OK. What is up with this? This is an excerpt from a play written by our nation's newest and most-well deserved object of disgust and scorn, mass murderer Cho Seung Hui.
I was only joking over at the Washington Monthly when I said that we should have seen it coming from an English major. Now you really have to wonder what's up when this is the kind of work our country's English majors are turning in. Was he going straight to Hollywood with this? Were his prospects good?
We're all pattern-seeking creatures. And the more you think hard, or even lightly a number of times, the more patterns you see. Just yesterday I noticed that all three cabs I took to and from work had their 'service engine' lights on. I noticed it the first time, I chuckled about it the second time. Only the third time did I say something to the driver, and now I'm writing about it. All these patterns will be how we remember whether or not the patterns make sense, and of course how long those patterns make sense will be a function of what feedback we get as we mention them going forward.
The first pattern that clicked with me and has stayed with me since late yesterday afternoon until a few hours ago was that this guy might be here on a student visa and was probably ex-military. Once you have decided to kill, killing 2 people is not very difficult relatively speaking, killing 30 more requires focus and concentration. This guy was reloading his pistols. Sounded like a sick plan to me.
I wonder now, if he chose his victims at random or if he picked the engineering building out specifically related to the fact that he was an English major at a technical university. In that regard I relate him to Omeed Popal the nutjob who stewed for half a day after breaking up with his girlfriend then started plowing into people in San Francisco.
I remember writing ugly poetry, but nothing like this. I was 19 or so and reading a lot of Stephen King and my ugly poetry was about the confessing mind of a monster who left a trail of blood. But like the movies of the day, the actual description of the killing was done off scene, off script, and what was left to tell was the sad tale. Cho worked in the present tense, in the planning tense. There is no inner dialog against Richard McBeef, he simply must die and the only thing that's unsaid is the plan. Plot details for a sick mind.
I hope I don't have to, but I'm sure I will end up in discussions about how we can guarantee that this 'will never happen again'. That is to say I'm not trying to hear anything about psychological interventions and screenings and other procedures designed to keep us all safe. And yet this is about process, and it is about how shallow our conversations are when it comes to talking about what's inside us. This is why I wrote about sacred honor yesterday. Our public institutions are devoid of that and we make no sacrifices or pledges to honor. And if you ask me, this is what has degraded the quality of our higher education. No essay questions, just fill in the blanks. Somebody get me this guy's SAT score, this is what we've substituted for the content of our character.
When I get a chance, I'm going to watch Master and Commander again. If you ask me why I'm an Anglophile despite what the Brits have apparently become today, it is because they took over the world and reorganized it without the benefit of computers or technology as we know it today. They had fierce loyalties to codes of honor deeply rooted in traditions of chivalry, yes a patriarchy that worked - that maintained values through many generations. We have yet to accomplish that, but it is what must be accomplished to keep our world well lit. We must have faith and discipline so that we are not overcome by the fatalism that often accompanies the inexplicable tragedy.
The heroic story in this, if you haven't heard, is the sacrifice of one of the professors as he blocked the door and placed his body between the shooter and his students. His name was Liviu Librescu. He too was born elsewhere than here. He was in America for a reason, to teach the science and mathematics. This is one of the men we lost to that maniac.
We'll all have our ways of dealing with this tragedy, and despite the fact that people die every day around the world for no good reason, we are rectified in our anger that such a thing should happen in one of the institutions that is imbued with so much trust and faith in our future. We all know how college students should behave. We all understand the responsibilities and privileges of the collegian. The university is central to our belief in meritocracy. And so we will ask ourselves if we are to remain the America we must be, how it is that one so crude manages to spew his murderous rage against those in the midst of fulfilling their American dreams. There's a fundamental incompatibility here.
I'll close in repeating...
For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our Sacred Honor.
Until we are ready to make such mutual pledges to ourselves and to our posterity to provide for our common defense and domestic tranquility, we'll be unable to distinguish ourselves from the shooters. Being an American means more than just being here, it means pledging allegiance.
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