Before I begin this rant, I want to express my condolences to the friends and family of those injured and killed during yesterday’s violence at Virginia Tech University. No one should have to worry that they or someone they love will be senselessly killed while doing the right thing……going to school. It is hard enough to keep youth interested in education and to pile on it worries about whether or not it is safe for them to go in the first place is just ridiculous.
Increasingly over the next handful of seconds the media focuses on this incident (before being sidetracked by who got booted off the next episode of American Idol), we will hear recriminations and handwringing over what happened. I have already heard outcries against the campus police and the beginnings of the next renderings for and against gun control. The “Blame Game” is in full force and is pointing its trigger at the most convenient (easiest???) spots, but that’s nothing new.
I’m not a police officer nor an expert in law enforcement or criminal justice. I do have family and friends who were once or are cops, so let’s say I am inclined to give the campus security the benefit of the doubt. I mean, given the commonplace incidents security is always planning for with limited if not dwindling budgets, does a school use resources on planning for the uncommon or the everyday? People seem to want everything for the same $1.85 with little mind to the fact that one can’t get blood from a stone. But, I digress…….
As a political wonk, I want in on this fray. My two cents into this Blame Game points to the two real culprits. The first is the shooter himself. Let’s not forget that we would be discussing the latest celebrity blooper or continue complaining about the lack of peace in the Middle East if the shooter had not shot anyone. He brought this on….he made this happen. If he had gone to therapy, taken some Paxil, or called a hotline instead of shooting people who had nothing to do with and/or control over whatever ailed him, Virginia Tech would be on the front page of the New York Times for other reasons (a winning sports season or G-d forbid, high academic achievement, maybe!?!). The shooter has sole and full responsibility for what he did, even if we don’t have the revengeful pleasure of watching him prosecuted for his crimes on Court TV.
I think it is because we don’t have that pleasure that we want to look elsewhere to place our anger and pain. The police and campus security are convenient – we often want authority figures to be mind readers and somehow know who is going to doing something senseless and stupid like this and breach that person’s civil liberties ahead of their actions. I heard a so-called “expert” on a NPR show this afternoon talk about how his agency taught numerous police forces to successfully do just that and how he personally knew of 100s of threats adverted because of their work. Yeah, sure. So when are you going to give me the right lottery numbers, eh? Like the old saying goes, there’s nothing guaranteed in life but death and taxes.
There is someone else though I want to add into the mix of the “Blame Game”. Everyone reading this should pick up a mirror and look into it then you know who I mean. Every single adult walking the Main Streets of America has chunk of this blame to share with every other American adult. No, don’t go to the recording industry-you either give your kids the money to buy the albums or you buy them yourselves. No, don’t blame Hollywood-you either give your kids the ride to the movieplex or you go with them. No, don’t blame the video games-the average gamer is an adult with a J-O-B who could easily waste his/her money elsewhere. It’s your fault, my fault, and every other American’s fault that violence in this country has gotten so out of hand.
Most violence doesn’t start with the massacre of 33 innocent people. I have to agree with that “expert” on NPR today about one thing-usually this stuff starts with someone taking a minor slight or broken heart then notching things up a level. Then someone or something notches it up a bit further leading, quite possibly to some words or pushing. Add some alcohol, and things move to the punch or knife. Add more alcohol or a few days more anger and guns get involved. Anyone will tell you, once you’re over the first murder, the next ones are easy.
The lack of anger management and overall emotional control amongst the adults, particularly the adult males of this country, is of epidemic proportions. We have become so narcissistic and self-focused that we have forgotten that we share the planet with other people and those people have got rights too. When my daughter was going through the “terrible twos”, my constant refrain to her was “you may be the center of my universe but you’re just another planet to everyone else and you’d best get aligned with the rest of the stars.” Harsh, I know. But it is in childhood that we must make sure that kids consider the feelings, needs, thoughts, wants, etc. of others so we aren’t astonished later.
I’m not sure why this shooter started this but I hear that it was over a girl. Columbine was over being bullied. Some guys got shot recently in Detroit over a seat at a club. When did these things call for someone being shot, let alone the shooting of a bunch of people who had nothing to do with it? Leave the NRA and gun control out of it. I want a law demanding that saying that children betaught and can pass a test of self-control before they leave kindergarten. Now that would be a real “No Child Left Behind” policy.
No comments:
Post a Comment