This one is only the latest in what is becoming just about the fastest growing trend of the last 7 months. People lose their jobs, go home, and slaughter their family.

Sometimes they spend a couple frustrating weeks or even months looking for a job first.

In a couple conversations three months ago, I predicted that these would be the big news story of 2009 – self-defined (or society-mandated) “providers” feeling so overwhelmed at the burdens of being unable to provide that they decided to eliminate the need for provision altogether. All of them killing themselves directly afterwards.

It’s not that things like this haven’t happened in America since the dawn of the nation. But now we have a wider proliferation of firearms, more acceptance and awareness of these types of crimes (I would imagine they would’ve been considered hideously deviant and unspeakable in the 1930’s, whereas they seem sort of quietly understandable and unfortunate now), and of course the impending Depression II (aka the Greatest Depression). Thus the extensive spread of pater familias execution sprees.

I’m not here to tell you that the life of clients we serve at my work (or any similar location) is glamorous. I’m not going to say that living on the government dole or even the street is the best situation ever.

But compared to being shot by one’s father?

Have we really created a set of male adults so enamored with their standard of living and their self-image that any major break from that reality manifests in gunning down the 3-6 people they most love?

We need a public re-education program, and quick. Talking about the programs available, the way to subsist in a modest, humble, government-sponsored life when one no longer has viable employment as an option. We need the AdCouncil going on the airwaves talking about free after-school programs and free clothes and free everything for kids of the unemployed, overleveraged, and flat broke. We need people to understand that losing a job is not the end of the world, any world, certainly not the world of those who have not yet reached the age where they’re expected to take a job at all.

I’m not trying to minimize the pressures and weightiness that these individuals face – I am blessed to be in an entirely different financial category than the patriarchs I am addressing here. But right now, a notable portion of the population believes that losing their job without much hope of being rehired somewhere soon is literally the end of the world. Think about that for a second. They are so convinced it’s the end that they cannot imagine a future of anything but pain for any of their children or their spouse. To the point where they are willing to effectuate an end to pain, despite how blindingly painful the act of doing so must be.

Maybe if less energy were spent in this country defining “hope” as “everything will magically turn around tomorrow for no reason” and instead turning it toward “this country might be able to get accustomed to not being so unsustainably greedy and abundant” – maybe then we could reduce the number of job-loss-related filicides.

Until then, I have only this personal appeal. Stop. Think. Realize that most people in the world raise children on less money per lifetime than the government gives US citizens in your situation in a year. Even if you think it’s the end for you, let your children decide for themselves.