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hbrennan
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Philippines
1455 Posts |
 Posted - 04/22/2007 : 3:22:11 PM
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No flames, Pip. you raise valid points. But I tend to look at things in a "harsh" light. Sure - deaths can be prevented with the "correct" solutions to the gun control issue (whatever that means). Just as deaths can be prevented when a "correct" approach to detected mental illness is put in place. But, in my opinion, little of this pertains to what happened at Virginia Tech. It is what it is - and no amount of analyzing will lend an ultimate insight. As I stated in my opening - a sociopath is a sociopath. And an intelligent one who had planned well can kill a large number of people under any circumstances (whether it's with a suicide bomb, a truck full of fertilizer, a plane or a knife). Imagine a former Navy Seal, turned psychotic. How many people do you think he could have killed at Viginia Tech - even if the place had armed guards? My guess is more than 32. Preventative psychological intervention coupled with standardized terrorist procedures seem to be the best way to start in dealing with this problem.
"...yet it hadn't destroyed his brain."
re: Charles "The Butcher" Benton (1956)
http://www.henrybrennan.com/
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Edited by - hbrennan on 04/22/2007 10:45:35 PM |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 04/22/2007 : 11:29:23 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Greenhornet
A te4acher who was caught in the Collumbine murders stood by the door with a fire extingisher to protect his students. We NEED men and women with courage, not laws that prevent us from defending ourselves and others and (in too many cases) punishing those who resist criminals.
Yes, that last part is true, and it wasn't always people who fired or even only pointed a gun.
Undoubtedly true. If a student of Virginia Tech had broken off a table leg and bludgeoned Cho to death with it, he (or she) would this very day be considered a hero by most media outlets.
Had that same student produced a handgun from his bookbag and shot Cho, he or she would likely have been expelled from college and facing a civil liability suit.
But the bottom line is you must resist. Especially if you are a man. Perhaps this is an outdated and even shocking concept to some, but there comes a point in life when a man must realize that he is expendable, but that women and children are absolutely not expendable. This is a cornerstone of civilization.
When men stop living up to their obligations as men, their "gender roles", as feminist academians drolly refer too, then none of this is going to last very long.
Kiss it goodbye. |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 04/23/2007 : 6:13:52 PM
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The thing is is that most everyone around him knew he wasn't stable.
Pip and CC, you are absolutely correct. Too many "men" don't act like men. It's years of media and educational preaching about the "evils" of masculinity and the tearing down of expectations of what a man should be. There's even more to it than that, but I'll try not to rant. Anyways, how could a self-respecting man leave a 70+ year old man to hold the door against the gunman. It's brave of the professor, but cowardly of the male students.
I'm a Traditionalist and hold such views of society.
Mr. Brennan, I see your point and it's true to some extent. However, we almost encourage this as a society. The DailyKos had some guy talking about how Cho was justified for his actions. A healthy society would have put Cho in an institution for obvious mental problems. If he somehow got to the point of his rampage, that same healthy society would have reacted in a way that would minimize the damage by aggressively responding and not acting like sheep. In the aftermath, a healthy society wouldn't act in the narcissistic manner we see today, but would speak of the evil of this man's actions, mourn in a dignified manner, and seek to reasonably address how he was enabled. So, yes there will always be evil people willing to commit evil acts. But a healthy society doesn't have as many.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
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New Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
469 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 07:32:51 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Citizen Carrier
A political commentator recently wrote that tragedies like this are usually followed by a perceived need to "do something about it".
This was not a tragedy, nor was it a disaster. A tragedy is when a college student, with his belly full of beer and his soul full of a youthful sense of "it can't happen to me" invulnerability, drives drunk and dies in a traffic accident. An earthquake is a disaster. This was a massacre. |
Edited by - New Hinda on 04/26/2007 07:34:02 AM |
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nshumate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
464 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 07:38:39 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by New Hinda
quote:
Originally posted by Citizen Carrier
A political commentator recently wrote that tragedies like this are usually followed by a perceived need to "do something about it".
This was not a tragedy, nor was it a disaster. A tragedy is when a college student, with his belly full of beer and his soul full of a youthful sense of "it can't happen to me" invulnerability, drives drunk and dies in a traffic accident. An earthquake is a disaster. This was a massacre.
Wasn't a "tragedy" either, in the classic sense; that's when an otherwise good or potentially good person is undone by their own actions and flaws. Cho was not a "tragic figure"; we have another word for his kind.
"LOSER."
Nathan Shumate
http://www.coldfusionvideo.com |
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New Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
469 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 09:11:02 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by nshumate
Wasn't a "tragedy" either, in the classic sense; that's when an otherwise good or potentially good person is undone by their own actions and flaws. Cho was not a "tragic figure"; we have another word for his kind.
"LOSER."
Nathan Shumate
http://www.coldfusionvideo.com
A college student's sense of "it can't happen to me" invulnerability is a flaw. You're right about Cho being a "LOSER." |
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New Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
469 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 09:19:07 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Citizen Carrier
Now they are running stories that Cho was picked on in high school.
Oh God! Say it ain't so! Somebody, surrounded by a bunch of other emotionally immature people with the fragile egos of teenagers, got picked on in high school?
Sorry, but I'm holding this guy responsible for his actions. Even his own grandfather seems to be doing this. He was right about one thing. This didn't have to happen. The jackass could've not murdered people.
I was picked on in high school and I bet other people on this forum were. We all managed not to shoot anybody. I also hold this guy responsible for his actions. |
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Citizen Carrier
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
322 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 09:51:23 AM
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Honestly, when I chose to use the word "tragedy" I was second guessing myself in that I should've used the word "atrocity".
I broke one of my own unwritten rules of political commentary.
For example, I do not refer to 9/11 as a "tragedy". A hurricane is a tragedy. Plays can be tragedies. Car accidents are tragedies.
"Tragedy" suggests that nobody is really to blame and that it is akin to an act of God. Fate. The Muses. Whatever.
Virginia Tech was an atrocity.
Thomas Sowell blames the increased incidents of mass shootings like this in America since the 1960s mainly on how 1960s sensibilities took away the concept of individual responsibility and replaced it with the concept of collective responsibility.
If you are unhappy. Miserable. Don't have everything you think you should have, well, other people are to blame for that. And under those auspices it makes a kind of sick logical sense to walk into your workplace or school and punish everyone who is responsible for it.
Until Virginia Tech, the most egregious example of this idea of "collective responsibility" dating from the 1960s was when Ward Churchill referred to the victims of 9/11 as "little Eichmanns" who it was perfectly logical to target with Arab grievances.
Another example of why I sometimes wish America and the World could've just skipped over the entire decade of the 1960s... |
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New Hinda
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
Israel
469 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 10:28:12 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Citizen Carrier
Honestly, when I chose to use the word "tragedy" I was second guessing myself in that I should've used the word "atrocity".
I broke one of my own unwritten rules of political commentary.
For example, I do not refer to 9/11 as a "tragedy". A hurricane is a tragedy. Plays can be tragedies. Car accidents are tragedies.
"Tragedy" suggests that nobody is really to blame and that it is akin to an act of God. Fate. The Muses. Whatever.
No. A hurricane or an earthquake is not a tragedy. A hurricane or an earthquake is a disaster, literally "dis-aster," as in astrology, bad horoscope or bad luck or an act of God or fate or whatever. Macbeth and Edipus Rex are tragedies because they deal with potentially good men who are destroyed by their own flaws. A car accident is a tragedy because it is caused by somebody's flaw-usually carelessness. The Virginia Tech shooting was, as you said, an atrocity. |
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Food
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
342 Posts |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 04/26/2007 : 8:32:09 PM
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Atrocity covers it well. It's interesting that the people who use words for a living (press, commentators, politicians) are so imprecise in the terms they use.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
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nshumate
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
464 Posts |
Posted - 04/27/2007 : 07:37:20 AM
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People use "tragedy" to characterize a very sorrowful event mainly because, in English, we don't have anything stronger than "a damned shame."
Nathan Shumate
http://www.coldfusionvideo.com |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 04/27/2007 : 4:06:11 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by nshumate
People use "tragedy" to characterize a very sorrowful event mainly because, in English, we don't have anything stronger than "a damned shame."
Nathan Shumate
http://www.coldfusionvideo.com
Yes, and it has trivialized the word. When someone so much as stubs their toe nowadays the press labels it a tragedy. The word has lost its meaning...
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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Terrahawk
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
644 Posts |
Posted - 04/28/2007 : 10:38:22 PM
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They've done the same thing with hero. I've always considered a hero someone who does something extraordinary. Someone may do something brave but that isn't necessarily heroic. Today though, we call just about everyone heroes.
- While science has societal benefits, science is not a social virtue. - |
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Gristle McThornbody
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
Germany
186 Posts |
Posted - 04/29/2007 : 07:10:08 AM
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quote:
Originally posted by Terrahawk
They've done the same thing with hero. I've always considered a hero someone who does something extraordinary. Someone may do something brave but that isn't necessarily heroic. Today though, we call just about everyone heroes.
That's very heroic of you to point that out, Terrahawk. It's tragic that no one else thought to post that.
;^)
"Hi, I'm Bob Evil!" |
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