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Condolences and questions
I was just reading the news about the poor students who were murdered today.
As much as the jaded side of me wants to relate this to other issues, I won't. To do so would be selfish and demeaning to the victims and their families and friends.
Some of my colleagues at work say that this is the result of a "gun-addicted" US culture, but I don't think so. We have had similar tragedies in Canada and yet we do not have a gun-oriented culture.
I will conclude by saying that a reasonable person cannot understand this crime because a reasonable person will never understand insanity.
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You know, part of me wishes that if the average American can feel so much empathy for the murdered students, why can't they feel the same thing for the countless murdered Iraqi civilians?
Even if it is just for the 10s of 1000s of dead Iraqi children who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I wonder what societal monsters this war is creating for their future today?
Do you remember that young man who went on a shooting rampage in the US mall not too long ago? Did you know he was a child survivor of the massacre of Srebrenica?
... tick tick tick tick goes the clock in their brain, then ... the alarm just goes off.
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I wonder why these crimes seem to happen more frequently and with more ferocity than in the past?
The Canadian
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I appreciate your restraint, and agree that this tragedy is not merely, as so many want it to be, an object lesson for or against gun control.
As for the 'why' of the increasing frequency of such slaughters, my best guess would involve numerous contributing factors, including western society's skyrocketing insanity, and the "role model" factor, as tomorrow's psychotics watch coverage of today's slaughters in public places.
Helen & Harry
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Yes, one could write a thesis or two on the subject of decaying social fabric. No point,
however, as I think these cycles will play themselves out regardless.
Sometimes, that little dismissive voice in the lower recesses of one's brain wonders if it wouldn't be better to wipe the slate clean and start over? Of course, this fleeting thought collapses with the realization that there is no such thing as utopia.
So...what's next?
Another pair of home grown gas station snipers? A mall shooting rampage? Copy cat killings?
You know, if I were a terrorist, I could easily cause massive chaos by placing a handful of snipers in large cities. Then I would create a traffic snarl on one of the main arteries of their freeways by having colleagues break-down in inconvenient places.
Once the traffic is snarled for miles and no-one has anywhere to go, the well-concealed sniper just starts picking people off in a random fashion.
Of course since the sniper will make the mistake of firing multiple times from 1 location, in order not to give away their position, one would need a rifle affixed with a silencer.
There is no defense against such an act and the chaos factor would be extremely high. How could one defend the breadth of a freeway?
How long will it take for some group to come up with this insane idea?
The Canadian
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The possibilities are endless, and certainly a few similarly horrible notions have popped into my head on rare occasions over the years. Never as ideas I'd pursue, because I'm not insane, but often as "What's to prevent?" scenarios. And of course, the only safeguard against all such "What's to prevent?" scenarios is totalitarianism.
Actually, I'm sometimes amazed at how rarely such psychotic mass murders occur. I mean, really, isn't it just remarkable that in 230 or so years of guns being generally available across America, a mere 32 killed (latest count I've heard) in one mass murder is supposedly the most?
Of course, one suspects there's plenty of small print and asterisks behind such a "record". Thirty-two dead is a lot, hell of a lot if you're one of the dead or you knew one of the dead. The Bath School bombing in 1927 killed 45, but even if the 'record' is limited to shootings, does anyone doubt that Indian encampments were sometimes surprise attacked, with men, women, and children killed in far greater numbers than 32? After race riots or mass lynchings in the South, did anyone count the corpses? And were industrial "accidents" like the Triangle factory fire really "accidents" in any meaningful sense? And so on...
Helen & Harry
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I understand your view, and I think it is entirely correct.
You know, part of me wishes that if the average American can feel so much empathy for the murdered students, why can't they feel the same thing for the countless murdered Iraqi civilians? Even if it is just for the 10s of 1000s of dead Iraqi children who are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wonder what societal monsters this war is creating for their future today?
Do you remember that young man who went on a shooting rampage in the US mall not too long ago? Did you know he was a child survivor of the massacre of Srebrenica? [see sidebar, right]
... tick tick tick tick goes the clock in their brain, then ... the alarm just goes off.
The Canadian
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Thanks, and no, I'd missed that little nugget of background information amidst the many hours and pages of shallow in-depth coverage devoted to the Trolley Square killings.
I wonder how many future terrorists have been molded by the rage and hatred manufactured in Washington DC but exported to Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course, we only see the first round of killing, and only the tidbits of death that make the news... our children and grandchildren will see the repercussions.
Helen & Harry
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A child of violence: Killer survived genocide
by Ben Winslow, Deseret News [Salt Lake City]
and Nedim Hasic, Slobodna Bosna| |
Excerpt: As a little boy in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sulejman Talovic hid in fear from the Serb military forces who were slaughtering Muslim men and boys as war and genocide ravaged his country.
Years later, the 18-year-old slaughtered five people in Salt Lake City's Trolley Square mall before dying in a shootout with police officers.
A world away, those who knew him say he was an "ordinary kid" with dreams of America, and they are unable to comprehend that he could have committed such a crime.
"I know all Talovic family," said Omer Johic, who was a neighbor of the Talovic family in the Bosnian village of Cerska, near Srebrenica. "Everybody are nice, quiet and fine people, and I just cannot believe that Sulejman has been able to kill those people."
But neighbors also acknowledged that the war in Bosnia likely left its mark on the boy. During the war, the family lived for five years as refugees in Bosnia and spent almost a year in the mountains hiding from the Serb military forces, neighbors said.
Up to 200,000 people were killed and 1.8 million others lost their homes in Bosnia's 1992-95 war. ... |
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