Self-Creation Through Annihilation

Every so often, something happens that makes me question exactly what kind of hellish reality I am living in. Today, only a few days from the Columbine anniversary, someone in Virginia woke up, got dressed, loaded himself with two 9MM handguns and ammunition aplenty, and proceeded to massacre 32 innocent students and teachers in cold blood at Virginia Tech University. This was before he put to good use the only worthwhile bullet in his arsenal, by shooting himself in the head.

Columbine, Jonesboro, Stockton, Austin, Springfield, Nickel Mines, move over. Today’s slaughter ranks (for now) as the worst mass murder in American history. I have no doubt that this record will not stand very long. It was only a few months ago – October 2, 2006 – that a homicidal lunatic killed 11 girls, execution style, in an Amish school in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Eleven girls. In an AMISH school. I didn’t write about it then, because I think I was too dumbfounded. Who kills little girls? Who kills the Amish? They are the most peaceful people on the planet. The whole thing was so shocking, so fucking obscene, that I didn’t even know what to say, or what to write. I wasn’t concerned that there wouldn’t be future opportunities to opine on this subject, however. Because in these United States of America, suicidal, disaffected, homicidal rampages are like buses. If you miss one, don’t worry, another one will be here in 15 minutes. Which is about the same amount of time as the ensuing, inevitable, and ultimately futile debate over gun control will last. Don’t blink, you’ll miss it.

As I write this, they still haven’t identified the shooter, except to say that he was a student at the school, and they believe he was of Asian descent. They also don’t know his motive. The Big Question: WHY? Everyone wants to know why. Why did he do it? Why was he on such a rampage? Why did he kill random strangers? We ask these questions because it’s a human impulse to want to make sense of the senseless. To understand and explain away random violence. We want to apply our logic to the situation, ostensibly for the purpose of doing something else that is very human, comprehending the problem, so we can solve the problem. If we keep asking the right questions, 9 times out of 10, we’ll get the answers we need to move forward, to evolve. That other one time? Hey, you can’t win them all. That's why we're still using umbrellas that don't work as well as they're supposed to.

So let’s take a stab at why. First, there’s the personal. In the coming days, this piece of dogshit will be found to be one or more of the following: troubled, depressed, disaffected, angry (at his girlfriend, at his parents, at his school, at his classmates, or with himself), chemically imbalanced, frustrated, and possibly ostracized. I think we’ll find also that his parents did a less than stellar job raising him. On average, people who do things like this don’t come from A+ family situations.

Second, there’s the culture. Who are we kidding? American culture is violent. We’re bombarded with violence every day. And we fucking love it. Football, WWF Wrestling, hockey fights. Our bestest most favorite t.v. show, 24, features a secret agent, Jack Bauer, who tortures at least one person in every episode. And this season has, so far, featured one (1) detonation of a nuclear bomb in the City of Los Angeles. Don’t even get me started on our movies. Saw IV anyone?

American history is violent. This country was FOUNDED on violence! We kicked the living shit out of the Native Americans and stuck them in reservations, fucked the English up the ass (with a little French help) and got our independence, pummeled Mexico and took half her country (though she’s kind of taking it back these days, ha ha), gave Spain the what for, nailed Germany to the wall, stalemated China in Korea, and won the Cold War after hitting a sizable Vietnamese speedbump. All with the help of a lot of guns, bullets, and bombs. There is a reason why the American eagle, our national symbol, holds in one of its taloned claws a quiver of sharp arrows. Violence is the American way. This isn’t to say the history of other countries isn’t violent (shit, I tell my Italian cousins when they try to bust my balls over the American Indian, look what the ROMANS did!), but we’ve really got it down.

Today we’ve got first person shooter video games where you can select from 100 weapons of varying devastation, and do your level best to inflict a “head shot” on your enemy, whether he is a German WWII soldier, a carnivorous demon, an undead zombie, or simply, an Altered States experiment gone wondrously awry. We’ve got our gangsta rap. We’ve got our gangs. We’ve got our serial killers and our C.S.I. Miami/New York/East Bumfuck to glorify them. We’ve got our NRA, one of the biggest, most insidious, most society-fucking lobbies in the U.S. And to protect our right to bear arms, we’ve got our overactive, archaic, misused and abused Second Amendment. I repeat: From My Cold Dead Hands.

Third, we’ve got our wars. Let’s not forget them. Seeing “88 Iraqis Dead In Market Bombing” as a nightly headline makes you numb after awhile. It’s only when Americans die that Americans pay attention.

All of this bombards America’s senses every single day.

Fourth, we’ve got all those guns floatin’ around. Millions and millions of them. Just waiting to be caressed, touched, loved, and popped off. This country LOVES its firearms. We. Love. Guns. How do I know this? Just look around you. Getting gun control legislation passed in this country is harder than pooping an ice cube. And when they do finally pass a gun control law, they leave enough loopholes that anyone can jump through it and get the guns they need without too much trouble.

Example: Gun shows. While background checks are required before guns can be sold in stores and most other places, a huge loophole exempts gun shows from this requirement. This means that any miscreant can go to a gun show and buy a gun without even getting a fucking background check. Oh but T., how many MURDERERS shop at gun shows? Plenty of them. Messrs. Klebold and Harris obtained guns this way before using them at Columbine. For further analysis, go rent or buy Bowling for Columbine by Michael Moore. It’s not as over the top is his 9/11 movie, trust me. Another problem is that the gun laws we have are not enforced. Neither the gun show operator, who sold the Columbine guns to a minor (which IS illegal), nor the minor herself, who purchased the guns for Klebold and Harris, have ever been prosecuted. Go figure.

Is it any wonder that we are the ONLY developed country in the world that has these types of murderous rampages occur on a regular basis? Sure, isolated incidents happen in other countries from time to time. But not like this. Not this often.

Now, I used to think that all of the above were the problem, and if we just got some solid gun control and toned down the violence in our movies, video games, and t.v. shows, we would go a long way towards addressing this cancer of homicidal massacres that keep happening in this country. I no longer think it’s that simple. The reason? I think the homicidal psychology is just too strong and uncontrollable. The people who do these things here in the U.S. are the American equivalent of Islamic suicide bombers. They want to die on their own terms, and they want to take lots of people with them. Unlike Middle Eastern suicide bombers, American suicide shooters don’t usually have a political or economic reason for killing innocent people, however, and they don’t use bombs. Instead, the American suicide shooter has personal reasons for engaging in mass murder, and he uses an automatic or semiautomatic gun as his destructive means. Unfortunately, bombs and guns do the same thing: they kill a lot of people in a short amount of time.

To me, the tortured mentality of the Islamic suicide bomber and the American suicide shooter is the same. Rather than describe it myself, however, I will let Charles Krauthammer of Time Magazine, a man far more eloquent than I, do it for me. I think we will soon learn that the following passage from Krauthammer’s essay The Fine Art of Dying Well is equally applicable to the person who killed 32 people today at Virginia Tech, and his homicidal brethren:

No one grasps more greedily – and cruelly – the need for agency in death as does the greatest moral monster of our time, the suicide bomber. By choosing not only the time and place but the blood-soaked story that will accompany his death, he seeks to transcend and redeem an otherwise meaningless life. One day you are the alienated and insignificant Mohammed Atta; the next day, Sept. 11, 2001, you join the annals of infamy with all the glory that brings in the darker precincts of humanity. It is the ultimate perversion of the “good death,” done for the worst of motives – self creation – through the annihilation of others. People often denounce such suicide attacks as “senseless.” On the contrary, they make all too much malevolent sense. There is great power in owning your own death – and even greater power in forever dispossessing your infidel victims of theirs.

THAT’s why. Same mindset, different country.