Slates Dave Cullen thought he had solved the why riddle in his article — Mark Ames

"Yet whats missing from Cullens explanation is a context for Harris rage attack on Columbine High School. Even Hitler is given a context by serious historians- the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and the failure of Weimar Germany- whereas rampage murderers, like slaves once before them, are portrayed as having killed without reason. Their murder sprees were and are explained as symptoms of the perpetrators innate evil, or of foreign forces, rather than as reactions to unbearable circumstances."

"The whole country is infested with this meanness and coldness, and no one is allowed to admit it. Only the crazy ones sense that it is wrong- that what is "normal" is not at all normal- and some of them, adults and kids alike, fight back with everything they have."

"Cruel and callous when on top, afraid and smiling all the way to the grave when not- that pretty much sums up the post-Reagan zeitgeist. And if youre not just as cheerful as the rest, "youve got some personal problems." Youre a weirdo if you complain. Its your own fault if youre traumatized by a massacre. Its your own fault if youre poor. Its your own fault if you get downsized, overworked, bullied, and fail. Get over it."

"Its widely accepted today that high schools are miserable, nerve-pinching stress machines. They are governed by dim hypocrites; the climate favors the cruelest and shallowest students, and many, if not most students, are constantly suppressing a burning sense of injustice, shame, and powerlessness."

"Like blaming evil, the copycat rationale is so empty that it doesnt even qualify as a convenient explanation... dismissing this rash of murder and sympathy- across the country, across a wide variety of students- as simply copycat shooters assumes that kids operate at about the same intelligence level as sardines."

"As the Economic Policy Institute reported, "What income growth there was over the 1979-1989 period was driven primarily by more work at lower wages"."