QUOTE : However, brutal programs are avidly absorbed by children who have never been allowed to defend themselves against overt or subtle tormenting at home or who, for other reasons, can never articulate their feelings—for example, to spare a threatened parent. So they can satisfy their secret longings for revenge by identifying with what they see on TV. These children already carry within them the seeds of future destructiveness. Whether or not this destructiveness will erupt depends largely on whether life offers them more than violence: in other words, whether witnesses willing to rescue them cross their path. What is important to understand is that the child learns cruelty not by watching TV but always by suffering and repressing.