In tooth and claw
Here in Virginia the massacre at Tech is all people talk about. I know the rest of the country is paying attention too, but for most of you it’s all rather distant. Horrible shooting in some town you’ve probably never heard of. Unfamiliar names and places. A tragedy on TV.
Here in Virginia it feels closer to home. It is closer to home.
Our local newspaper had a big feature on the front page yesterday about the two local kids who were killed in the attack. One was a volunteer at her high school. One was a dancer. Not anymore.
The rest of the paper is filled with interviews with students who’ve fled Blacksburg to shelter in their parents’ homes. Families recount their stories of frantically trying to contact their kids. People who knew the dead talk about their memories.
In the middle of the paper is a single sheet with “VT” on it in big letters. I’m not sure what we’re supposed to do with it. Put it in our windows?
People struggle to find meaning in all this. A kid with undiagnosed mental illness. A blood-soaked culture of violence that gave shape to his delusions. A gun lobby that gave him the weapons to act out his vengeance. What it all adds up to is this: It took longer to type that than it does to re-load a 9mm Glock. I got your meaning right here.
The local Korean-Americans are worried about racist backlash. It’s ironic, because when I heard that Cho was a Korean immigrant, my first thought was, “Well, he sure did assimilate thoroughly.” Going postal is such an American thing to do. It’s as American as apple pie and baseball.
Here’s a thought: 183 people were killed in Baghdad on Wednesday, victims of suicide bombings. The Virginia Tech massacre times six. And that’s been going on in Baghdad for years now. The Virginia Tech massacre times a thousand. Meanwhile, the TV anchors are saying that the 32 dead in Blacksburg are “inconceivable.” An inconceivable number.
What must we look like to the rest of the world, howling and tearing our hair like this when 32 of our own die? Poor us! Feel sorry for us! It’s so awful, those young people, dead in the prime of life! I swear to God, it’s a wonder the rest of the world doesn’t gang up on us and drive our bloated self-involved asses off the planet somehow. It would be an intervention.
13 Responses to “In tooth and claw”
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foilwoman says:
I’ll just repeat what I wrote on my own blog post on this subject. To say that the Virginia Tech Massacre is inconceivable (or unimaginable) simply demonstrates a failure of conception or imagination. Any review of human history, any recent read through of U.S. newspapers (or newspapers anywhere at different points in time) shows how completely conceivable the whole thing is. For it to be unimaginable to someone really means she or he just isn’t aware of the world as it exists.
April 19th, 2007 at 9:50 pm EST -
Flash says:
The number of killings was ‘inconceivable’ because they all happened at once, perpetrated by one man.
When individual fatalities occur on the roads, they rarely make the news. When a plane or a train crashes, with multiple fatalities, it’s news. The death toll in the Virginia massacre was shocking, but what about all the other killings in the US (and elsewhere) that may not have happened, if guns weren’t so readily available?
I’ve read that suicides are down in the UK. It has nothing to do with people feeling less suicidal, but with tighter controls on drugs like Co-Praximol (a favourite for suicides) and less lethal forms of fuel or gas that used to be deliberately inhaled. If we had the same attitude to guns as you do in the US, the suicide and murder rates would soon go up. What amazes those of us who don’t have the option of buying guns as easily as you appear to do is, why the state of denial?
As for Iraq - that’s another subject, but small arms control is a huge problem there too.
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B. Dagger Lee says:
Bob Herbert had a really good essay in the NY Times yesterday, Thursday, about the intersection of misogyny, homophobia, and going postal to prop up insecure masculinity.
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silverside says:
I propose that all victims of brutal violence be treated with the same respect and individual attention as the people who died at Virginia Tech.
One way to do this is to universalize the lists of victims with links to obituaries that we first saw in places in places like the New York Times after 9/11. Let’s do it not just for mostly upper income white Americans, but everybody. Instead of reading only about the white girl from suburban Virginia whose great promise was cruelly cut off, or the stockbroker from one of the twin towers, let’s read about the young Iraqi boy who was killed in a suicide bombing. Let’s hear what he was like, how he was always cheering people up with his jokes, or how he liked to collect rocks or something.
In a time of unemployment, this will create lots of jobs for people with writing and computer skills. A nice side benefit, I submit.
Yes, the job would be huge. But I’m tired of the double standard. Some victims deserve names and obituaries and recognition of their promise and kindness to others. And some are buried in a random number–5 Palestinians killed in air raid, 16 Iraqis killed in car bombing. This has got to stop. Narcissistic people need to be forced to read about Abdul’s hobbies and academic promise and love of soccer. Just like Johnny from the Suburb’s.
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sam says:
Your post reminds me a lot of how I felt living in NYC during Sept 11, right down to the fear of racist backlash, local mourning mostly unfathomable to those not there, and sense of injustice that when some of “ours” die it’s more tragic than when lots more of “them” die.
I don’t suppose I should be so surprised by the remarkable similarity but I am.
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Violet says:
You gotta love Bob Herbert. We should make him an honorary woman.
Silverside, I love your idea.
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will says:
excellent idea silverside. I get tired of the idea that dark skinned people dying isnt that big a deal.
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Rebecca says:
Did Cho actually have “delusions” proper? I keep wondering as I see coverage of all this. It seems clear he was mentally ill in some way, but I haven’t yet heard anything that makes it clear to me that he was delusional or in any other way truly “around the bend” in a responsibility-negating sense. (An example: really delusional would be “I am Jesus.” What he said in his video was “and now I die *like* Jesus, etc.” Morally delusional, we might say, but still in touch with the basic facts of reality.)
And yet some in the media are taking this kind of “poor kid, he needed help and didn’t get it, boo hoo” tone that makes me kind of ill. It’s true we’ve got all kinds of health care (and particularly mental health care) problems and deficiencies in this country. At the same time, it’s not like he SOUGHT care and didn’t get it. Like most abusive fuckwads, he didn’t think HE had a problem. He thought OTHER people were the problem.
Anyway, I’m just getting irritated with the “poor mentally-ill Cho” tone of some of the coverage . . . is anyone else?
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Violet says:
Well, I’m not a mental health professional, though for various reclusive reasons I have researched psychosis quite a bit . But yes, Cho definitely seems delusional to me. “I’m Jesus” or “I’m Napoleon” is only one rather rare type of delusion. When I started reading the transcript of his video I instantly thought “delusional.” Paranoid delusion, delusions of reference, delusions of grandeur, all pretty classic. And people with psychotic delusions don’t necessarily understand that they are ill.
Cho’s earlier life also points to schizophrenic-like symptoms — flat affect, poverty of speech, etc.
I actually do feel sorry for Cho, because I think he was psychotic and suffering terribly.
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Rebecca says:
Good point. Perhaps I was being overly harsh. I also read this morning that he was diagnosed as autistic as a child but never received treatment for it.
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Infidel says:
“Here’s a thought: 183 people were killed in Baghdad on Wednesday, victims of suicide bombings. The Virginia Tech massacre times six. And that’s been going on in Baghdad for years now. The Virginia Tech massacre times a thousand. Meanwhile, the TV anchors are saying that the 32 dead in Blacksburg are “inconceivable.” An inconceivable number.”
I thought about it and you have to divide the 183 by the number of suicide bombers. Also the suicide bombers have an agenda and are fanatically about something to the point of selflessness. An individual espousing his own selfish agenda by individually passing individual slugs of lead through and into peoples bodys is way different then a fanatical zealot strapping on a bomb and randomly snuffing whoever happens to be in predominantly opposition populated area. That is what I thought about what you thought. -
Jonah says:
Living fairly close to Virginia (southern PA), I can understand what it is you’re saying here. I also relize though, that even while it isn’t as distant to me as it is to much of the rest of the nation (and the world), you and the rest of the people living in Virginia are effected in much more direct ways. However, let me relate this little story:
Both of my parents are college professors, my father at Gettysburg College and my mother at Bucknell University, and they both teach courses on the history and psychology of violence. Needless to say, both of them felt the need to address the Virginia Tech shooting in their classes. My mother asked a class of about thirty how many of them had close friends or relatives attending Virginia Tech. Seventeen of the students raised their hands, and one of them seemed closed to tears. There are also two other students at Bucknell grieving: one of them lost a close friend in the shooting, and another has a friend in danger of dying from multiple gunshot wounds. The situation is very similar at Gettysburg, but on a smaller scale as the college is much smaller than the university.
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bonnykate says:
I recently read a thoughtful and well-composed article discussing how the VT “massacre” qualitfies as a “non-event.” I have to say that I agree - every now and then, we seize on something and suddenly it becomes taboo to react in any way other than displays of tremendous grief and sympathy. I have no problem with people expressing sympathy and sorrow for the families and friends of the students who died, and agree that this event should cause us to again reexamine the place of guns in our culture and the treatment (not just medically) of individuals with mental or emotional disorders. The problem lies in the extent to which we allow - no, practically demand - high-profile individuals to rend clothing and smear on the ashes. The media orgy and exploitation of grief was positively obscene, as it was after Sept. 11 and Columbine. The students’ lives are a tragic loss, but it needs to remain in perspective - the loss of life happens, and it is tragic to the friends and family left behind, but one life should not be more valuable than another. How many other people died that day who were only mentioned in the local obituary section?
