"Smack Dab in the Middle"*

I've been forced by recent utterly tragic murders and quite ugly events - the Aurora, Colorado shootings and the Penn State University child molestation cover-up - to process dreadful and deadly images of the ruined lives of the Aurora and PSU victims - lives ruined by men masquerading, on the one hand, as a deadly movie character, and an 'educator' on the other hand.  When it comes to assessing the reasons and causes of human behavior, I am a quietist on the head-shaking side of the behavioral science divide. On the other side of this divide would be, I imagine, most moral philosophers, run-of-the-mill psychologists, psychiatrists, and CNN and ESPN worthies. But, in addition to my quietist, head-shaking stance, I am inclined to suppose that the studies of history and economics are of far greater use in understanding the events noted above.
  Education and the lack of economic opportunity. The cost of a decent education at state colleges and universities has become out of reach for many Americans. The exorbitant cost of an undergraduate education at a state college or university is determined to a large extent by legislative fiat (budget appropriations) - legislative acts have become part of the weeding- out and debt enslaving process. If a young person is reckless enough to fall into a student-loan trap, then she is bound for a life of servitude. (I may be mistaken but didn't President Obama payoff his student loan just before taking office - correct me if I'm wrong about this.) Remember the good jobs are handed out to the Ivy League and Stanford grads. So the state school, student-loan, grads will be working for the rich to payoff their student loans. In many cases our student-loan grads will be repeatedly kicked to the curb by their betters.
  The threads connecting paragraphs one and two above are those of impoverished life prospects and poverty - especially as pertaining to the young men victimized because of their impoverished circumstances.
  I sat down to blog-on today about beauty as demonstratively revealed in the Pacifica String Quartet's recording of Elliott Carter's first string quartet. I heard this marvelous work performed by the Concord Quartet in Detroit, Mi. in the fabulous '60s. Carter's quartet is to my ears, among other wonderful and mysterious things, a discussion among violins, viola, and 'cello that erupts often into intense rhythmic happenings - sorry about my amateur thoughts here.
  I hadn't planned on treating the subjects noted in paragraphs one and two above. But Noam Chomsky's Guardian article on the Magna Carta interrupted my swooning away on beauty and Elliot Carter's quartet. Chomsky's illuminating and profoundly disturbing article turned me in the direction of first two paragraphs that appear above. In the mean time, links to Parts 1 and 2 are below.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/24/magna-carta-minor-carta-noam-chomsky
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/25/magna-carta-minor-carta-noam-chomsky/print
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* http://www.elyrics.net/read/r/ry-cooder-lyrics/smack-dab-in-the-middle-lyrics.html