"If you want to get through the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre in a healthier way, don't watch the news for about a week."
I haven't watched the news, but there's no way to get around the story, which appears to offer a cornucopia of tantalizing details for those who want to score political points:
...Cho left a note in his dorm railing against "rich kids," "debauchery" and "deceitful charlatans" on campus.
Other reports say that he also expressed unhappiness with religion, apparently with references to Christianity.
A law enforcement official who read Cho's note described it as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion.
"You caused me to do this," the official quoted the note as saying.
Cho indicated in his letter that the end was near and that there was a deed to be done, the official said. He also expressed disappointment in his own religion and made several references to Christianity, the official said.
There's plenty there for the activists who look to blame things and people other than the shooter.
I can't blame anyone except the shooter, and I don't care what his eight page rant said. Millions of people have or have had problems dealing with rich kids, debauchery, deceit, and religious disappointments.
But they don't kill people, and this guy did.
Likewise, millions of people have guns.
But they don't kill people, and this guy did.
It's awful, and for years I have been tired of the cycles of blame which always emerge whenever an evil person manages to commit mass murder. Yes, murder is evil, and crazy or not, this guy did a profoundly evil thing, for which I blame him. Not Charlton Heston, Michael Moore, George W. Bush, the religious right, post-modernism, the multicultural left, the gay agenda, the educational system, anthropogenic global warming, or whatever else might come up.
While I would have preferred to see at least someone at the university in a position to defend himself, it just so happens that no one except the shooter was armed, which is in retrospect a shame. But saying that is not an attempt to score political points; it's like wishing the whole thing hadn't happened.
I blame the shooter, Cho Seung-Hui.
Beyond that, I don't have much to add.
(Unfortunately, I'm sure others will, and it might be tough to ignore them.)
MORE: Speaking of scoring political points, Dinesh D'Souza thinks this occasion calls for attacking atheism:
Notice something interesting about the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings? Atheists are nowhere to be found.
D'Souza continues with what he sees as a moral refutation of Richard Dawkins, who (notes D'Souza pointedly) "has not been invited to speak to the grieving Virginia Tech community." Dawkins's molecular nihilism view is posited as the "best science has to offer":
For scientific atheists like Dawkins, Cho's shooting of all those people can be understood in this way--molecules acting upon molecules.
If this is the best that modern science has to offer us, I think we need something more than modern science.
I suppose self defense could also be seen as molecules acting upon molecules, as could the taking of medication for mental illness. It would never occur to me that such thinking constituted the "best" of modern science, much less that a mass shooting would be the right time to worry about it.
But I guess anyone's favorite cause can be plugged in somehow.
Violentvideo games seem to be a more tempting target than molecular nihilism.
But I still blame the shooter.
posted by Eric on 04.18.07 at 10:32 AM
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Political hay from this? If one of those students in the first classroom had a gun in his or her backpack, the massacre would have ended right there. At the very least, one student shooting back would have emboldened the others to throw books, backpacks, cell phones, pens -- you can't reload and fend off an attack like that at the same time.
Atheists don't kill with religious fervor to appease the gods, or because of disillusionment with the faith. Nor do atheists offer platitudes that soothe on the surface but reveal beneath the extreme ugliness of faith. How can the religious accept that god allows such things, or spares this child over that? What kind of a god could allow the rape of infants or the slaughter of dozens? Only faith in the extreme allows one to accept such senselessness.
Molecules upon molecules, and an illusory soul? That's nonsense.
The universe may still be an ineffable accident, but human consciousness and the soul (though not eternal), is part of that accident.
It's all the more wondrous for that.
Maybe some people are comforted in some small way by the lie that all things happen according the divine will and plan of god, and that our pets and friends live forever in eternal bliss, but those people still mourn because something in them recognizes the finality of death. Mourning would be meaningless if there were an afterlife. It should be a celebration. We should care less about this life, a fact that also puts to lie the faithul.
An atheist is just someone who chooses to cope without the illusion of another world.
This is so terrible. Not only are 33 people dead, but I fear that the long-term tragedy will be an infringement on our liberties. Because so few people can point the finger where it belongs (at the shooter), when people call for gun control, the vast majority of mainstream conservatives seem to jump on the video game bandwagon. Some THING has to be blamed, some thing that can be changed or dealt with now, as though a perfectly safe society can be formed if we just hammer out all the little imperfections. Madness.
Of course, it especially horrifies me as a gaming gun-nut because I know I'm going to get reamed by this.
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Don?t bang your head!
Don't mention his name.
Political hay from this? If one of those students in the first classroom had a gun in his or her backpack, the massacre would have ended right there. At the very least, one student shooting back would have emboldened the others to throw books, backpacks, cell phones, pens -- you can't reload and fend off an attack like that at the same time.