Who Cares That 32 People Were Shot at Virginia Tech?

Since my role on this blog is to play devil's advocate of political and social issues, I'll have to be a little insensitive here and say that relatively, this massacre at Virginia Tech is barely newsworthy. The key word in that statement being relatively. Of course its a horrible tragedy, even 1 person being violently murdered is a horrible tragedy. But I'm sorry, this event has dominated the news all week, will be the cover story on every weekly news magazine, and has all of America talking about everything from gun control to race issues to mental health to our prescription drug culture, (he was on mind altering anti-depressants.)

But you know what happened in Iraq yesterday? I don't know either, but I guarantee you that way more than 32 people died in a violent horrific tragedy. You know why we don't really know, because it happens EVERY day. So why is this Virgina Tech thing such a huge issue? Because it was Americans? There have been days where 32 American soldiers died in a 24 hour period. It never makes headlines for more than 24 hours though. The only mention something like that will garner is, "and in Iraq today, 32 American soldiers were killed, making this the bloodiest day in Iraq since last July." Whenever scores of Americans are blown up in Iraq, its always just, "the bloodiest day since" a few months ago. And in other news a cat got stuck in a tree, and yet another member of Bush's cabinet is stepping down after being proven to be incompetent, totally corrupt, and a liar.

So is all this hubub because this happened IN America? Why does the location of a tragedy rank so heavily in how tragic a tragedy is perceived to be? What happened in Virginia happens 10 fold in Iraq every day. Hundreds of bodies found with electric drill holes in their kneecaps and foreheads. A hundred people blown up in a crowded market, a few thousand leave their homes and all their possesions and become war refugees. Everyone is asking how this horrible tragedy at V-Tech occured; why didn't the school take earlier action, why didn't his mental health practitioners see this coming, why was he able to buy a gun when he had a history of mental health problems?
Why isn't there an army of guards with kevlar vests and M16s positioned in every hallway and classroom in an average college?

When something like this happens everyone scrambles to point the blame, and every scrambles to ask how did this happen and why didn't we prevent it. WHY? Because there are hundreds if not thousands or wierdos that have stalked chicks on campuses, or were picked on or abused, or were depressed and on heavy medication, or are mentally unstable and own guns, but NONE OF THEM GO ON SHOOTING SPREES! They're supposed to know that of the thousands of wackos out there like Suong Hui Cho, this particular guy was going to go on a rampage? They say, "jeez, there were warning signs, why didn't you know he was going to do something?" Which is like saying, "jeez, there were warning signs, why didn't you tell us it was going to rain today?" No, its actually more like, "Why didn't you tell us it was going to rain in the Gobi desert today?"

I digress, but I just can't stand the hypocrisy, because we DO know exactly why and how the far greater tragedy of Iraq came about. Its was chosen willfully! Everyone said that what is happeningin Iraq was GOING to happen! Long before the invasion! But the Bush administration said, "no that's not what's going to happen, so we're doing it anyway... Oh whoops! We'll admit, some mistakes were made." Yeah of course they were, because they are exactly what was fucking predicted. So you can't really call them, "mistakes" now can you? Blunders maybe. Hubris definitely. But if someone warns you not to put your hand down the garbage disposal and turn it on, and you turn around 5 seconds later an do it, your mangled hand is not a fucking "mistake," its the fucking height of idiocy and arrogance.

So let's just put things in perspective here. Over the next few decades, (which is the least amount of time it could take for peace to settle over that region,) Iraq will be Virginia Tech time a million in terms of the lives destroyed. Or let's put it another way: How many people die of starvation in America every day, or of some easily curable disease, or freeze to death, or are murdered in violent crimes for that matter? I bet you that on most days, any one of these categories exceeds 32, and combined, easily exceed 100.

So maybe we should not worry so much about a crazy guy who goes on a rampage from time to time, because that shit will always happen in an free society, and there's really nothing we can do to prevent it, short of closing the open society. Maybe we should worry about the hundred plus people that die every single day because of policies that are consciously chosen, and because of steps that could be more or less easily enacted if there were just the political will to do so and maybe the amount of money directed towards them that we spend on a couple of tanks that we'll never use again, or at most, an aircraft carrier. If we were down just 1 aircraft carrier, I wonder how many American lives could be saved with that money.

We could use this money to save the lives of a several thousand people, but instead, we're choosing to let them die, and use this money to buy stuff for killing even more people. Ah, the American way.