I’m consciously avoiding writing directly about the Virginia Tech shootings — by directing rage at cable news or politicians — because it is one of those things I don’t feel comfortable or knowledgeable about, at least, enough to criticize. Gun control? Criminalizing mental illness? Profiling of loners? None of these seem to be the answer… and yet they all do.
Frustration lies at the heart of it all, and I assume that it also the case with a sizable number of people. Frustration at not being able to fathom it, frustration that once again the person who did this gave so many warning signs and was even put into mental illness intervention — yet still did it; frustration that with a tragedy like this comes punditry and politics and hatred; frustrated that some seeking the limelight are openly blaming the victims for what happened.
I’m frustrated that foreign politicians and local press alike are fanning the flames of racial hatred simply by asking, over and over, if there will be racial hatred. Why are we as a species still so frightened of those who are not the same as us? Why would one, obviously mentally ill, person represent millions upon millions of his fellow South Koreans? Ridiculous.
I deliberately did not watch the news tonight after it was announced that the shooter had sent a manifesto package to NBC. I knew that media outlets everywhere would scramble to saturate the airwaves and internet with whatever they could find. It’s not the sensationalism that I was avoiding, but rather the content. I really didn’t see how this would make me understand what was in a madman’s psyche. I can’t, and won’t, understand.
We are inured to the devastation of lives taking place in Iraq, so much so that 131 lives lost in car bombings today can scarcely divert our attention to the loss of lives in Virginia. I am frustrated that I can’t better articulate how I feel about deaths here and deaths there, that if I said they were equally devastating that someone would take issue.
I don’t understand.
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