Covering the Violence

Back when I was in school, the surreal fear hovering above our heads was about the atom bomb. Our duck-and-cover drills were designed to protect us, somehow, from the Big One. Nowadays, we drill our kids on what to do if a classmate goes nuclear. It's an unlikely scenario, just as the Bomb was. But when you eavesdrop on kids these days, there's the painful possibility you'll hear them speculating on who in their class might be most likely to play Doom for real. The shootings at Columbine, Conyers and elsewhere remind us that the threats we face amid our end-of-the-century...

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