So, you've heard about the 33 killed on the Virginia Tech campus. My sympathy goes out to the families and friends of those killed. My positive thoughts are for the people wounded by the killer.
That said, the following is directed toward the rest of America who was not directly touched by yesterday's events:
Grow up you fucking shallow, ethnocentric drama queens.
OH WHY DID HE DO IT??
SURELY, THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH OUR SOCIETY WHICH MIGHT INSPIRE SUCH VIOLENCE!
America is PURE and CIVIL and NO ONE RIGHT IN THEIR HEAD would have a SINGLE PROBLEM WITH ANYTHING HERE!!!
/sarcasm (in case you couldn't tell)
But seriously, what makes anyone so sure that our society is so perfect that no one would ever want to just pull out a gun and start shooting people? Are you such a perfect person that you'd assume no one would ever want to hurt you?
And what's with this absurd re-evaluation of the gun culture in America? I heard on the BBC this morning that there have been "any number" of shootings like this and the reporter only cited four in the last forty years! How many years has it been since Columbine?? Almost ten.
Finally, I'd like to end my rant with a few questions:
How many Americans died in Iraq yesterday?
How many Americans died in Iraq this week?
This month?
How many Iraqis die every day in Iraq?
33 dead in Virginia doesn't seem so senseless now, does it?
More like par for the human course.
Too bad that South Korean guy who killed himself and all those people in Virginia yesterday hadn't enlisted in the army. There'd be 33 more Americans alive today and who knows how many more Iraqis dead.
Peteski, I know you're going to an extreme to make a point here, but you know as well as I do that this situation isn't as facile as you paint it to be here.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, the kid was not a "South Korean." He was an American of South Korean descent, he's lived in this country since he was about two or three years old; he is a citizen of the United States. It's disingenuous to paint him as a South Korean, as if that had something to do with his actions. He grew up watching the same TV shows and movies as you and I (give or take ten years), probably reading the same books in high school, playing the same games at recess.
Speaking only for myself, the wondering of "Why did he do it" and "How could something like this happen" has nothing to do with our society. It has nothing to do with the war. It has nothing to do with whether or not we as a country, as a people, or as individual persons, are "perfect" (of course we're not -- no one is). It has to do with human nature as I have always understood it. How does someone with the same basis genetic code as you or I, or the cashier at the Vons or my next door neighbor or the lady on the corner directing after-school traffic, snap so bad as to cause him to go on a rampage like this? And what's to stop me from doing it, or you, or the cashier, or the neighbor, or the crossing guard? My own basic understanding of how people work has taken a severe beating in the last ten years.
I could name a lot more than four incidents like this in the last forty years, even in the last twenty. School shootings, office shootings, hell even that bank robbery that went terribly wrong in North Hollywood some ten years ago. I can only name ONE incident like this that took place on Great Britain's soil in the last forty years. Just because that BBC reporter didn't have a laundry list of incidents at his disposal doesn't mean this country's gun culture isn't a factor. Any crazy motherfucker can get his hands on guns in this country. Without the guns, how does this kind of rage manifest itself? Football hooliganism, maybe.
What I don't get is the rage. I cannot relate to it at all. When I "snap," I yell at other cars in traffic, or maybe snap at co-workers, or in extreme cases slam pillows around my apartment. I don't understand how another human being can become so broken that he calmly purchases weapons and ammo, and blasts the living hell out of other people. I don't care if he was picked on, or if he was lonely, or if he'd had his heart broken -- what he did is not a normal response. It was not even a standard "abnormal" response.
You write: "But seriously, what makes anyone so sure that our society is so perfect that no one would ever want to just pull out a gun and start shooting people?"
If I'm understanding your point here (and I acknowledge that I could well be missing it), then what's stopping EVERYONE ELSE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA from picking up a couple of guns and blasting the hell out of another 32 people? If your point is that society causes it, why isn't everyone doing it? It's not that simple, man.
To answer your second question -- no, I don't believe I've ever done anything in my life that would cause someone to take a gun and kill me. I don't believe you ever have, either. I kind of doubt the 32 people who were murdered yesterday did either.
I apologize; I have some facts wrong above regarding the shooter's citizenship. Something I read in this morning's Washington Post led me to believe that his family emigrated here when he was a toddler (he was in fact 8 years old). I had also mistakenly thought that he had attained US Citizenship -- that's wrong, he had resident alien status. So my apologies on that, should have checked my facts. I do maintain that "South Korean" is the least important aspect of this story, however.
ReplyDeleteI think one thing we can agree on is that if the human race is good at anything, we're damn good at destroying each other. Awesome! High five! We're also awesome at destroying our own planet, and animals, and given enough time I'm pretty sure we can take care of that whole pesky solar system thing.
ReplyDeleteHere's one thing that I disagree 100% about:
"All I was saying, and I suppose I could have phrased it more effectively, is that we shouldn’t be shocked."
The day we stop being shocked is the day we're all of us goners. The day that something like this happens and we don't react to it, and we say "Well, we're human beings and that's what we do -- we kill each other" is the day we've lost all hope. Shouldn't we try to improve? Shouldn't we strive to be better? As a country, as a world, as a species?
I think you're just too emotional about this right now.
ReplyDeleteI said several times in my comment above that there's nothing wrong with asking why, learning why and so on.
Here's a direct quote from my last comment: "Wonder why, ask why, learn why, but enough with the “oh my god†stuff."
I repeat over and over again above, we shouldn't be shocked. We shouldn't be surprised. As you say above were good at all of that destructive shit. Why all these absurd headlines? Why the overdrama--as though this kind of thing NEVER HAPPENS. It happens all the time. All around the world, but we never hear about it because ultimately our news media doesn't allow us to care about it happening in other countries. But it happens. Senseless stuff just like this.
I have to stop being shocked by it because it's too self-centered. It's morally wrong, in my opinion, to spend so much time being shocked about what happens in our own backyard when it happens in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America all the time. But all we are told about in the US is fucking Anna Nicole Smith and Don Imus.
BUT WHY DO PEOPLE MASSACRE!?!?!
Ask the question, but let's be adults about it. Perhaps lowercase letters would be a good start.
I hope that's clear. Of course, learn, expand, improve. But we've got to cut out the drama queen shit and stop caring so much about the Anna Nicole shit and start learning from humans around the world instead of assuming this never happens anywhere on Earth EVER.
It's clear. I understand you. I just disagree.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how you can disagree.
ReplyDeleteShock serves no purpose, in my mind. You seem to connect being shocked with learning from the things that shock you. I'd rather skip to the learning from things and stop wasting time with the shock.
But it's cool. To each their own. I appreciate your comments. I just don't know how you expect to go through life knowing what goes on in it and still somehow being shocked every time something like the VT Massacre happens. It will happen again. It's happened before. Instead of the freaking out, let's learn and be ready next time. No offense to the dead, wounded and their friends and family, but we do have more important things to worry about.
Does anyone know what happened during the Gonzales hearings this week?
Oh wait, they didn't happen.
How strange.
Oh yeah and it turns out, essentially, the dude did blame society.
ReplyDelete""Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats," he said. "Your golden necklaces weren't enough you snobs. Your trust funds wasn't enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.""
He was also certifiably insane, as it turns out.
ReplyDelete"I’m not sure how you can disagree."
ReplyDeleteAw, come on, Pete! What kind of lively debate would it be if I just rolled over and said, "I guess you're right"? I don't think you would respect me if I did that. I hope you wouldn't, anyway. I'm a grown-up person, I listen to NPR, I read The Guardian and the Sunday Times, I think about things, and I have my own opinions on stuff. It's what I do.
"Shock serves no purpose, in my mind."
A-ha! There's that key phrase. In YOUR mind, it doesn't. In MY mind, it does. I believe that we should ask not only "why" but also "WHY??" The day we throw up our hands instead of wringing them, we become complacent. Shock provides the impetus to gain knowledge from it. I think (and I know you disagree) that what happened IS shocking, and I think people have a right to be shocked when they are confronted by things that are shocking. In fact, I think the shock is helpful. I think the shock urges us to do better.
Sorry, had some server issues yesterday so I didn't reply sooner. Here's the response I had typed up before my site took a dive:
ReplyDeleteStennie:
First off, I'd respect you no matter where you fall on the debate--whether you agree with me, disagree with me or previously disagreed with me only to come to agree with me. I understand now how you can disagree with me, though--I don't think shock should provide the catalyst for action, I think morals should. Shock gets pretty tiresome after a while. I don't need to be shocked to know that I don't like wearing clothes that were made by unpaid prisoners in China.
I don't need to be shocked to know that killing 30+ people in Virginia or 24 people in Iraq in cold blood is bad.
I agree that shock can be a positive thing, but I don't think it's always required--as in the VTM case. The shock of 911 may have helped me realize that I needed to learn more about America and what it does in the world, but it also allowed America to invade two countries and kill a whole lot of people in both of them at the cost of an absurd amount of money and American lives. Ultimately more than 911 cost us in both lives and money. Shock can be misused and exploited. However, if we had known that there were Muslim extremists out there who hated us, say if the news reported it to us once in a while, or if we lived in a culture where knowledge was praised instead of ridiculed, when 911 happened we would have asked "why?" instead of "WHY???" and then killed a bunch of people. The odds of dying in a car crash are several thousand times better than dying in a terrorist act, yet 911 shocked us so much that we're still not that unhappy with the wars.
But I'll let this go at this point. I think we've both explained our views. I see why you disagree and hopefully you see why I do.
And of course all of what I saw comes from my mind. I just feel like my mind is pretty rational and calm about things most of the time and in most cases getting upset about something like this may feel right, but I don't know what purpose it serves. Do we round up all the guns and change the US Constitution? Round up all the insane people and probably grab people who aren't insane? We need to look at the numbers and remember that we live in a free society where people can do bad things to each other. That's the risk of living in a free society.
Andrew: The question I have regarding his certifiableness is this: why wasn't he put someplace where he couldn't hurt anyone, then? I saw something about an order to put him away but I didn't have time to read more about it. Seems, to me, that we might be able to blame some one for negligence. Then again, who ever made that call could have simply made a mistake.
Ah well, in the end, I just wish we could get back to the more important stuff, like the war, whether Gonzales really did anything wrong and so on. There's not much we can do about a random person going crazy and killing a bunch of people, for the reasons I've already listed.
Of course, as with everything I say, ultimately, it's all my opinion. I could be wrong. I have been before and will be again.