Processing the Virgina Tech Shootings

Over the next several days, columnists, bloggers, and talking heads alike will be pointing fingers towards causes of random acts of mass violence.

We want to know why. The usual suspects will be cited: environmental factors such as impurities in food, pollution, a hyper-violent society, particularly on television and on video games. Some will delve into the psyche of a killer: want to know whether these accusations of molestation were true or were, in fact, the rambling of a deranged psychotic.

I have to say that I slightly disagree with the majority of my lefty bloggers. This is not to say that I think gun control isn't an important issues, just that it's a facet of a larger problem that we in society have yet to confront. This country has had a history of violence, no matter how we've tried to obscure it in fantasy and mythology.

We fought for our independence. We fought and killed off a race of indigenous peoples. We fought and enslaved another race of people instead. We fought between North and South. We fought for land and conquest and money many times over.

I've been watching D.W. Griffith's silent masterpiece, Broken Blossoms. The plot is inconsequential to this post, but one inter-title struck me. It mentioned how the older Asian religions had long since shunned overt violence, but the Western Anglo-Saxons were brutish figures, violent and aggressive--apparently born that way.

How ironic, then, that the native shooter is a native of the seemingly non-violent Orient: talk about irony.

I do mirror some of the comments made by fellow bloggers. We must confront an epidemic of mental illness that runs rampant in this society and raise more money to find its cause and treatment. We must remove the veil of shame that, despite having been muted over the years, still stigmatizes those who suffer. We must forgive the killer for his evil actions, knowing how troubled he must have been. It is the least we can do.