As much as I hate to start the blog off with this subject, it is what I have.
Needless to say, it has been an excruciating couple of days for this country. By no means do I mean to equate what I am feeling with the pain and suffering of deceased victims' families, survivors and their families, and students of Virginia Tech. However, this particular event strikes me very hard, much as Columbine did in 1999. One tries very hard to look for meaning in acts such as these. Meaning that goes beyond the "he was a loner..", angry at rich kids and religion.... spurned by love interests. I mean, really, we've heard all of this crap before. Most of us have had to deal with these types of emotions at one point or another in our lives. Yet most of us find the mental capacity and fortitude to deal with such circumstances. Most of us ultimately discover this or that is really not what is appeared to be. This girl is not who I thought she was.... this religion holds no sway over me.... being rich is really kind of a pain in the ass! You get the idea.... So why, or perhaps a better question is how is it a bright young mind exacts this type of carnage, culminating in his own death, to express himself?
Obviously killing is the means by which he intended to express himself. The thing that always gets me in a lot of these cases is the incredible detail to which the killer plans his attack. He spends weeks or months thinking about how to do the maximum amount of damage in a short amount of time. Although, I must admit, I chuckled a bit when I read that Cho chained the doors shut at Norris Hall. No one in these cases did that before. It will be interesting to find out how effective that tactic was. Truthfully, I'm surprised, given his age and assumed intelligence, that we wasn't able to kill more. But I digress... As much thought that goes into the attack, there is little or no thought put into his message. A hastily written note... drunken ramblings on videotapes... how the hell is the world supposed to know what you took all of those lives for (including your own)! There will be some who say that Cho attempted to communicate this in his notes, but if you've read his plays, you could see how the message may somehow get lost. I just find it all very difficult to wrap my head around, as a rational person. I know rationale waves bye-bye to these guys to some extent... but if this type of thing is supposed to have a purpose... to send a message... what the hell is it?!
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