Shift The Blame

It's the war in Iraq that's to blame for the massacre at Virginia Tech. "...prevailing anxiety, insecurity, embitterment and violence currently felt in this cultural centre of the US military..." according to the editor of the Irish Times. So it comes down to George Bush again, is that it?

The murderer has been described as exhibiting odd behavior back in high school. Let's see, high school age, seventeen, eighteen? He was twenty-three on Monday. Five or six years, he was weird and getting weirder. But it's the fault of George Bush and the NRA and American culture...ooops, sorry, cut that last bit. The killer was Korean, not American.

Professor Gerard Toal of Virginia Tech lashes out at the NRA and the war in Iraq as the root cause of the unprecedented violence. That's much easier to do, to shift the blame to his particular bugaboo, than to ask why in God's name one of his fellow professors didn't get off her chair and do something more forceful than suggest the young man obtain counseling. The English Department at Virginia Tech knew the student was a nut job. His creative writing was 'troubling'; his fellow students had him pegged for a dangerous loon and his professors weren't comfortable being around him. He was known on campus as a nut job who did not even speak to his room mates. He never spoke in class. Ever. Not even to write down his name. But it's the war in Iraq that drove the lad. It's the fault of the NRA and George Bush.

The fault lies with those who would pat the slightly deranged on the head and say, there, there, do your own thing. You really should do something about your insanity, but I'm not going to make you do anything. Oh no, we musn't put restrictions on people. We musn't act, we musn't call in the authorities to have someone committed to a mental institution. They're entitled to their freedom, the dangerous lunatics. And when they act on their insane reveries, well, we'll just shift the blame to the NRA and the war in Iraq and then on to President Bush.

We send our children to university and expect those in charge to mind them, to look after them. Sometimes that means getting one of them out of the general population, as unpleasant as that may be. Sometimes an authority figure has to be the parent, and not the best friend.