Thoughts on Virginia Tech
Posted on April 17th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 27 Comments »
Even as our hearts go out to the families, friends and loved ones of the victimsâwhat a horrific, hideous eventâwe ask (and in some ways, we hope), “Is there larger meaning in the slaughter at Virginia Tech?”
Standing Eagle raises a good point in a comment below: Even as the nation is rightfully transfixed by this obscenity, we pay little attention to the everyday horror that is life in Iraq. Yesterday, for example, 34 people were killed in Baghdad alone. What would our reaction be if that was a typical day here in the United States?
There’s surely no literal connection between violence in Iraq and violence in Virginia, but I wonder if there isn’t some more abstract one. The Bush administration has for years operated on the cynical premise that it could export violence to another country without disturbing the peaceâthe culture of entertainment and greedâthat placates the U.S. citizenry.
Perhaps those chickens are finally coming home to roost…..perhaps the violence of a war based on lies can not be limited to the country in which it first occurs, but carries throughout the world, to land back at its source…..
Can we really practice violence around the globe and not expect it to infect us here at home?
27 Responses
4/17/2007 8:55 am
An overreaching suggestion, Richard: the lone nut on a rampage has been a leitmotif in the US for much longer than this particular adventure overseas. And it’s too easy to puncture your implied causality by pointing out that the shooter this time was a disgruntled stalker, or whatever.
The main point is not that violence begets violence, although there is truth to that. It is that the US moral imagination is broken, and truly cannot recognize the extent to which it should care about the death it has inflicted in Asia in the last four years and 29 days. Will the divine forces that stir the cyclone of violence in the Oresteia, so that what goes around comes around, unleash horrors on our homeland as a result? Superstition and a taste for poetic justice (and those plus four bucks will get you a latte) say yes; the moral apathy of the real god History, plus my own fervent prayers for peace everywhere, say no.
Does our rotted moral imagination mean we will become less prosperous or less safe? No. It just makes us worse people.
Standing Eagle
4/17/2007 8:58 am
Shorter Standing Eagle:
“Is there larger meaning in the slaughter at Virginia Tech?”
No.
SSE
PS. It was the belief that there HAD to be larger meaning in the slaughter at the Twin Towers that led to the American people eating out of the hand of a guy who claimed such a visionary understanding of the event: freedom vs. fear, God not neutral between them, etc. (cf. 1/20/2001, joint session of Congress). Moral high roads can promise nice bird’s-eye views, but great temptations for axe-grinding that way lie.
And yes, anons aplenty, I know that I’m in a glass house with regard to the ‘moral bird’s-eye-view’ comment.
4/17/2007 9:00 am
Anon 1: Read the post againâ”no literal connection…”
4/17/2007 9:01 am
There were many larger meanings in 9/11âthe problem was, the White House and the country at large just didn’t pick the right ones.
4/17/2007 9:02 am
Of course, sorry, Richard, didn’t mean to imply that you’re a buffoon (cf. Jerry Falwell after 9/11).
But I think not a metaphorical connection either, really. The link is topical but I think not apt.
SE
4/17/2007 9:09 am
Somewhat short SE:
The meaning of 9/11 was that twenty nuts with some minimal financing can kill a lot of people.
The meaning of Oklahoma City was that one nut with a credit card can kill a lot of people.
One hundred sixty-eight Oklahoma City fatalities times twenty equals 3,360. In the Twin Towers 2,973 died — a smaller ratio of nuttiness to damage.
We learned nothing new from 9/11. Some people who had been uninformed before learned that there are many who hate America, or its wealth, but the policymakers knew that before (cf. Clinton, Clarke, the competent ones).
“Nothing is either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” -Hamlet
Just my two cents on that topic. Flame away.
Standing Eagle
4/17/2007 9:10 am
We’ll have to agree to disagree, SE. There is something sick with this country right now, and as Michael Dukakis once memorably said, “The fish rots from the head.” The violence, deceit and cynicism of six years of Bush/Cheney has made the nation in some profound way unhealthy, and I suspect the consequences of that are much broader than we will ever know.
4/17/2007 9:11 am
I’ll agree to agree with that.
SE
4/17/2007 9:22 am
Rotting fish are like myrrh and frankincense next to the mephitic stench of Bush and Cheney.
4/17/2007 9:28 am
i think the bigger question/talking point is that we’re so far removed from the war that the daily casualty report isn’t jarring us.
we don’t see it on tv, it’s not the cover story in the NYT, nightline doesn’t do an extra hour about it.
we seem to care more about these students because they were caught in the crossfire of the shooter’s war. not unlike the iraqi citizens who are killed daily. and i am sure it’s more than 34 daily… but our 30+ are blond and christian and innocent and their friends and family look pretty on TV while praying in circles at the local church.
let’s please not shove the racial reality under the rug
4/17/2007 12:32 pm
The “American at the Crossroads” program last night on PBS was a series of dramatizations (and in one case, animation) of non-fiction stories written by actual soldiers who saw combat in Iraq, with interviews of those soldiers. One of the most elegant, moving pieces of TV I’ve ever seen. One was done by a Lt. Col. whose job it is to accompany the “remains” to their final resting place and provie what comfort the military can to the parents in such instances. Wow did it bring the war home — and make me realize how far away that war is and how uninvolved I am in it, despite my opposition to the administration, etc etc. I think the linkage you make between Va. Tech and Iraq is perfectly apt, albeit not, as you say, “literal”. What matters is that we confront the violence in ourselves, both that perpetrated by wounded human beings such as the Virginia shooter, and our own children, whom we send, sadly but ultimately passively (or occasionally willingly), off to kill other people’s children in a land we know nothing about.
4/17/2007 12:33 pm
Maybe the ’78 Yankees/Red Sox pennant race was tied into this in some metaphysical way. Nah, it probably had something to do with the Summers administration at Harvard. Better yet, maybe you shouldn’t be trying so hard to tie together two things which have nothing to do with each other.
4/17/2007 1:40 pm
Wow, that was really incisive. You must be so smart. Do you have a blog too, because if you don’t, you should. You’re so interesting.
4/17/2007 3:22 pm
This was an embarrassing installment to an otherwise (or at least often) valuable blog. That the American public are not as emotionally shocked at religious nuts blowing up innocent bystanders in the Middle East-par for the course, unfortunately-as they are at 30 students being butchered at school (in a country that has little to no religious violence) could not be more normal. This country is outraged at every American military death, however, the only deaths we can control over there, such that fighting another world war would probably be impossible because the American public could never again handle those casualty levels, not with current levels of media coverage (unfortunate, perhaps, for security reasons but nothing to be ashamed of, it’s the sort of collective humanity all too often absent in the Middle East). In fact, the more I think about the connection you’re drawing the more ridiculous and even insulting it seems. So ridiculous even that I’m wondering whether your judgment is really very sound on national-level or global news items. Perhaps you are better served with a little more focus.
4/17/2007 3:31 pm
Hmmm…except you’re not really phrasing what I said accurately. I said that violence is contagious, and that you can’t export violence, or be as glib about it as the Bushies were when they commenced the war, without having it come back to bite you in the ass.
It is, for example, the same culture of violence that leads to anyone being able to buy a gun over the counter in Virginia…or at a gun show…
What I wrote may sound flaky to you. But are the old ways of thinking about this working? Our adventure in the Middle East has led to tens of thousands of deaths abroad and made the whole world a less stable place. Can we really be so sure that violence half a world away has no psychological and cultural impact here?
4/17/2007 3:39 pm
Ok, violence may be contagious in some situations but I think your point here would mean comparing this to other mass murders or spree shootings. For example, if I was making your violence begets violence argument in this situation, I would come down hard on the gratuitous media coverage. It gives the deranged killers just what they want. I know it’s impossible nowadays, but if the MM could show some restraint-especially with the television coverage, show it the respect and attention necessary through print media-perhaps there wouldn’t be such a bankable deliverable for postmortem fame seekers.
4/17/2007 4:13 pm
Richard, don’t take this anon seriously — he’s got some serious xenophobia issues.
Media attention to casualties, he says, is “nothing to be ashamed of, it’s the sort of collective humanity all too often absent in the Middle East.”
And American military deaths are “the only deaths we can control over there,” and therefore the only ones to bother being outraged about. (The first clause may be technically true now, but was not four or even three years ago.)
I question the judgment of anyone who thinks members of a democracy should bear no sense of responsibility for bad things that result from their government’s actions.
And even more I question the judgment of anyone who thinks 30 deaths here (“in a country with little religious violence”) are in any metaphysical sense more important than 30 deaths elsewhere. They may be more important in a policy sense, as a matter of (national?) security, but in no other morally decent way.
Standing Eagle
who reads closely
4/17/2007 4:32 pm
The US culture of guns and violence certainly predates GW and the war in Iraq. Columbine, for example, happened during the Clinton adminstration. To insinuate that the Virginia Tech shootings are tied in even an abstract way to Bush’s foreign policy decisions is absurd.
4/17/2007 4:39 pm
Of course the gun culture predates Bush. On the other hand, the Administration has done far more to promote violence than to curb it, both abroad and at home….
âQ: What is the status of the federal assault weapons ban?
A: The federal law banning the sale of semi-automatic assault weapons, known as the federal assault weapons ban, has expired. It was passed as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. President Clinton signed it into law on September 13, 1994. Despite his promise to renew the ban, President George W. Bush and Congress allowed the ban to “sunset” in September of 2004.â
http://www.bradycampaign.org/facts/faqs/?page=awb
4/17/2007 5:38 pm
You’re changing your point, Richard. Reread your post. There was no mention of US domestic policy regarding guns, but rather an attempt to tie the tragedy in some abstract way to Bush’s foreign policy. Not one of your high points.
4/17/2007 9:12 pm
As always, SE, you quote selectively to your own ends. Of course I’m not saying 30 deaths one place are worse than 30 elsewhere. But I am saying that it’s a fact of life that we have become accustomed to suicide bombings by fanatical Muslim terrorists or insurgents, whatever. Spare me your moral outrage over a hypocrisy that doesn’t exist. You’ve always been a little too generous with your, er, wisdom but this is one issue that doesn’t deserve, let alone need, your intellectual charity. If you and Richard are determined to tie this one to Iraq, perhaps you should just exchange private emails like snide, awkward high-fives.
4/17/2007 9:19 pm
Put down your weapons and I’ll bring back the sun.
Standing Eagle
who always has to have a better fishing story, aka THAT guy
4/17/2007 9:38 pm
9:19 is NOT me.
9:12, if you’ll read the thread you’ll see that I was the first one to tell Richard that there was no sense in tying the VA Tech thing to Iraq, and I stuck to that. The link I was interested in was the one between our media culture’s reaction to this tragedy and its reaction to the tragedy (equivalent in human terms, since each human life is equally valuable) every day in Iraq.
Your sentence illustrates the reason for my outrage rather precisely: “We have become accustomed to suicide bombings by fanatical Muslim terrorists or insurgents, whatever.” Perhaps we have. But on the other hand, WE are not the ones being bombed, are WE? It’s pretty f***ing easy to get used to some other people being bombed, rather than having it happen down the street and knowing you could be next. Are Baghdadis USED TO IT?
You’re “used to” watching it on the news. Bully for you, tough guy.
And before anyone draws a silly equivalency: no, you are NOT going to be the next victim in a rash of university shooting sprees. So don’t pretend that the VA Tech thing “strikes close to home” in a way that remotely resembles a bombing at the melon stand in Sadr City while you’re two stores over buying detergent.
We are used to it, he says. We are used to it. Indeed we are — shamefully so. That was my point.
Actual Standing Eagle
4/18/2007 1:21 am
The chant “Let’s - go - Hokies” at the end of the service in the VT gym is simply a version of the “U -S -A” chant that allows distraction into the cult of the nation/club that distracts from looking beneath any sort of surface to what is really wrong.
4/18/2007 3:17 am
1:21, you’re a sad, sick-minded person. All those soccer fans or music fans out there chanting in unison, they’re all brainwashed, cultists, huh? Funny how a comment as brief as yours can be lame on such an epic level. It usually takes Standing Eagle four paragraphs to get there. Let me guess, you resent sports or group activities in general and you pretend it’s not because you were always chosen last as a child?
4/18/2007 7:22 am
3:17: A minor correction: I prefer to think of my lameness as a sort of georgic, pastoral lameness, rather than aspiring to an epic mode. I keep my opinions like Vergil kept bees.
Standing Eagle
4/18/2007 10:11 pm
3:17 here. Well said, SE-you have your moments.