SORRY ABOUT YOUR CEO, BUT WE LEARNED MATH UNDER DESKS
A generation raised on active shooter drills is being asked to condemn violence in corner offices while their insulin-rationing neighbors die. The math ain't mathing.
THERE’S SOMETHING GRIMLY INEVITABLE about a healthcare executive being gunned down in Manhattan by someone who probably learned to hide from a “bad guy with a gun”, before they learned where Dora was exploring.
I mean, what exactly did America expect when it raised an entire generation on “duck and cover”? When it taught kids that death could come for them at any moment, in any classroom, and the best advice adults could offer was “try to make yourself smaller”?
I don’t know about you, but the shocked corner-office-clutching from corporate America about *senseless violence* hits different when they’re talking to a generation that grew up doing active shooter drills between homeroom and algebra.
We’re talking about kids who learned to build barricades before they learned about the Boston Tea Party. Who knew what an exit strategy was before they knew what S.A.T. stood for. Who got texts from their parents saying “I love you” every time there was a shooting anywhere in the country — just in case their school was next.
Since Columbine in 1999, the United States has had more than 400 school shootings. Folks, that’s not a statistic — it’s an engineered generational trauma. Every single person under 30 in America today grew up knowing that at any moment, their classroom could become a war zone. And unlike the CEOs in their corner offices, they couldn’t just deny coverage for the threat and make it go away.
Let’s put some numbers to this trauma: By 2019, more than 95% of public schools ran active shooter drills. A generation of kids spent 20 years learning to hide from death between social studies and lunch. More than 390,000 students have experienced gun violence at school since Columbine — that’s roughly the population of Pittsburgh walking around with invisible scars.
The frequency? Fucking horrifying. In 1999, these drills happened maybe once a year. By 2016, nearly 40% of schools were running them monthly. Today, some elementary schools drill as often as once a week. We’re talking about five-year-olds learning to be quiet as mice so “the bad man won’t find them” before they’ve even learned to tie their shoes.
And the psychological damage? It’s exactly what you’d expect when you teach kids they could die at any moment. Studies show these drills trigger severe anxiety, depression, and PTSD-like symptoms in children. Teachers report kids wetting themselves during drills, having panic attacks, and writing goodbye letters to their parents — in elementary school.
Some kids are now showing the same clinical stress markers as actual combat veterans. We have literally traumatized kids in the name of protecting them from trauma.
And here’s the thing about trauma: It doesn’t just evaporate when you hand kids a high school diploma. Ask any combat veteran how that works. After World War II, we saw a generation of people return home with what we now call PTSD, leading to waves of violence, substance abuse, domestic abuse, and collective devastation. Vietnam vets came back and were told to silently swallow their rage and extremely understandable disillusionment. Today, while we claim to ‘support our troops’, more than 35,000 veterans remain homeless on any given night and 22 veterans die by suicide every single day.
“Well they signed up for war,” Janice says coldly, adjusting her freedom-infused beige cardigan and sipping her oat milk chai latte. Okay Janice . . . but this generation? They signed up for kindergarten.
And now these kids have grown up. They’re in their twenties and thirties, carrying invisible backpacks full of trauma into their adult lives. They’re working jobs, paying taxes, and watching healthcare executives like Thompson use AI algorithms to deny coverage to cancer patients while pocketing multi-million dollar bonuses.
The same generation that learned to text “I love you, goodbye” from under their desks is now being asked to feel shocked and empathetic that someone might respond to systematic corporate violence with reciprocal violence.
UnitedHealthcare’s AI denial system had a 90% error rate in rejecting claims. Dudes, that’s not a mistake — that’s a very deliberate business strategy. While Thompson was cashing his $10.2 million compensation package, Americans were rationing insulin and dying from treatable diseases.
You want to talk about violence? Let’s talk about how many people died because healthcare execs decided their lives weren’t worth covering. Let’s talk about the violence of telling a parent their child’s cancer treatment is “experimental”. Let’s talk about the violence of forcing people to choose between medicine and food.
This isn’t about justifying what happened to Thompson. But maybe — just maybe — we shouldn’t be surprised when a generation raised on lockdown drills and mass shooter alerts doesn’t shed a tear when violence breaches the ivory towers.
Every year since 1999, America handed its children trauma as a graduation present, and now what — we’re shocked these kids grew up to be traumatized adults? Shocked that a generation who was taught that death could come for them at any moment now gives zero fucks about lectures on the sanctity of life from the generations who turned death into profit margins?
Make it make sense between all the corporate wellness seminars and gun-prevention sponsored kale smoothies.
So yes, mourn Brian Thompson if you like, CNN. Remember his Patagonia vests if you must, NBC. But maybe save some of that grief for the generation that had to learn about mortality rates before they learned about multiplication tables. For the kids who grew up knowing the best hiding spots in every room they entered. For the teenagers who graduated high school knowing more about tactical response than trigonometry.
This is the world we enabled. When we raise a generation in the shadow of gun violence, we can’t be surprised when they stop fearing it — and can’t be shocked when they stop condemning it.
The school shooting generation is all grown up, and, wouldn’t you know it, they listened to the endless lectures about accepting violence.
Thank you. Knowing this newsletter exists is what’s keeping me sane right now.
Poignant, well-written, and captures the anger of a purposefully traumatized generation.
Thank you, Jo.