First thing is this: I really don’t want to get myself involved in the response to the Virginia Tech shootings – like everyone, I have my own private response to national (scale) tragedies, and generally I like to stay uninvolved until I have an informed opinion that I feel needs to be shared. I pay attention to everything and watch it unfold, and then, if it really doesn’t involve me (as indeed I have absolutely nothing to do with the university, nor do I know anybody who has ever attended), I will speak about it in terms of a completed past.

Having said that, I would like to respond to the responses that I have encountered in the last couple of days.

I wasn’t outraged at anybody or anything when I read about the shootings. I was saddened, but not moved to anger. Other people, however, have been moved to anger. I have heard the words, “Goddamn terrorist.” In conversation, one of my co-workers said, “You know what really makes me mad? There had been bomb threats a short while before. What were they thinking?”

“What a dumbass!” is what I think every time I hear somebody point their finger. But I guess it’s only natural. My co-worker is a smart person. People are upset, and of course they’d love a scapegoat. The trouble is, the logical scapegoat – Cho, the shooter – also killed himself, thus taking away any figure for us to throw our figurative stones at. It’s not fair, but the fact of the matter is the only real scapegoat we should be using to deal with grief is already dead, and he did the deed himself. (What a morbid thought, right? But it’s true.) So now people are going around saying it’s the university’s fault, oh, they should have done more to prevent this, and oh, his parents must be terrible people to have raised such a person, and oh, it’s those violent video games, he wrote violent stories, he should have been locked up ahead of time, and oh, this is really the fault of the NRA, they should be disbanded.

Let me just stop you right now, folks – the university, in hindsight, might have locked down the campus and spent their resources searching for the murderer of the first couple that was shot, but from all angles, it looked like a domestic issue; if it was in fact a domestic issue, they would have been foolish to lock the campus down. It wasn’t a domestic issue after all. Give the university a break. I don’t know anything about Cho’s parents, but chances are even if they were bad parents, they probably didn’t want this to happen. We can’t go around locking up anybody who had bad parents growing up; our jails are too full as it is. And if we lock up anybody who writes violent stories, we might also imprison Stephen King and Quentin Tarentino. As for the NRA – I am by no means a fan of the NRA, in fact I wish they would just dissolve, but the fact is that they have a right to exist because of the first amendment in our Constitution. They have as much a right to exist as an organization as does the ACLU; the ACLU will tell you the same. The NRA must be fought, vehemently, but peaceably and intelligently.

It’s especially frustrating to me because this is the same type of response we saw after Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. Half the nation got hot on the trail of who to blame, when in the meantime people were still homeless down there – impeaching the president over that would not have helped the displaced population in the least bit.

Anyway, my point is this: there are about a million factors that contributed to why this guy did what he did, so grieve how you must, but do me a favor – don’t pretend to know what was going through his head, don’t pretend to know the one source of all his troubles, and don’t pretend you could have prevented it if you were in anyone else’s situation. Instead, try to focus on the people who are still alive.

Seriously.

My second thought is this: turkey is a much better lunch meat than I give it credit for. I used to say, “Why should I bother spending my own money on turkey? There are other, better lunch meats, and if I will spend any money at all, it surely will not be for turkey.” But for the last month, I have found myself getting turkey sporadically throughout my daily life. Once at a café – turkey Panini. Once at the grocery market – one package of turkey instead of chicken. Here and there. Like that.

I used to cry tryptophan. “Tryptophan! Tryptophan! It will put me to sleep, and the sky will fall down before I awake!” Actually, tons of things have tryptophan, it’s an essential amino acid, and a small serving of turkey will actually do relatively nothing to cause me severe drowsiness. Somebody told me that, and I tested the theory – it’s true.

I had forgotten how much I actually enjoy the taste of it. Thanksgiving feasts made me believe it would put me out. And I’m not really sure where I got the notion that it’s so cheap that it’s not worth spending money on (that’s like saying water has so little nutritional value, you might as well not drink any at all). But all that’s changed, and if I feel like a turkey sandwich next time I go to a café, I won’t be scared.

This is worth noting, because I’m the type of person to go around and insist that just because you tried sushi once upon a time and didn’t like it doesn’t mean that you won’t like it now.

I still hate mushrooms, though. I always have, and I probably always will.

These two thoughts have nothing to do with each other, and yet I seem to have squashed them into the same blog. How dynamic of me. Overzealous, though, you might say. Sorry. Maybe I can tie them together somehow.

Okay, check it out: see, maybe if Cho had had enough tryptophan in his diet, he’d have been a mellower dude. Yeah, that’s the ticket…I guess the bottom line is that individuals can change, but people stay the same.

Right?

Filed by Bil at 12:26 pm under General, Social Issues