignored in the field.
What goes on in those secret overseas CIA prisons where interrogators use lethal methods can only be imagined.
Which makes one wonder: when those interrogators whose profession is brutality retire, will they market their skills for a second career? And where?
Pat Murphy
