There are countless Poster Boys out there now for the cause of the Virginia Tech massacre. Most of them don't bother to look at our sick society in general. Most of them are sweeping generalizations.

Robertlightfoot

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Watching this guy, even the first photos, and then the words he spoke in his video, to me it was Crystal clear: This guy has been bullied into hell.

I'm so glad they have an active policy in the Netherlands now to prevent bullying. They teach victims to stand up for themselves and they teach bullies to show more respect.

Allas the american way of life has little or no respect for the fellow men which is less socially capable.

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All people need to be treated with basic respect. Nobody should be frozen out of social discourse because they are too quiet, dress badly or aren't 'cool'. In fact, Cho basically executed the cool kids as a statement: 'say I am not cool, then you will pay the price.'

A university has to be a broad church and the university must allow space for everybody. It can't just have time for the beautiful rah rah types. I smell a preference at this school for only the cheerleader/football player types.

When I went to university grades were not the be all, and end all. Unlike today, where campus life revolves only around grades and the social status of the job you get at the end of it all. This competitiveness will breed the opposite: catastrophic failure. Grades are not everything and a university must have a varied public life that has space for everyone.

Sadly, we will not see the end of such disasters.

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If we assume that this article is right, and the reason for the shooting was the culture of the campus, then it begs the question...why aren't there more shootings? The author wants us to believe that Cho was not an anomaly, but a victim of school oppression. But everyday tens of thousands of kids are bullied, so shouldn’t we be seeing tens of thousands of school shootings?

The reality is that most people are sane and are able to deal with bullies in ways that don't end in multiple deaths.

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I was born in California (1935) but grew up in Louisiana and got the crap beat of me in the sixth grade because I talked like a Yankee due to my liberal parents’ influence.

The painful experience taught me two things: speak with a Southern accent (which I learned QUICKLY!) and be empathetic to minorities. To this day, 60 years later, I talk with a drawl and side with minorities on most social issues.

As for crazed campus shooters, by definition, an underlying psychological disorder is responsible, not previous bullying. And for students at other universities who given into the climate of media/Bush-inspired fear-mongering, the statistical odds of you being killed on campus are extremely remote. So muster up some intestinal fortitude (guts), quit living in fear and enjoy your remaining years while you still have some.

Hugh E. Scott, editor of King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption. AlterNet readers who object to my NON-PROFIT campaign to expose President Bush as a lying crook can email me through the website rather than comment here.

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Congratulations, Capt. Justification. You just spent many words and, I assume, much time, trying to explain a senseless act by a disturbed individual. And it is senseless. I look forward to your next posting justifying something equally troubling ... I'll just throw out the war on Iraq and, oh, let's say child rape as examples of similar depravity. I'm sure there were many external factors that would lead to such things. Doesn't change the fact that they're wrong. Or that they're insane. Millions were/are bullied and ridiculed. Millions didn't/don't commit mass murder. Some things just aren't acceptable, no matter how many explanations a(n idiotic, self-righteous, career-advancing jackass) provides. It's a sad time now. This was a tragic event involving a troubled individual. Being a liberal doesn't have to equate to being a fool.

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No one learns anything in those concentration camps anyway. Few people learn much in college either, but at least they don't have to pay student loans the rest of their life for high school.

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One theme of the article: to profile the schools and their culture, is a good idea, if only for knowledge and curiosity. Maybe some statistics on school violence, number of kids diagnosed with depression, physical environment, etc...But I'm not sure how accurate the revenge of the nerds theory is.

In the case of Columbine, those kids did not seem like geeks, freaks or outcasts. They seemed more like Tier II type kids: cool enough, but not the star kids. I seem to recall a girl who helped them get weapons or something was rather normal looking and attractive; why would someone like her take that kind of risk for geeks? To me, it seemed like more of an ego trip by a couple of spoiled brats than revenge of the nerds, even if they said so in their manifesto.

You're right about this country, and probably other countries. We don't like to reflect on our culture or environment. We would rather look for simple answers that make us feel comfortable with our prejudices. I also think that we fear taking the blame off the killer(s) or justifying what they did.

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For the life of me, I can't understand WHY VA Tech did not Suspend/TERMINATE this student and refund any monies due him. Why the mental institution did not place a Red Flag on Cho is just unbelievable. Their excuse being because he was NOT hospitalized, give me a break!

I hope the families sue the hell out of VA Tech and the State of Virginia! This incident, CERTAINLY could have been avoided, by dismissing/suspended/grounded from campus, and by all means Cho should have been in the Judicial system, FLAGGED so he could NOT PURCHASE ANY FIRE ARMS!

After Columbine, one would "think" that the schools/colleges, Police Dept., and Mental Health facilites, would be on top of troubled individuals like Cho, ESPECIALLY after he had visited and a determination was MADE that he was a danger to himself and society!

It appears, we have NOTHING but dummies running the Police Departments, Schools, Colleges and our Government! Are they all RELATED to this administration? It appears so, for they all appear to be VERY INCOMPETENT, THOUGHTLESS and IRRESPONSIBLE!

Now they are BLAMING the victims because they did not fight back; I would like to see anyone of those punks in the same situation, and watch their reaction; they would run for cover, they only thing they have is a lot of mouth, and NOTHING to back it up with but total BS! Heck, most of them haven't seen a day in the military, as in the Bush Administration .... THEIR TALKING HEADS! It's ALWAYS someone else's fault; NEVER THEIRS! This is what money and position has given our country, a bunch of first class CHICKENHAWKS!

I am so sick of these Talking Heads that I do not watch TV 90% of the time!

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The guy has all the sugns of being a trauma based Monarch mind control victim (this is an extension of nazi trauma based mind control experiments continued in the states after they brought goebels in for that reason). Family abuse and placement in traumatic situations is all part of the creation of MPD (multiple personalities- which can be manipulated and triggered by the "handler". The family abuse and incest is part of it, family will always have a government connection and are payed well or bribed or blackmailed to put their children into the programme.
The fact that his sister works for nato military intellegence too should set off alarm bells.
Thesec students were also obeying their conditioning on a lower level, to obay and trust authority otherwise they would have attacked ther assailant.
The only bullies here is those we call the government and their psy ops nightmare. Got YOU scared yet and running to them for PROTECTION? Tes just one big protection rakket being played out onthe american people. These scholls are turning into killing chambers and should as of now be boycotted until this government (sic) is taken down.

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Really pisses me off..... If you hate your life and your surroundings etc.... Dont take other people with you when you decide to go off and end your life.

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It's America culture that has developed a disregard for human
life - that breeds the killing in your country, in Guantanamo, in Iraq ---- wherever . don't look any further than the new form of lower life - no longer lawyers, but journalists - the propagators of death without a conscience. Who else would market the tasteless videos of a common murderer ??

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reflect the mood and beleifs of their culture in an unobstructed way. Add in a weak or damaged personality, and these are the things that may manifest.
Its interesting to me that the media has gone wild with this story of 33 unfortunate victims, yet two days later 300 people died in Iraq and it hardly made mention. No flags at half mast or memorial services. What is the real difference between the two events? Both have been perpetrated by insane beleifs and acted on in an unconsciable way.

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Media: I dare you to be bold!

If you decide to get serious about CAUSE of youth suicide, time bombings etc (rather than re-mouthing the politically correct lines handed you by the self serving professionals) then ask the forbidden question: “What is the Great Common Denominator in the childhood background of a random sampling of time bomb killers suicide completers etc?” What is the ultimate sadness and anger that one can impose on a child, a sadness he never gets over, no matter how brave a smiling face he wears? What is the trauma they all had in common in their CHILDHOOD background? Repeat: CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD CHILDHOOD. Why is everone in the media so afraid of reviewing the CHILDHOOD backgrounds? Notice how little has been reported on this current killers childhood
This question was asked (and answered ) decades ago by authentic researchers. The answer was politically incorrect then and even more so now and so was quickly suppressed. Vern in Canada .

PS Be prepared to leave town at midnite for your insubordination and indeed out right threat to the professionals who build their empires on the blood and tears of dying children, CAUSE well concealed. .….

You doubt my claim of professionl and media cover-up of cause? Then have a look at yourself a few weeks from now and ask “Just what was it in verns question that caused me to avoid even ASKING the question, let alone publishing the answer.

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Actually, I don't think the video of this young man showed anything but a disturbed individual. I think it's quite a leap to say that he's been bullied. I'd rather say that he PERCEIVED himself as a victim. Whether or not he ACTUALLY was is a matter of debate. I've yet to hear anyone--administrators, faculty or students, Nikki Giovanni among them--say that this man was bullied. Instead, I've heard them say that he made everyone else uncomfortable. I've heard them say that he stalked young women. I've heard them say that he refused the hands of those that had tried to reach out to him.

The fact that many of us here are trying to make HIM the victim astounds me. He killed 32 brilliant CONTRIBUTORS to society. We can postulate all we wish, but the evidence we have before us says, very clearly, that he didn't do so because he was bullied. He did so because he was incredibly disturbed.

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It's similar to the issues that arise over fictional violence or sexuality. Does a certain kind of fiction produce perverts?

Well, in some cases, it seems to. In most cases, such fiction is actually a release; the fantasy shows itself to be only that. But for some cases, the fantasy works to disorient.

So this author's use of the fact that violent behavior cannot be predicted accurately or such actors be typed does not then prove that it is the environment, alone, that is to be held responsible.

Jumping to opposite conclusions has no more merit than jumping to conclusions. But it does get you published, doesn't it. Between the two journalists at issue in this article, is it any wonder that Americans are confused?

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I don't see it - not in college. There are so many ways to avoid bullying in college, its an entirely different environment than elementary school or high school.

I was bullied a lot in elementary school, and harassed in high school - these are much more limited environments, with less choices of social groups, or avenues for escape from bullies. I can see how it would be harder to deal with bullies at a young age, when trapped in a classroom or on a playground with them.

From my experience, the bullying grew less and less as I grew into larger and larger schools. It was better in Middle School (new kids, new clubs, new chances to meet people who shared my interests and to escape the bullies from my past.)

By high school there were still bullies around, but many ways to avoid them or simply ignore them. There were simply more of us - more non-bully types running around - and many choices for groups and friends. I can still see how it could happen in high school... how a Columbine situation could happen... but not in college.

In a college or university setting, you are treated as an adult: expected to get yourself to class, do the work without prodding, take responsibility for yourself. Unless you are in a very small school (and Virginia Tech isn't a small school,) there are literally thousands of other students around from which to choose your friends. Avoiding people you don't like is extremely easy, and its hard to imagine being subjected to anything or anyone that you don't actively seek out. Its possible to have an annoying roommate, but that changes every year - and you can change dorms, get a single room, or move off campus entirely.

The key - the difference - is the vast array of options available to you. You can choose to escape a situation in which you are uncomfortable. I can't imagine being 'trapped' into any bad situation in college, except perhaps financial difficulties... the cost of college is staggering these days.

I don't think you can blame college life for Cho's outburst of rage. I think no matter where you go in life, there will be people who have issues, mental problems, or demons from their past. It is impossible to completely escape this. I hear that family members say Cho was very distant, even as a child.

This massacre could have happened in a mall, a Church, a fast food restaurant. Cho may well have been bullied for much of his life, but that doesn't mean his final outburst was really due to anything that happened at Virginia Tech. From the sound of it, he was already very disturbed when he arrived on campus.

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Whereas my heart goes out to the families of those who lost loved at VT, I'm glad someone pointed out the obvious.

From Mark Ames to The War Nerd, eXile always seems to get these things right.

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I looked it up a few years ago when I wrote about the phenomenon of stupid, incompetent, bumbling goofs as male images in popular tv shows (especially exemplified by Homer Simpson). I wrote it for an educational supervision course... and my professor didn't like it. But this was after only a few years of The Simpsons, not the many years during which the Simpsons have proven their worth.

But that's beside the point. I am wondering- why the author of this story refers to the (red state?) citizens as hicks? What exactly is a hick? I thought that "hicks" were the uh... primitives of our culture and thereby entitled to respectful and politically correct appellation. Perhaps we can devise these appellations now.

And besides... just because the hemmed-in aspects of life away from the coasts can create a sense of being away from "where the action is"... I am curious about exactly what sort of "action" is so much cooler, that these (poor stupid pitiful) hicks are missing? After all... we coastals and city dwellers love and respect nature, don't we? We believe in farming and the envirnoment and hold all sorts of idyllic views of noble working people-of-the earth. It's just that we call the stupid corrupt ones "hicks"? And stupidity... there's a cause celebre. Let's get rid of it. Not more stupidity, dammit!

Did I miss something? Did I miss-read irony and think of it as damning prejudice?

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"In a sign of solidarity the people of Palestine in general and those from the Sothern villages surrounding the Holy city of Bethlehem dedicated their weekly nonviolent activity against the building of Apartheid wall to the families of the victims of the Virginia Tech massacre.

"Every Friday, Palestinians, internationals, and Israeli nonviolent activists gather in the Southern villages of Bethlehem to protest against the building of the Apartheid Wall that will eventually destroy the livelihood of these villages.

"This Friday, the protest began with a silent procession by the group of about fifty participants. We carried banners and leaflets with the Virginia Tech logo and statements supporting them in this time of pain. Thirty two olive trees were also carried in the procession to remember each person killed in the massacre. The olive tree is a global symbol of peace and hope.

"Once we reached the path created by the by the bulldozers for the building of the Apartheid Wall we dug the earth and plated the thirty two olive trees in a row – instead of building an ugly wall that divides people, let us plant trees that bring people together.

"Several of the participants made statements condemning the violence that we all, as the human family are witnessing and condemning the building of the Apartheid wall and the killing of innocents. Over 150 Israeli soldiers came to dismantle our protest.

"Our commitment to nonviolence and to achieve our goal completely paralyzed their weapons and their goals and eventually our power made them withdrawal. The planting of the trees was followed by reciting the names of all those who were killed in the Virginian massacre followed by a fifteen minute period of silence before the group moved back to the villages.

"The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said “where there is an injustice somewhere … there is an injustice everywhere.” This also means that where there is violence somewhere there is violence everywhere… We need to work for peace somewhere so that peace can also spread every where."-Sami Awad


During this reporter's January 2006 visit to Israel Palestine, at another nonviolent demonstration at The Wall, Sami Awad was detained and beaten by Israeli soldiers. Afterwards, Sami stated,

“The Israeli occupation is sending a clear message to the Palestinian people, they don’t want us to engage in nonviolent resistance because it truly exposes them and the injustice they are doing to the world.”

"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals." -Martin Luther King, Jr.


e
http://www.wearewideawake.org/

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I am reading lots of comments that are quickly dismissing that the schools and bullying could be one of the contributing factors to these revolutionary acts. John Taylor Gatto talks extensively about the artificial extended childhood enforced by schools, arbitrary rules presented by teachers and administrators and the fawning of teachers over the popular kids. It made me one crazy young adult. No wonder I liked alcohol so much!

I was one of those kids called fag and queer. I was physically larger than most of them, so I didn't get beat up 'much'. Would I have been a supporter or one of these revolutionaries if I had the roles models these kids have?

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this person murdered dozens of innocent people who had never done him any harm. many people tried to help him over the last seveal years, he refused their help. he was obviously a highly disturbed individual. to blame it on alleged bullying and flourescent lights (!) is incredibly irresponsible and offensive.

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Mike Moores Columbine movie was terrific regarding this shooting …but he was wrong about Columbine just as the media is wrong about the current massacre.

I applaud this article for pointing out how this crime is common in the USA. In fact, it's only when white students are killed that this sort of thing even reaches the media.

These crimes happen because oppressive, conservative, sexless, war mongering, suburban US culture breeds these isolated, evil, desperate, and agitated men left alone without even friends or emotional support over and over until they snap. Add to that some asshole psychiatrist’s prescription of SSRI anti-depressants and you have the makings of another avoidable mass killing.

The kids in Columbine didn't kill their classmates because Americans love guns (Mike Moore suggests an oppressive culture, which the town of Columbine is OVERWHELMINGLY, but can't seem to admit it as an American), they killed their classmates because their classmates harassed and attacked them for years. More, the entire town did this to anyone who stood out as not a right wing white man.

Virginia Tech can't be much different, I reckon.

The point is that American suburban culture is incredibly oppressive to anyone who isn't a rascist right-wing war loving American. It's not that the USA is a culture of war, it's that the USA is an oppressive culture. That is, specifically, suburban culture is oppressive. That's where these horrors happen right?

Think about it.

Think I'm crazy? Hey, we are talking about a country that has national radio hosts refer to a girls sports team as "nappy headed ho's". That's oppression.

You watch... it will take some deep investigative journalism, because such info is suppressed by the media, but you will find that this kid in Virginia was given SSRI drugs and was oppressed by a culture right wing racist "Christian" war lovers.

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Perhaps the event is too new but this article was too close to home. As I read this article I could not shake the feeling that it was speaking of my life. I am, perhaps, one of the lucky ones, having avoided the killing actions but these are not unknown thoughts to anyone that has lived through the harassments, and bullying. This is not a post of "pity me" but a call to knowledge. Calls to the affect that it is a "pity me" post is yet another form of bullying.

There are many people that do not "fit in" to the "norm" of life. This is not to argue that we are maladjusted, or sick, but that we are our own persons. Society, for most people, is a normaltive thing, providing what they need to be comfortable. But for others, the salitary souls, that normaltive, "conforming", nature is a violation. Society wishes to have everybody "behave" like everybody else and when that doesn't happen it begins the attack. It is never big things, it is the little pricks, the little barbs, the little irritants that eventually build up to be an extremely unbareble pain.

When will society learn that there are people that must be themselves? When will it learn that there are some, admittedly a small fraction, that needs to be left alone? This is part of the phenominon that is behind the shootings. I am not saying that it is an excuse, for there is never an excuse for killing others, but that there is a need to address this failing of society to heed the needs of all.

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with all do respect, I think the author is way off base this time. I am not about to consider the feelings of this mass murderer. Too little - too late. He took the lives of young, good, innocent people, people with plans, dreams and families that were proud of them. I hope he burns for all eternity.

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it is interesting that while the media hysteria about Cho Seung-Hui has focused on his being "crazed", bullied, etc. very little has been mentioned about his specific rants about religious and class issues. Crazy and bullied that he was, yes, but there is something more here that cries out for examination. The mainstream media is falling all over itself to reassure the public that we had an individual pyscho on our hands and is avoiding the haunting issue of the class/religious war brewing in our country. Religious and class oppression were a factor in Cho's breakdown (since he mentioned them) and I would like to see that openly discussed. In the larger context, that is far more disturbing to the ruling class like the Bushies than any loner nutball discussion ever will be.

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Like most, maybe all small children, I was relentlessly bullied through school and high school.
In every class, in every shcool, I was placed alongside a big stupid footballer who had an amazingly intimate connexion with the teacher and was never disciplined no matter what he was caught doing. Never even spoken to for bullying.
When I eventually went to a reunion, I was amazed to find that all the bullies were now rather smaller than I. I felt sorry for them.
I was not amazed to find that most were cops, lawyers or teachers. The others were crims. I stopped feeling sorry for them.
The school system depends upon bullying. It's a cheap effective way of policing a school with minimum effort by teachers, most of whom are ex-bullies.
The mob could not control the streets if the cops didn't condone them and collect payoffs.
Bullies could not control school playgrounds if teachers did not condone them.

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In coastal or big-town white America, if you are a failure, you are more inclined to imagine that it is your fault, that it is some kind of cosmic judgment on your innate base nature. You might accept it more passively, suck it up more, or just quietly end it in your garage with a garden hose and the idle running. But well before you'd snap in suburban California, you'd be giving it your 110 percent over and over and over, constantly convincing yourself and those around you of your optimism and determination, always being positive and trying to make sure that everyone thinks you're just swell. There is no room for eccentric behavior in coastal suburban America -- unless it's the kind of eccentric behavior that's already considered cool in a recognizably safe way.

In rural America, expectations are different. However, the "shootin' the bastards up who done you wrong" solution has a long tradition, and doesn't seem as bizarre a response to injustice as coastal America's cheerful slavishness.

--Where's the proof for this. These statements aren't much different than "All Blacks have rhythm" or "The average IQ in the South is lower."
How pedantic!

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This incident set off bells, endless streams, rivers even, of ink to analyze the massacre. This is inevitable.

I hope that at least progressives, liberals, and leftists would take time to reflect on the depth of the iraqui civilian tragedy.

Why iraquis are killing and murdering each other is also an endless debate but Americans can again get a glimpse of the disaster we have unleashed on a poor country, whose majority si under 21 years of age. The deaths in Virginia make us feel the brutality of guns, violence and war.

Maybe we can empathize with the iraqui victims of liberation and democracy, and maybe have mainstream corporate US Media remind us that the vast majority of victims are iraquis and like Vietnam, several generations will carry the weight of war.

Just like we seek to reach out to the victims of Virginia Tech at least progressives, liberals and leftists can try to put a face and a name to the pain, the suffering and death of iraquis civilians.

Because maybe this society's frightful love of guns soldiers and violence has something to do with all this killing.

You know 58 million voted for GWB. And even McCain is heralded as a war hero, despite dropping bombs on civilians. And we all support the troops despite torture and masscares committed in official capacity.

We try hard to make sure the killers face in Virginia is only his and not the face of America. Hell no!!!He ain't us!!!Just one bad apple like those dudes in Abu... what is it again???

Hey maybe we could reflect along the lines of Kurt Vonnegut!!!

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All the Cho sympathizers should read this testimonial from someone who knew Cho and who has put his plays online:

http://newsbloggers.aol.com/2007/04/17/cho-seung-huis-plays/

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Ames writes:
"It does not consider the possibility that maybe the kids aren't simply evil but have valid reasons for making Klebold and Harris into heroes. Perhaps they are considered heroes for valid reasons, and the Net allows us easier access into the unofficial truth."

the columbine kilers are considered heroes for "valid reasons"? am i the only one who thinks this is a seriously offensive claim?

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another absurd statement by Mr. Ames;

"Blame is hurriedly focused on the murderer, rather than on the environment."

hmm, a bunch of people are murdered, who should we blame? how about...um... the murderer! yeah, that's it, instead of pinning it on the true culprit, flourescent lights, we single out the guy with the still smoking gun and three gallons of blood on his hands. If not for rational truth tellers like Mr. Ames, the flourescent lights would have gotten away with it.

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Ironically, Mr. Ames' article is itself a fine example of an aspect of the American psyche that contributes significantly to violence of all kinds. We are addicted to the simple answer. Every event, large or small, good or bad, must, in the American mind, have a simple, single root cause.

Real life and real human beings aren't so tidy. To assert that "society" made Cho Seung-Hui explode is to suggest that he was a robot incapable of independent thought. To suggest that he was merely "crazy" (whatever that is supposed to mean) is to suggest that his environment had no effect on him. The choice to massacre almost three dozen people and then take his own life was the result of a far more complex interaction of societal and personal ills.

To discount, out of hand, any of the possible factors that contribute to incidents of violence is to assure that they will continue to plague us. Please, let's take a deep breath, get off our soap boxes, and instead of fixing blame, get serious about fixing our problems.

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I am astonished to hear people talk about the other students being un-armed as a reason for why the shooting wasn't stopped sooner.

If there was aver a campaign for the pro-gun lobby this is it!

While this guy was taking out dozens of people where were the security guards?!? What purpose do they have when in this most serious of circumstances they are unable to even catch the guy before he blows his own brains out? For all the talk about security being paramount you Americans are quite slack!

Its absolutely embarassing and beyond belief that one should think that the only solution to protection from violent acts lilke Cho's is to arm every sigle person. Its just ridicuolus and it has me flabergasted! I am utterly speechless at the insurmountable stupidity of such childish logic.

One of the people I least expected this rethoric to come out of is Alex Jones, the now famous 9/11 conspiracy theorist. He talks about the Anti-Gun persident Bush (what!?!) wanting to take away the right to bear arms written into the constitution as a further step to render people powerless to react against the government.

Dear Alex Jones and all of you who think along these lines: The second amendment was created for people to rise up to a dictatorial governemt whose actions went against the will of the people. If you haven't taken up arms against the current administration then the 2nd amendment is plain useless as your nation has been repeatedly flushed down the toliet and its reputation and status will take decades to be restored, if it ever will be restored at all!

Stop talking crap and get real. Being able to buy guns in Wal-Mart without many restrictions is a joke to the rest of the world. Nevermind the fact that being so liberal about gun ownershop creates a massive an very lucrative weapons market. This encourarages the production of tools the sole purpose of which is to kill - tools that once created are a lot more difficult to get rid of.

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that's all i'm reading here--someone else's fault.

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My beloved 21 year old son died by suicide last fall. He wrote in a letter that the bullying and abuse he endured at school left him with no self esteem and he thought of himself as a loser. He said that he was tired of being angry, sad and lonely. All of my kids got teased because they wore garage sale or homemade clothes and for other reasons. My son was very sensitive and had a hard time making friends because of his low self esteem. I have sinced learned that there are many suicides because of bullying. And you can bet that many abusive adults were bullied as children either by parents or at school. This is a serious problem and parents and schools need to start taking it very seriously.

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Given what the VT officials knew about this boy, he should not have been allowed to remain in school. He was deeply disturbed, a potential threat to the other students, 33 of whom are now dead. No doubt there is a cultural ingredient here. Perhaps family pressure to excel. No word from or about his parents. He just wouldn't talk? There's too much we don't know. I'm not so sure 'society' is at fault here. Much about this boy was ignored therefore condoned. Thanks, ANNA

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Given what the VT officials knew about this boy, he should not have been allowed to remain in school. He was deeply disturbed, a potential threat to the other students, 33 of whom are now dead. No doubt there is a cultural ingredient here. Perhaps family pressure to excel. No word from or about his parents. He just wouldn't talk? There's too much we don't know. I'm not so sure 'society' is at fault here. Much about this boy was ignored therefore condoned. Thanks, ANNA

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http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_5708449

Church plans to protest services of victims
By McClatchy Newspapers
Article Last Updated: 04/20/2007 12:00:35 AM MDT


Newport News, Va. - A fringe church that has garnered attention and scorn for protesting funerals of troops killed in Iraq is planning to picket services for the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Members of the Westboro Baptist Church have disrupted funerals across the country over the past few years with signs saying that deaths in Iraq are retribution triggered by America's tolerance of homosexuals.

A church news release says: "God is punishing America for her sodomite sins. The 33 massacred at Virginia Tech died for America's sins against WBC (Westboro Baptist Church). Just as U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq each day for America's sins against WBC."

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell

is warning protesters that they could be arrested if they interrupt the funerals. McDonnell's spokesman sent an e-mail detailing the section of the Virginia Code that can be used to quell disturbances at funerals.
Pastor Fred Phelps and his congregation at the church in Topeka, Kan., travel the country preaching damnation to a "nation of sinners," routinely glorying in the death of U.S soldiers.

His church of 75 people, many of them his relatives, believes that God causes the death of soldiers as punishment for a society that condones homosexuality.

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Talk about ignoring the evidence.

Kids were shooting each other in school long before Kentucky. Except they happened to be black and hispanic and poor and urban. And even one of the shooters in this article mentions this, and yet - no, no, it has to start with rural white kids because that's when YOU started paying attention.

There was an article in the late 80s/ early 90s about inner city kids more likely to be planning their funerals than their proms. But no, no, that doesn't fit with this sick schools theory so let's start with WHITE kids. That's when it became meaningful.

Also, no condemnation for books & theories that state that it's heroic for kids to disrupt their school? Even violently? No one wonders if all of us on the left who say high school is hell and is only there to crush your souls - are we adding to this problem? No, no, let's make it about the schools. It must be their fault.

This kid was sick. You can want to believe that he was bullied or abused or any of a hundred other justifications but he was mentally ill. Schizophrenia is a disease. As for kids laughing at his accent? He was in Northern VA. That's not a lily white school system. It has a huge Asian - South Asian population. He wasn't the only Korean in that class.

And when all is said and done, he didn't get help because that's the nature of this disease as well.

I think these school shootings happen because teenagers are our canaries in the mine. We have a violent society (tv, movies, games), we have an open handed policy towards guns and we ignore the mentally ill since most of the time they're more a danger to themselves than to us.

But lets not give the next shooter justification. You're being bullied? Deal with it. The popular kids are shallow and mean? Take my word for it, they won't be important to you in five years. Mock them.

And yes, I was bullied. I came home and cried nights, trying to figure out why other kids didn't like me. And my mother said "would you really want to be friends with people like that?"

And one day I realized she was right. And the bullying didn't matter so much after that.

Don't justify violence. Don't shame us by trying to excuse the death of 32 innocent people.

Bridget

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This article is so flawed it makes me want to vomit.

MANY people, including myself, have been victims of bullying
or being picked on in school. MOST people do not grow up to kill
or harm other people. Of those who do, *other factors are at
play*.

The author goes on with his ignorant condescending remarks
about how Cho is scapegoated again as one sick kid--HE WAS ONE SICK
KID!!! HE HAD SCHIZOPHRENIA!!! He had delusions! Add to this
the fact that his delusions were violent and gory. And everyone
involved with him truly were doing everything humanly possible to deal
with the situation--his parents, his teachers, counselors, the
judge, the police, etc. etc. They were up against, we now know, a
system where communication between the federal and state is not
adequately funded to ensure this information of his
hospitalization was immediately available on his background check. **He
slipped through*. The middle class isn't to blame! His environment isn't to blame!

Hey Mark Ames--stupid jerk--why are you blaming the middle class
for a homicidally crazy person's actions?? What makes YOU any
less of a self-serving hack than the people you are pointing at??

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Now, of course, one really shouldn't go and kill a bunch of people -- but that said, the point of this article is right on. In fact, when I heard the audio of Cho ranting about the spoiled m-f-ers he came to despise, I couldn't help but think back to how irate I was, myself, at the sickening preppy trustafarian bastards in college in the mid-80s. If I hadn't been suitably sane at the time, I could have taken out a few myself! Or at least, done some serious damage with a wrist-rocket or a sledge hammer on some fraternity windows and furniture ; )

I wish Cho had taken a different route. But he clearly had some righteous anger there, amidst the mental disturbance that unfortunately put the whole god-damned scene over the top!

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To Bridget:

PREACH!

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I've been Googling "Mark Ames" since 5 minutes after the VA Tech story broke. I read Going Postal last year. A great and provocative book. The truth is dangerous-- How can anyone dismiss the Seung-Hui videos as evil or nuts? They're plainly INSURGENT videos and you know it. Question his cause and his acts-- I do-- but don't call him crazy! Hui was a nerd retaliating against the overwhelming cruelty and winner-take-all injustice of college. The details are already coming out about the bullying and marginalization he suffered. The IMs he sent to those girls weren't stalking, they were friendly. But they had him arrested like a criminal!!! Ames dares to write the truth. He'll never get the big job at Newsweek, but being right is better than hanging with MSM losers and talking heads anyhow! Mark: If you get on cable to debate a cop or an "expert" please please please make sure the video gets linked here or on crooksandliars. Thanks.

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The mindset and the cultures that form on some of these campuses are revolting, filled with people with sickening values. The keep up with the Joneses crowd, if you're not wearing the latest fashions then we don't want you, if your not driving the coolest car then we don't want you, if you don't come from a certain income bracket then we don't want you, if you're not in the sports then we don't want you.

I have done some traveling in which I have had to go to several college campuses across the country, and on several of these the air was thick with spoiled little brat's, just walking on to the campus you got the impression that everyone was in their own little groups. I couldn't help but think of Columbine when I watched the the students throughout the day that I was on these campuses.

America is real good at raising assholes and living in its 200 years of lies and that's something that we must admit or there will be more school shootings because the mind set on these campuses are just as sick as the mass murders that blow up because of them.

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See: CRIME LIBRARY "Bad Seed The Fledgling"

This schoolyard shooting inspired the (now) Sir Bob Geldorf of the Boomtown Rats to write the song "I Don't Like Mondays"

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Bullying is a horrible and often damaging experience for many kids, but I think we fall back too quickly on that as an excuse for these types of crimes. The shooter in this case clearly has signs of mental illness, and spent time in mental institutions. I'm as much of a lefty as anyone writing for Alternet, but I believe that the left sometimes gets to comfortable with their own ideas and fails to think critically. I believe this case is an example of that.

Additionally, for those saying this is a "uniquely American crime", there was a shooting rampage that happened in Germany in 2002 and killed 18 people, 5 more than Columbine. Just Google it and you'll find it.

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What happened to the good old walking up to your foe and punching his lights out? Am I really getting that old?

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You missed my point -- the point made by the Secret Service researchers: There is no profile of a type of student (in the sense of race, ethnicity, affluence, etc.) but there is a set of behaviors that these school attackers follow on their path to violence. Anyone who reads the Secret Service study can see that this point is made clearly. Bill Dedman, MSNBC.com

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During the memorial service that followed the Columbine shootings, grieving students and families were comforted by a somber Amy Grant singing the sad “Why, why, why.”

Less famous Christian entertainers did a string of “Don’t give up hope” numbers, and a few ministers preached and prayed.

The day was cold, sad and overcast. But the moment that put the whole business in perspective came near the end, when a perky blond cheerleader walked up to the podium.

“We are!!” she shouted, in her best perky cheerleader voice. “We are!!” came the response from hundreds of grieving students. “Columbine!!” the blond girl shouted even louder. The roused student body roared, “Columbine!!”

The pep rally went on for a few minutes. As I sat watching the scene on my television set, a flood of memories from my own high school years in Oklahoma overwhelmed me. The late 1960s were my high school years, but the perky cheerleader who could’ve been my daughter (my middle son was a high school senior in Nevada that year) made it clear to me that the nature of America’s high schools hadn’t changed since the ‘60s.

The shootings suddenly became clear to me. “What this girl is doing is exactly the reason why those two boys killed all those people,” I said out loud, even though I was alone in the room.

At the very moment when students, teachers and families should’ve been searching their souls for an answer to Amy Grant’s plaintive question, “why, why, why,” this representative from the school’s pampered elite was really telling her fellow students to plunge right back into the follow-the-herd groupthink that had spawned the most horrible tragedy of their young lives.

Maybe Roger Waters was on to something after all: “We don’t need no thought control, no dark sarcasm in the classroom, teachers leave those kids alone, all we are is just another brick in the wall.”

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Cho's rampage is a symbolic event that says as much about those seeing it as it does about those involved. Some see America the Bully, schools as factories, prisons or training grounds. Some draw connections with apartheid walls, white kids being killed, persecuted women who do not kill back, anti-depressants, easy availability of guns, John Taylor Gatto's critique of schools, flags at half mast and the discrepancy between 33 dead here and 3/4 million in Iraq.

When I signed on this morning, my eye caught the headline: DOW approaches 13,000. Interesting. The shareholders, big and small, must be smiling. Follow the money. That's the root of the problem. Google The Money Masters. They're happy to see tragedies occur because they create distractions from what is really going on. If there are not enough distractions, the masters create them, like 911. Revealing the part money plays in tragedies like the Virginia school shooting is a pet project of the Red Brown and Blue party. RBB advocates for The Lover Government to break the grip money has on our consciousness and replace it with love.

That being said, I acknowledge my own sadness and grief for those involved. I suffer a small part of their agony. I also admit my culpability in the money racket that is behind this tragedy.

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and was taught not to fight because it was wrong - with a willow switch and a leather razor strop. In school, I was the scrawny, four-eyed nerd who was constantly picked on, humiliated and pounded by the schoolyard bullies. I had no self-esteem or pride (which I had been taught was wrong anyway). The teachers never saw, and after reporting it the first time, I was left bleeding, having peed in my pants in a hallway by said bullies; the rest of the kids wouldn't talk to me either - I was a "snitch". This continued into past school. A bully and his friends were going to pound me after school once, so I called my stepdad (lifer military) and asked for a ride home. He refused and said I had to learn to be a man and handle it myself. There was no place to turn.

I began martial arts at nine, but I had found ways to "handle it": a toy bat hidden in a sleeve from behind (what else can an 85 pound kid do about a 140 pound bully?); tossing a bully over the rail on a second floor walkway too fast for him to see who it was. I would never have gone after others, even though they went along in the mockery, though. Once in 7th grade, after a kid (very large) had put gum in my hair and I'd asked him why, he humiliated me in front of a bunch of girls, one of whom I was sweet on. He had broken my watch and my glasses and left me black-eyed and with a bleeding nose and mouth in the past. He was found not long after with both legs busted along with his skull; he never came back to school (he recovered). Another who thought it would be funny to knock me out from behind with a knotted, wet towel fell off a second floor walkway and spent several weeks in traction.

In most of high school I was skinny, but had the equivalent of a brown belt in two martial arts styles, but even then I would cry if I had to fight. I HATED hurting people. Except once: a kid who had spit on me in the hall and gotten his face smashed against the wall before anyone could act peed on me in the shower. It took three teachers and a number of students to pull me off him: the martial arts were gone. I had hit him hard enough to slide him down the length of the shower, and was sitting on him choking him. I think I intended to kill him.

The adults never listened, or punished the wrong kid (me). I wasn't into athletics - I was a bookworm. When my 163 IQ somehow got out, I had eleven fights in one week. I was a "troublemaker". After I passed six feet and two hundred pounds (I was a paramedic then), a couple of martial arts demonstrations in college put a stop to this garbage, but for most of my life I had no decent self-image.

I AM an artist of several types, and I still hate violence. I also hate the "Boys will be boys", "Be a man and stand up for yourself" attitude. I was one of the quiet, blind-without-glasses, socially inept, shy kids who was always picked on. I would never have gone after everyone though. Still, I can understand someone snapping and going after the bullies, the teachers who did nothing, the counselors who said to stand up for yourself like a man, the kids who wouldn't back you up. Right after Columbine I tried to tell people about this and didn't understand how it could be anything but obvious. I was laughed at, or told I was "sick" and should see a shrink, and that what I'd written was "no excuse for mass murder". I never intended it to be an excuse - just a reason. I still do.

I'm almost 52 now and to me the causes of this kind of thing are still obvious, and you who say there is no excuse, a murderer like this deserves what he gets have your heads up your asses like most of the rest of the country. Maybe there aren't excuses, but there sure as Hell ARE reasons.

Ian

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"There is no room for eccentric behavior in coastal suburban America -- unless it's the kind of eccentric behavior that's already considered cool in a recognizably safe way."
As an ex Cali, I find those words right on the mark. And you had better be thin, and willing to go along with the crowd at all costs. Even if the crowd is doing something as off-the-wall as joining a cult! Glad I moved away! Midwestern winters aren't so bad after all!

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Anyone else getting the impression that the author was bullied as a kid? I'm no psychologist, but in a way it seems he's living out his revenge through Cho, the Columbine killers, etc.

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First of all, rural Americans are a little less conditioned and a little wilder than their highly socialized counterparts on the coasts.

I started reading this article thinking it might be informative, enlightening, or thought provoking with regard to how popular progressives view individuals who engage in heinous, violent acts. What I got instead was extremely dark comedy: words so ignorant that--taken at face value--they are legendarily hilarious, but implanted in a subject utterly devoid of the potential for humor.

In coastal or big-town white America, if you are a failure, you are more inclined to imagine that it is your fault, that it is some kind of cosmic judgment on your innate base nature. You might accept it more passively, suck it up more, or just quietly end it in your garage with a garden hose and the idle running. But well before you'd snap in suburban California, you'd be giving it your 110 percent over and over and over, constantly convincing yourself and those around you of your optimism and determination, always being positive and trying to make sure that everyone thinks you're just swell. There is no room for eccentric behavior in coastal suburban America -- unless it's the kind of eccentric behavior that's already considered cool in a recognizably safe way.

Having lived in both places, I must question whether the author has lived in either to make such intellectually bankrupt characterizations, or if she simply draws upon her vast command of stereotypes gleaned from her rapt attention paid to all the talking heads that grace DuhTeeVee.

Never mind. She's probably harmless; foaming at the keyboard rarely translates to foaming at the mouth. I would, however, suggest she move her ignorant caricatures to less weighty topics.

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He was obviously disturbed before he set a toenail on that campus! Where were his parents in all of this? Why did they allow their disturbed son to go away to college when he wasn't ready for it? Bullying isn't as damaging if the kid has an emotional outlet and respect at home. #1: no guns. #2: parents need to nuture the emotions of their male children. These shooters are always boys, maybe because boys aren't allowed to have emotions in our sick society! #3: we don't have evidence that he was bullied, but we do have evidence that he isolated himself and was paranoid. The university did all it could. He fell through the cracks long before he got to college. The people that KNEW him, ie his family and home community are the only ones who should have been monitoring his behavior.

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Regardless of the details in the Virginia Tech case, and without placing blame on anyone currently reeling from this Tragedy...
Thank You for this article.

Bullying is rampant in pockets of US society, and I personally was on the receiving end several years ago.

In a workplace that is majority conservative, I called several young co-workers on their homophobic and classist diatribes. In all instances, my remarks were delivered with what I considered humor. Evidently what I said was so shocking to those I addressed that they retaliated in a way I did not foresee.

The change in their interaction with me was drastic.

On "Monday", I had a normal day, saying "Hello" and smiling at coworkers as we passed in the hall.

On "Tuesday", and continuing for about a year, roughly 40% of the people in my office would not make eye contact with me. If I smiled and said "Hi" to them, they would do one of the following:
1. stare straight forward, with no expression
2. glare at me, quickly look down and make a disgusted expression

When these people passed my cube, they would "loudly inhale", as if smelling something putrid. (I bathe regularly)

2-3 people would congregate in the cubicle next to me, talking about their cliques various social events, then make references to their worries that I might be listening to them.

When leaving for lunch or other events as a group, they would whisper loudly about their plans, and the fact that they needed to be quiet so I wouldn't hear them, because I was probably listening.

One coworker would run away from me when he saw me in the hallway. (He did this repeatedly).

The general theme of their narrative was that I was an outsider who really wanted to be their friend, and they had to work hard to keep me from bothering them.

I was undermined on work projects, and made fun of because of my non-professional career track.

My general response was to try to ignore everything, a passive response. And in general this worked for me, although I was miserable for eight hours a day and considered quitting several times. But it was a good job.

I never reached the level of lashing out physically, although I did fantasize about kneeing a male co-worker where it hurts out of pure anger.

This may all sound very low-level to some, but being isolated in a crowd is no picnic.

I was an adult shunned by coworkers who I didn't really care about, and it hurt a lot. Luckily I have health insurance, and was able to seek counseling.

I can't imagine being a younger person subjected to 8+ hours of the same thing, without the outside emotional support I had.

Michele

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This topic has brought to the surface old memories of being bullied growing up. I can still remember the names of those bullies 50-60 years later. They never hurt me physically but certainly influenced my consciousness since their names are implanted in my memory. I felt guilty for being a sissy and a chicken in not fighting back. Now I fight back at writing and speaking up for justice. I can see the connection between America the Bully and individuals and groups who are bullies.

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was done in Elephant. But of course, that's
not black-and-white, unambiguous enough for most
of the public.

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But I think it's only a starting point, albeit in my view a useful one.

The VT perpetrator had something in common with the 9/11 perpetrators - their acts were not just premeditated murder, but also premeditated suicide. We so often miss the point that those who killed on 9/11 are also dead themselves. But we started two wars to go after others we thought were also responsible. Mr. Ames, I believe, is making a similar point: not that these schoolyard killers are not responsible, but that they are not alone in their responsibility. Indeed, there is a huge difference on the issue of intent, but I think Mr. Ames would stipulate that.

As all of this is speculation, allow me to also speculate. Mr. Cho was indeed mentally ill. His diagnosis is private (by law), but it's not that he was undiagnosed, just that he was untreated. I can imagine that he was autistic from a young age, and transformed eventually into a delusional paranoid schizophrenic psycopath, with multiple personality disorder. I see three manifest identities: Seung-Hui, his given name; "?", a weak alter ego that manged barely to break through the autism, and "Ishmail Ax", a strong alter ego. I would speculate that only one of those three was dominantly evil, but it came to be dominant among the three, to protect the "we" of the whole person. And yes, it was evil.

I would further speculate that his family may have been as much a source of his suffering as his school environments, which may have reinforced abuse from his family. I can imagine that some of his victims were targets, by virtue of fitting a profile to which his family contrasted him. He was an introverted Asian minority under-achiever with no social or technical skills. Ryan Clark was an extroverted social over-achiever, also a minority. Others were engineering students, i.e., with superior technical skills.

His great-aunt called him an idiot. His grandfather called him a "s**-of-a-b**** who deserved to die." He had a sister who graduated from Princeton. In context, he was the black sheep of the family, the failure, and he may not have been able to do anything about it.

Nikki Giovanni is a world-renowned poet; I used to read her poetry. Mr. Cho may have seen her as potential redemption for his shattered ego; instead of being a good engineer, he could be a successful writer. Ms. Giovanni herself entertained the possibility, but in the end, knew she couldn't help him. He may or may not have known it as well; but he likely couldn't do much to help himself either. I'm not at all blaming Ms. Giovanni, she has long been one of my personal heroes; but she's not a psychiatrist, just a poet.

I'm just speculating, mind you.

There is always a context, and we must, most of us, believe as much, or we wouldn't be cheering on two wars over an incident whose perpetrators died as they did it. We think others can be responsible as well, as virtual killers who didn't do the killing but intended for it to be done, or who had not intent at all, but still enabled it anyway. The differences are matters of degree, maybe more than matters of nature. And that, I think, is part of Mr. Ames' point.

It hurts me that my country is involved in conflict which kills more innocent people on an average daily than were killed in Blacksburg, VA this past Monday, whether it's for a good cause or not. Of course, it can't hurt me as much as it hurts those innocent people. I don't want to blame anyone for the ongoing carnage; I can understand the impetus, though I disagreed with it from the beginning, but I can tell you, that I want the killing of innocent people to stop. Wherever they are, and whoever they are.

"That which you do not do for the least of these, you do not do for me."

Innocent Iraqis are not that least that Jesus was talking about.

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I, too, have been bullied all my life, at home, at school, and in most of my workplaces. And, I've been pretty depressed all my life. Was I predisposed to depression and the bullying made it worse, or did the bullying cause it? Does it matter?

For the first time in my 47 years, I am in a home setting AND a workplace free of any bullying, and for the first time in my life I am a very happy person. I'm not in counseling and not on any psychotopics. Stupid s**t still happens in my life, but I cope with life's s**t the way healthy people are supposed to be able to. What a difference it makes to not be bullied. And workplace bullying is a grossly underreported phenomenon that is practically taken for granted as something natural.

My other observation about all of this is that, when we rushed to close down all those institutions in the 70's and 80's for very valid concerns about abuse, we effectively threw out a whole bunch of babies with that bathwater. So even if we have warning signs from someone as we so often do (and in this case it seems as if most of the people involved were taking note of those warning signs), what can anyone do? You can't have someone committed to a decent facility for any length of time, because the only facilities available now are understaffed and underfunded holding facilities and they're very few and far between. The preferred method for dealing with troubled people now is to medicate them, and that, apparently, does not work for everyone. And if it fails someone, then we jail them (after they've done someone else harm).

I think bullying needs to be addressed, because even if it doesn't cause these problems, it certainly does contribute, and I can't think of anything productive that it accomplishes, and yet it is very pervasive in our world today. But I also think that we need to take a good hard look at what options we have for people who have antisocial tendencies (and maybe we can put bullying in that category) for whatever reason.

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i can understand how the environment these people grow up in can cause them to go off in this way. i was a victim of bullying and teasing throughout middle school, and i never was popular in high school. i always had a kind of stigma over me, i was deemed "odd" or "freak" or "dork" by everyone in my schools. i was often very depressed- i have had depression my whole life, this kind of treatment certainly did not help. i can understand how people who are treated in such ways would want to go off and kill their perpetrators. i never wanted to do anything like that, thank god. i've always been kind of a "peace and love" kind of person. i hate guns and violence. i always have- but i can certainly understand why these people would want to lash out and hurt these people and try to open the eyes of the nation to the violence that is perpetuating this kind of violence.

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In 7th grade I transferred from a private school to my local junior high school. That year, because I dressed differently and was ahead of my peers in most subjects, I was bullied constantly and called a nerd, etc. The next year, I grew much larger than most of the kids. One day, the biggest bully of our grade called me out during shop class thinking I would demure. I didn't and gave him a thorough thrashing. Oddly, instead of feeling proud of myself, it left me feeling disgusted. Years after I graduated high school, I was told by a former classmate that I was feared by many and thought to be some kind of violent maniac. This despite the fact that I never again engauged in fisticuffs of any sort after the one fight with the bully (I was a long-haired, hippie musician all through high school). Go figure...

A simple query...If your car breaks down and you go about trying to determine what is wrong are you anti-automobile? When you consider what parts are faulty are you pro-breakdown?

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How unfortunate that, in the midst of an otherwise reasonable argument urging that we avoid bullying others for their difference and that as a society we subject ourselves to an often-uncomfortable self-scrutiny, the author feels it necessary to resort to reinforcing the most lame of stereotypes about rural people:

"First of all, rural Americans are a little less conditioned and a little wilder than their highly socialized counterparts on the coasts ... In rural America, expectations are different. However, the 'shootin' the bastards up who done you wrong' solution has a long tradition ..."

It seems as if self-introspection might be in order all the way around if AlterNet's commentators are to avoid precisely the simplistic approach to contemporary culture it rues in the mainstream media and the right.

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Brillant article on the fundamental state of American laisefaire capitalism as manifested in the behaviours of the people. The mass self-delusion popularised by corporate media surpasses the most evil dreams of people like Goebels, Lippmann and Bernays. These manifestations will soon retreat at the insistence of market forces. Others however, will appear to keep reminding us that human being are inately self-destructive. More over, other idicators will continue to show our collective intent to wipe out all other life forms as well.

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As a bullied guy in high school, I totally agree with this article. I remember being laughed at, picked on and even beaten up b/c I was not "cool." I didn't drink or smoke, or listen to the same music. I believe that this country is obsessed with the "cool" factor. This exerts a lot of pressure on people. The mass media is also a great contributor of this. So, when you fail to be in the cool category, it can get pretty out of hand. I am glad that i lived in a wonderful neighborhood, a little out of the ordinary I would say, but I do remember hating these guys at school. I never thought about harming them though, but i can certainly see how someone would.

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Virginia was the state with the most slaves at one point. Not that this applies to the present, but just wanted to put that layer on top of this discussion. On this issue...

We all should know by now that we (in the US) live in a sick society. We pay money to see films glorifying warfare. We think nothing of headlines saying that a suicide bombing (they didn't have these before we invaded) killes hundreds which are bookended on T.V. between ads/commercials. We know and care more about kids singing cheesy songs and winning as an "Idol" than we do about our politicians who are supposed to represent our views (hah!). We shop at stores (Walmart) which sells goods made from slave labor where we can buy guns and ammo BUT NOT "Rocco's Nasty Tales" due to "decency". We have a president who says he "takes responsibility" yet still has his job after 9/11, after no-WMDs, after Katrina (to name a few of his many highlights) and who likely believes he's bringing "democracy" to Iraq when really it's genocide. Only in America!

Are we really surprized by these things, really!?!? Come on!

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Having never had the money to apply to a real university, I have to wonder what kind of criteria universities use when they accept students. He was a senior? He must have had decent enough grades to pass through to this level, or am I missing something here? If Cho had all these issues to the point where teachers were removing him from their courses, why was he still a student at the university? I wonder how many perfectly qualified students weren't accepted, yet they took this clearly problem-child. I would be insulted to find this guy was acceptable yet I got turned away. Just wondering who this guy was "in" and kept him long enough to become a senior.

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Shame on Alternet for running this sputum and shame on those of who side with the author's intimation that Cho's psychotic killing spree was the result of bullying. I personally hope this piece of shit rots in the Christian hell in which he purportedly believed so strongly. A propos of heaven and hell . . .

Funny thing about you Alternutters . . . Copious, anti-Christian fulminations always abound here yet so many of you who number among [the erstwhile] rabid, anti-religion crowd are prepared to defend this cocksucker's actions despite the fact that his "faith in Jesus" obviously played a role in this (quite ironically, very non-Jesus-like) savage act of butchery. I guess we can chalk that up to liberal confusion, or more appropriately, wilfull hypocrisy. Had this been a white, Christian shooter, there would be no real discussion about bullying or taunts. It would be "Bible Thumping Jesus Freaks Make Me Sick" - end of story.

This will happen again in the not too distant future and it will likely be some white, Christian fundie. Look Out Then!!! It'll be white self-loathing and finger pointing all around. "Fuckwit white, Christian men and their mystic beliefs". How about a little evenhandedness in your treatment of religious freaks, regardless of race, or is that too much to ask of people who are busy trying to excuse an obviously demented and sadistic boy's homicidal behavior?

Those of you who have the temerity to blame this on bullying ought to be ashamed of yourselves. This kid was a sick fuck who, quite regrettably, decided to inflict his pain on others instead of just bighting his own bullet. I'm more inclined to believe that a sexually frustrated little boy, who displayed extreme sociopathic tendencies and with absolutely no prospect of getting laid, went berserk.

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Cho was a human being like any of us. He was defective, defective in that he could not adapt or conform to his environment. Why is that?

For one thing there is America itself and its subconscious adoption of social Darwinism. Americans, especially as children, are on the look out for anyone who is weak or falling behind the herd so that they can be destroyed for their amusement and to reduce a potential competitor in the no holds barred competition that is life in America.

Not everyone is the same and human beings are not infinitely malleable. Cho was not meant to exist in America, a country that is designed by and for the average. He was different in various ways, certainly not average. Grew up in Korea, learned to speak English but sounds, I'm told, like "Napoleon Dynamite" from a popular movie. I read the comments on youtube to his videos and all anyone says is, "he's a born loser and he sounds like Napoleon Dynamite lolol." I'm sure his classmates were not unaware of that movie and the fact that his voice apparently matches up somewhat with the main character of that movie probably brought him a great deal of ridicule. Is it any wonder he was "quiet" when every time he opened his mouth someone made fun of him for sounding like a geeky character in a work of Hollywood fiction?

Most likely Cho's torment began shortly after coming to the U.S. Kids that age are at their cruelest. Those who are not taught to stand up for themselves and fight by their parents become easy prey. Children are the greatest reflection of human nature as it truly is as opposed to idealistic notions of what we would like it to be. Racist, xenophobic, petty, cruel, bullies - that's humanity, a bunch of apes fighting each other to get the biggest share of available resources.

What happened to Cho, his decade and a half of torment, is not unusual by any means. It is the inevitable result of what happens when you throw a weak person, isolated, into a society based on competition. There was no community for him to fall back on. No older brother or cousin to stick up for him. Nothing but Cho against the world and the world won. As a final act of concession to the world he took his own life. But, as he said in his video, the world got it all wrong. Instead of destroying one more weak person Cho would strike back and give the world a taste of its own medicine.

There is nothing crazy about his line of thought. It's all very logical and dictated plain as can be in his videos. The media reaction reminds me of the reaction after Columbine with all of these people unable to understand the mentality of the tormented soul that strikes back. The only way that one cannot understand Cho is if they have never been bullied, have "never felt pain" as he says. What he felt is not something a person who cannot understand him has ever felt. They grew up without being bullied, without being weak, without being put down, a part of a community - a born winner in life.

America produces people like Cho every year in school yards across America, and every year they become more isolated, more bitter, and more likely to strike back in anger. Turning the other cheek gets you punched in both sides of your jaw instead of one.

There is nothing glorious about failure in America. The fear of failure is enough to drive people to their first heart attack by the time they are 40. Where are the support structures, the community that used to give even the most oppressed (think slaves etc.) among us at least a taste of happiness and hope? Gone, Americans are isolated islands in an ocean of humanity, waging a war against all and none.

That's America. The fact that the majority cannot understand the mentality of Cho or people like him speaks volumes and demonstrates conclusively that we have yet to see the last of this sort of attack.

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there he would have been a war hero.

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I feel sorry for nate.

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This part of the article really annoyed me:
"If you pull back and rethink how you view these rampage massacres -- if you can accept that the schools and offices are what provoke these massacres, just as poverty and racism create their own violent crimes, or slavery created slave violence and rebellions, then you have to accept that on some level the school and office shootings are logical outcomes and perhaps even justified responses to an intolerable condition that we can't yet put our fingers on."

These massacres are not justified responses to bullying or an unhealthy school/work environment.
(Speaking as one who was mercilessly picked on and the target of bullies in my past, I didn't feel the need to devise a plan and exact some sort of warped vengence and kill everyone. That thought never, ever entered my mind.)

Where is the individual responsibility?

I accept and understand the point of the affect environment has upon the individual, but just as it's too easy to write someone off and say the person is "evil", it's also too easy to maintain that the environment is entirely responsible for one's own actions or is a justification for those actions. As if the individual was just a puppet and had no cognitive thought, or capacity for realizing the impact of their own actions.

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Aw, poor Cho was bullied. Welcome to the real world. I went to school in TN from kindergarten through college. I was a nerd, and I got picked on quite a bit. Sometimes the way you keep others from picking on you is find someone more socially inept than yourself and pick on them. It's life. It got me through middle school. I still got picked on, still narrowly avoided getting beaten up a few times, but all in all I walked away intact. In high school I figured it out-- you find people who share your interests and make friends. Shy? You read a book on how to be more outgoing. You learn how to interact with other people, a skill that classrooms don't teach but the social environment of schools do. Your future livelihood depends on your ability to communicate, to get along, to sell yourself. In high school and college I never got picked on, because I had figured it out. I was in band, and that was my 'group'. At UT, or any large college, there is no shortage of people who are just like you. All you have to do is make an effort to find them.
This sick, angry, weak little f*ck killed innocent people because he was too deranged to figure out that regardless of how rough it's been, college is the place you can create the foundation of your future. He was a failure, and if he finally came to that realization he should have quietly ended his own life, not gone on some sick rampage against everything he was jealous of.
Maybe we shouldn't be keeping our eye on every weirdo (nothing wrong with weirdos in general), but weirdos who write play on how to brutally kill someone and get arrested for stalking a girl should be watched like a hawk. This guy should have been locked away and sedated long before he could kill. I do think he had a mental illness, but while I can't pretend to understand it I do know that is no excuse for him or anyone else to be allowed to murder anyone.

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I heard Cho was bullied in middle school. I know of middle school students who were bullied at the Edison Middle School in Westfield, NJ. When their mother came to pick them up after school one day, a bully threw a dead squirrel into her car and said "Go back to China!" And that was, alas, the tip of the iceberg.

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where does evil come from?

when i talk about this with people, i usual encounter someone who says that they believe that some people are Just Evil. and then i ask why they are evil. and they say it's a matter of choice and personal responsibility. and then i ask what makes someone choose to do something that is evil. and they say, "they do. they are responsible for themselves."

i agree with this last point, but these other loops of causality seem very confusing to me. who is this "they?" where is this origin of all thought and action? the way i see it, most people in this country seem to think that "evil" just arises, as if out of a cartesian vacuum, from nowhere, (perhaps from god?) and befalls and possesses someone. and then, after this, it becomes that person's "fault" that they are evil. in the same way that God creates adam and eve, endows them with the ability (and perhaps the destiny) to eat the apple, and then when they do this, God blames them for their "decision" and casts them out into a land like indiana where humanity will live in moderate torment for the rest of our lives.

i don't want to debate or argue with anyone and i certainly don't want to go into "free will vs. determinism" semantics. i really just want to understand this on a practical level. this is the way i see it (i'm not saying i'm RIGHT, i'm just saying that i see it this way:)

every single person that has ever lived has done exactly what they could do at any given point in their lives. we all do what we think the best thing to do is, given from where we are standing at in that particular point in space and time. stated another way, everyone does the best they can do given the resources they have available to them at the time. these "resources" don't just mean money or strength. i mean things like how much they were loved as a child, whether or not they have a dog, what color shirt the person to the right of them is wearing, the state of their teeth, the current weather and barometric pressure, etc...

basically, there is an infinity of causes that lead to any particular action. take this for example: a guy in chicago has his gun pointed to the head of another guy. the gunman has a choice to make: he can shoot or not shoot. what's going through his mind? imagine that the potential victim is sweating. imagine that the sweat reminds him of a gatorade commercial with athletes sweating, and this commercial reminded him of the orange juice he drank this morning, and this orange juice reminded him of the cover of a book written by the Dalai Lama that someone gave him on a train some years ago, and once the memory of the book comes to mind vague feelings and phrases, much more subtle than a conscious "what would the dalai lama do?" thoughts come to mind. so does he shot or not?

i dunno what he does, he's made up. but the point is: our systems of punishment, of labeling evil, of placing blame, of insane individualism, our conception of sin.....all of this lead people in the west, and particularly in america, to not question the moral or practical legitimacy of hating "the guilty." i say moral because it is the decent thing to do: to acknowledge the fact that the person who acts out of violence does so FOR A REASON: they are suffering. i say practical because if we, like this article, look to the REASONS WHY this kind of thing happens, rather than just strip victim number 33 of his humanity, label him as something other than the rest of us, and walk on, we are hiding from a very basic but unpleasant reality: under different circumstances, ANY ONE of us could have been this killer. it is easy to say "he is evil," but---and even this is an infinite simplification--it is the whole nexus of conditions (his upbringing, his genetic makeup, his environment, and very importantly, HOW THIS HUMAN BEING WAS TREATED BY OTHER HUMAN BEINGS.)

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Homocidal psychopaths don't need valid reasons to go postal, and to ascribe any to them or ascribe blame to their tormentors does a disservice to society.

If not the bullying, it would have been a broken coffee cup. Or a Gameboy that fried.

Blame the conditioning... blame the endless violence of the video games this sick fucker made the majority of his life... blame the Tarantino-praised violence-porn film he copied for his swan video, scene for scene.

Blame anything but the bullying... I was bullied unmercifully, and I didn't turn into a psychopath. Bullying makes many more people stronger and free from peer pressure than it turns into psychopaths. Not defending it by any means, but every human has to bear the sole and absolute responsibility for how they choose to react to life.

Psychopaths don't need reasons. Anything can be a trigger.

The guy was just plain nuts. The fact that he was a geek who talked as if he was mentally challenged was just a coincidence.

Time would be better spent analyzing what psychopath geeks who can talk reasonably well (well, one of them anyway) and have their hands on Armageddon triggers, like Bush and Cheney, will do when THEY finally go postal.

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The article just states the obvious - that the only country with an unending stream of school and office massacres is one sick shit hole. Not to mention our unending stream of massacre-wars on 3rd world nations. Maybe Americans can't face the obvious because they feel helpless to change anything. And the US is so huge, homogeneous media-wise and culturally isolated that they're unaware of any alternatives to the way they live and treat each other.

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Yes, I agree that there is much in our culture that breeds cruelty in how we treat and interact with one another, I have to ask the writer of this article, how about holding the killer accountable for his actions?
I think there are many factors that can and should be examined about what happened at VT, but ultimately this killer is the one who made the decision to kill. And for that, he is the one to blame, not society, not his parents, not his childhood or anything or anyone else.
One of the many reasons this kind of thing will happen again is that too many people today to not accept responsibility for their actions, including this killer. Too many people are told, as is being done by the writer of this article that no matter what you do, it's somebody else's fault.In his writing and video diatribes he blames everyone for his decision to kill except himself. just another example of a "poor me, my life is so bad" made by a whinny weak minded poor excuse for a human being, who took a cowards way out instead of standinig up and being a man and working to make himself happy.

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The Media practise of repetitious, sensationalization of every incident has a HYPNOTIC EFFECT on troubled minds.... EVERY channel re-runs every detail ENDLESSLY - and it is SOOOO WRONG !!

It is absolutely CRIMINAL IRRESPONSIBILITY to keep running that video!

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I think this is a correct take on the school rampage phenomenon. Part of the problem is also the pharmaceutical drugs used to "treat" these extremely disaffected young people.

A correction: the school closing in Austin, Texas was St. Edward's University, not the University of Texas.

Rebecca Swan
http://goodwordswan.wildflowerstew.com

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To summarize, the whole point of this six page diatribe is, 'The environment made me do it'?

Sorry, I don't buy it. Ames quotes one of the classroom killers as saying, "All throughout my life, I was ridiculed, always beaten, always hated. Can you, society, truly blame me for what I do?"

Uh - yeah!?! If we embrace this line of reasoning, why haven't African Americans systematically shot up every classroom and workplace in the country? Why haven't Jews machine gunned every German club polka party in the U.S. of A.?

On the opposite side of the coin, why do idiot Arabs run around trying to Jihad to death any other Arab who has the courage to stand up and say, "totalitarian brutality is not what the Koran is all about"?

I was an artsy in High School and I despised the jocks and the greasers but hey, you get over it and get on with it. There was never anyone so despicably vile to me personally that I planned their execution - let alone a symbolic mass execution for an entire stereotype of the student populace.

The reason you can't reason away something like this is because THERE IS NO REASON that can possibly be given for such behavior except for severe mental illness. Crazy people will do crazy things.

Now if you want to discuss why guns are as easy to buy as a 12 pack of Bud - for sane and crazy alike - well that's a discussion worth having. I have yet to hear of one of these mass killings performed with bare hands, a hockey stick or even a knife.

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You have to marvel at how abysmally stupid people can be when an undeniable pattern plays itself out in front of them and they can't see it...just can't fucking see it. A Nation of dunces.

"What a tragedy! We must get rid of the guns! Because then...why, everyone will be happy, yes?"

It was the same with 9/11. All you heard was "eeevil," which the author rightly points out is a nebulous concept void of any real meaning and appealed to in discussions only by Christians and other such waterheads. Very few people were able to see why it was done. Ward Churchill famously called the victims "little Eichmans," and he was right about some of them anyway. But we can't bear to face our own complicity as a nation, in terrorism foreign or domestic. And it's a goddamn shame...because as long as we refuse to change who we are, the more acts like this we'll see.

These acts of extreme violence are symptoms of a much larger and more systemic problem, and as any doctor worth a damn will tell you...it's better to cure the disease than treat the symptoms.

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I read the first chapter of "Going Postal" the other evening -- it's available on the I-Net for free and I highly recommend it to others. Like this excellent piece here it adds a badly needed dimension to the discussion of this difficult to understand event. All behavior occurs at the intersection of an individual in an environment. It's only sensible to look at both components.

I hope Mark's points of view stays out there to counter the MSM deluge and penchant for formulaicly writing it all off as being due to the individual's personal problems or failings, his being 'troubled' or 'disturbed', his having caught some mental illness, or something to do with gun laws. I'm sure everyone knows the drill by now.

There are other dimensions having to do with his childhood, family, anti-depressant drugs, and a few other things which I hope will be made clearer when the final report comes out several months down the line. I'm sure we're going to be talking about many aspects of this matter for some time to come.

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This article is bunk. As a former paramedic I can tell you that crazy is crazy and the school didn't "do it" to the student. The culpability of the school for NOT picking up and acting on his earlier behavior, not informing the student body that a shooter was loose on campus and the State for NOT seeing that his name was added to the "No Gun List" after he had been found to be at risk of suicide, is bad enough without pseudo-psychoanalysis grounded in pretension.

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Can't you people add up?
Bullied does not equal mass murderer.
Disturbed personality does not equal mass murderer.
Guns do not equal mass murderer.

But
Bullied + disturbed personality + guns equals potential mass murder situation.

So stop with the 'it's not this, it's that' name calling and crap that has been going on in this discussion, and get down to how to fix all these factors.
1. Fix your mental health services (fix your whole health system!)
2. Take action to prevent bullying in schools, workplaces, clubs and other community places.
3. Take action to control (not ban) gun use and availability.

Before you say it can't be done, it HAS been done in just about every other civilised country. Catch up before you totally lose it.

I’m beginning to think you Americans actually LIKE your sick, dangerous society. Maybe on the edge is where you all want to be

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Virginia, this state had it coming, in a way, when you think about it. Of course, it's terrible for the individual families and as such I don't want to minimize that. But, if this "conservative bastion" had some decent gun laws and services for its citizens, perhaps more than 30 of them would still be alive today.

So much for all the "healing" and crying and senstivity sessions, save it for Dr. Phil VA techies. If Cho could never have purchased a gun and if some psych hospital likely did not have to kick him out after just a few days (no doubt, his insurance was up), then a much different outcome might have ensued. But, sure enough, we must cling to "our traditions." Whatever.

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There was at least one thread above that questioned how Cho could have been a victim of bullying. Now, I'm not a big fan of the VICTIMHOOD mentality in this country, or in Israel even better/worse, but to say that one can't be singled out or picked on in college is hooey, even excluding the obvious factors of race. I had a horrible time my freshman year in college, in a dorm (little was I told ahead of time) of football and hockey players. Completely inconsiderate, rude, obnoxious, sexist and racist, spoiled, mental midgets slipping by on scholarshits, does not cover it all. I'll stop there, lest I have a fit. And just think, these are the pricks who now run your banks and corporations.

So, Cho clearly had an honest, righteous beef. Being a half bubble off level, though, he took it way too far. Let's just say, to be a little more interesting than the psychiatric conjectures, that he had an ANGER MANAGEMENT PROBLEM. (Eeeew!!)

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In coastal or big-town white America, if you are a failure, you are more inclined to imagine that it is your fault, that it is some kind of cosmic judgment on your innate base nature.
Gee...isn't it ironic that this is how black people are made to feel ALL of the time?!...and isn't it also ironic that black people tend to react by internalizing our rage while white kids seem to project their rage onto others?....this subject would make for a fascinating psychological case study...

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He said these people have everything, fancy cars, perfect health, friends, ect. And it still wasn't enough to make them happy. They had to be cruel to him to top it all off.

This dude was bullied, big time. None of those kids are going to admit to bullying the guy after he smoked 30+ people.

Come on, Asian kid, in a rich white bred college. Of course they are going to give him a hard time.

Its a favoriate American past time to make fun of people who are from different countries.

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Where did this dude get his info from? The flourescent lights in the schools? Is he effin' joking? I worked in schools where the plumbing sucked and rained poured down through the ceilings and roaches scurried about. Now those kids had some shit to be angry with. We have fewer shootings in the bigger cities because we have cops in the schools and metal detectors. i worked in an inner city school for years. Despite the presence of gangs and drugs, and weapons, they never had a shooting in the ten years i worked there. Why? Cause we had our shit together. We also had social workers and psychologists, people they don't think are important in most states. Hey, I was bullied as a kid. I'm sure my own kid will be as well. Difference is, I didn't have violent video games, 24 hour cable TV, and all kinds of internet crap to draw me in. Understand this folks, it is human nature for kids to poke fun at each other, and to hone in on a vulnerable few. You will not change it; there's a reason Lord of the Flies is an important book, and it ain't because it's good writing ( it's not, and Golding never came close to it with his other work, and there was a hue and cry when he won the Nobel on basically the strength of Flies alone )it's because it rings so effin true. Put a bunch of kids on an island, and they will descend into savagery pretty quickly. But hey, what do the adults do when they don't get along? They fly planes into buildings, bulldoze neighborhoods, and drop bombs on innocent civilians. Then we ask the kids to work it out? And sure, let's blame the schools, why not? They get blamed for everything else. What exactly are the school administrators supposed to do? Spank the bullies? The most you can do is expel the kid and spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer money ( for which the taxpayers will curse you for wasting ) to send a kid to an alternative school where he will read comic books in English and get A's for breathing. Once the school has gotten enough tuition out of the school board, and the kid starts ( inevitably ) to act up in the alternative school, then they kick him out as well. And it starts anew. This goes for both the bullies and the bullied. Then there are the schools for the " emotionally fragile" which cater to the bullied but are not usually accredited or state approved and so the school board won't pay for them. What do they offer? Lots of social workers, psychologists, and even psychiatrists. Are we seeing a pattern here? Like it might be a good idea to have mental health people in schools, who have manageable caseloads? Fooey! There's no money....

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you have a war on terrorisme all over the world.
One mental crazy boy was able to destroy the live of innocent people and all their poor family.
how you will be able to defend against a few hundred well trained terrorists?
Where was the police????
A disaster of this kind is a combination how to act because this is not the last time.

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Bob Herbert wrote a NYT Op-Ed piece about masculinity as homophobia. I also recommend the essay Masculinity As Homophobia by Michael Kimmel. It's important to frame current events ourselves before the mainstream media does it for us. Tom Ridge, former head of Homeland Security, is already the head of the investigation in Virginia. Last time, the media framed 9-11 as a rationale for the War on Terror which has killed over a million people.

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/19/opinion/
19herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

"But a close look at the patterns of murderous violence in the U.S. reveals some remarkable consistencies, wherever the individual atrocities may have occurred. In case after case, decade after decade, the killers have been shown to be young men riddled with shame and humiliation, often bitterly misogynistic and homophobic, who have decided that the way to assert their faltering sense of manhood and get the respect they have been denied is to go out and shoot somebody.

Dr. James Gilligan, who has spent many years studying violence as a prison psychiatrist in Massachusetts, and as a professor at Harvard and now at N.Y.U., believes that some debilitating combination of misogyny and homophobia is a “central component” in much, if not most, of the worst forms of violence in this country.

“What I’ve concluded from decades of working with murderers and rapists and every kind of violent criminal,” he said, “is that an underlying factor that is virtually always present to one degree or another is a feeling that one has to prove one’s manhood, and that the way to do that, to gain the respect that has been lost, is to commit a violent act.”

Violence is commonly resorted to as the antidote to the disturbing emotions raised by the widespread hostility toward women in our society and the pathological fear of so many men that they aren’t quite tough enough, masculine enough — in short, that they might have homosexual tendencies."

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His Op-Ed was written yesterday. CNN also said his plays and writings suggest he was afraid he was gay.

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I was isolated and called names, was sent hate letters with hundreds of signatures, was thrown down stairs, had hair spray sprayed into my eyes. People pointed at me, made gagging noises or held their noses when they saw me. They spit on me. Most of the people who signed the letters, made rude gestures, etc., didn't even know me personally. They just followed the herd.
If a person was brave and invited me to a party or befriended me, they also became a target of this irrational hatred.
One teacher observed my mistreatment and attempted to help me. He was brought up on false sexual abuse charges (and later exhonerated but he still left the school to teach elsewhere) by one of the students that led the bullying against me. This girl hated me so much that she would attempt to ruin the life of anyone who defended me.
I complained to my teachers, the guidance counselor and the school nurse. My mother talked to the principal about the abuse. NOTHING was done.
I was one of two girls in a class of several hundred who received this abusive treatment.
I hated to go to school and always wondered what was so wrong with me that I was singled out for this treatment. For years, I felt like a freak.
And I will admit: for years, I had fantasies of exploding a bomb at a class reunion.
Why didn't I carry out that violent revenge fantasy? I am not insane. I have control over my actions and bullying, however extreme, is not an excuse for cold-blooded murder.
I believe being bullied made me more sensitive to the underdogs and the hurting of society and freed me to be a non-conformist and explore my creativity. I am a creative artist and my 'day job' is at Child Protective Services. The other girl that was severely bullied in that class studied law and is a now lawyer for progressive causes.
BTWY: The bullying took place in a suburban Maryland school and stopped when I moved into DC and on to high school.
I later saw one of the girls that bullied me and asked her how she, who was the daughter of holocaust survivors, could do such bullying of an innocent person: she answered: " You were so different. You didn't seem to care about our interests (not totally true, BTWY) and fit into our lifestyles and we were afraid of you!"
In my opinion, fear is at the root of all negative and insane behavior. Fear causes prejudice, bullying, greed, etc..

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yes, he was mentally ill as the courts in virginia determined in 2005. Some dodo posters here think he was an 'insurgent' and a 'hero', but he was just ill. unfortunately, he was still able to buy weapons. the full article is on www.nytimes.com

WASHINGTON, April 20 — Under federal law, the Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho should have been prohibited from buying a gun after a Virginia court declared him to be a danger to himself in late 2005 and sent him for psychiatric treatment, a state official and several legal experts said Friday.

Federal law prohibits anyone who has been “adjudicated as a mental defective,” as well as those who have been involuntarily committed to a mental health facility, from buying a gun.

The special justice’s order in late 2005 that directed Mr. Cho to seek outpatient treatment and declared him to be mentally ill and an imminent danger to himself fits the federal criteria and should have immediately disqualified him, said Richard J. Bonnie, chairman of the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Commission on Mental Health Law Reform (more at www.nytimes.com)

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I am quite glad to see an article talking soberly and truthfully about what happened at Virginia Tech and school shootings in general. It seems as if no one realizes the simple fact that these kids were treated horribly by their peers and (I assume) shrugged off by the "adults" in their life. Although, there is one facet of this that the article does not take into consideration, the way Americans respond to and treat mental health, especially in adolescents and young adults. Obviously, many of the school shooters needed help. Not that they were down right crazy, but they needed an outlet for their anger, isolation, frustration, depression...and so forth. Unfortunately, it is extremely hard to find people and professionals that provide adequate treatment for kids like this. Many kids are carted of to a psychiatrist where they are written a inaccurate prescription for adderal or zoloft, something to that effect, but they are never really heard. This can also contribute to an outburst of rage. I have seen this many times working with younger children and even in my own experience as a withdrawn adolescent. It's time to start listening and trying to recapture the ability to relate/empathize with other human beings.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5CUzVoCjm4o

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In a word, "School Shooters: The Message They Bring"

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The author is using this tradegy to advance his political agenda. Comments like "the school's version of the executive/shareholding class" are completely absurd. This comment is a blanant attempt to tie the tradegy to authors desire to punish successful people.

Cho was mentally ill. He was invouluntary committed. Perhaps the author thinks being involuntary committed is just another form a bullying but it was more conveinent for his straw man arguments to not discuss Cho's mental illness at all. The only two mistakes society made was letting him out of the mental hospital and letting a documented mentally person buy a firearm.

To claim we can't profile these kinds of dangerous individuals is dubious at best when the individual has already been committed to a mental institution. Clearly somebody figured out he was dangerous.

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After reading many of the comments and mulling the contents, I've concluded that the focus on public schools and the media is sadly misplaced. Two of the greatest blessings that we enjoy in the US are public education and private media. Access to free public education is access to opportunity. Reporting by competing media sources, though flawed, helps to preserve the freedoms we enjoy. Mass shootings are rare, and yet many of the posts to this article suggested placing controls on schools, the media, and the liberty of individuals who do not fit the norm.

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Pre-dating all of the cited shoolyard "pay-backs", however, was Stephen King's-"CARRIE". That was/is/and will ever be, the classic example of High School bullying assholes, getting their due. Ever since I first read it, as a gay High Shool student, in the 70's-I've never once, considered Carrie, to be the villain, in that story, either.
Jaa
Orlando,FL.

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No one need feel guilty or attacked but with all the blame and violent language swirling around this event, need we look further for an explanatory cause?

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From Columbine, to Red Lake and now Virginia Tech, what is perhaps most disturbing and inexplicable to many people is that consistenly such atrocities are commit by isolated but otherwise extremely bright people. The problem is that, though they are for one reason or another inherently determined to be the outsider, they are intelligent enough to recognise where our civilization has gone wrong. Unfortunately they feel powerless to alter it in any significant way and so turn to destruction as an outlet for their despondancy.

Corrupt News

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"The tale of Cleomedes of Astypalaea is recorded in Pausanias’ Descriptions Of Greece (6.9.6-8). Cleomedes was a competitor at the Olympic Games, where he entered the boxing event. At one point during this contest, he came up against Iccus of Epidaurus. Cleomedes killed Iccus, and was disqualified. Pausanias never mentions why exactly this happened. Perhaps he used an illegal technique to inflict the fatality, and that is why he was sent home in disgrace. Whatever happened, the result was an enraged Cleomedes stalking the streets of Astypalaea. He eventually came upon the town’s school, where around sixty children were having their lessons. In his fury, Cleomedes grabbed one of the school’s pillars, and pulled it away. It doesn’t take an expert on Greek architecture to imagine what happened next. The roof collapsed, and crushed the children.


Needless to say, the townspeople were rather upset by this. Even in ancient Greece, where newborn babies were sometimes left to die on hillsides, slaughtering children without their parents’ (or at least fathers’) permission was frowned upon. A mob formed, and began to pelt Cleomedes with stones. The murderous boxer fled to the temple of Athene, leapt into the sacred chest, and pulled the lid closed. The crowd struggled to break the chest open, and eventually succeeded. They found it to be empty. Confused, they sent a party to the oracle of Apollo at Delphi, to obtain an explanation from the god. Apollo’s priestess informed them that Cleomedes had been elevated, and that the people of Astypalaea should ever more offer sacrifices and worship him as a hero. And so they did."

There was a time when what was supposedly the most forward thinking and enlightened civilization in the history of man would have looked upon someone like Cho as a hero in the literal sense. There is still a primal part of the human psyche that looks upon great deeds as great and heroic, whether those deeds are good or evil. Some have called it the "Cleomedes effect" and used it to explain why people like Osama Bin Laden are looked upon as heroes in many parts of the world despite their despicable deeds. Bin Laden is one man fighting the monstrously powerful United States, that wins him admiration from some, regardless of how morally reprehensible his actions are.

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God Hates Virginia Tech

God Hates Fags

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In reading most of the comments which have been appended to the original article I have been struck by the craziness of many of the ranters who who have written in. Killing others is not the only evidence of madness.
Many have rused to judgement without any idea of what Cho's personal history and mental state really were. This is not surprising as the profession which is expected to know something about mental states and is licensed to make determinations is as ignorant as the general public. They are mired in concepts which first aired in the nineteenth century and are now no more useful in dealing with the problems of a given individual than they were one hunderd and twenty years ago.
The only way to understand what Cho did and why is to understand both his subjective world and his interactions with the outer world. These key things wlll never be understood while the psychiatric profession is still fooling around with the medical/Kraepelinian model which has failed, failed, failed, in fact never worked at any level.
Labels like SCHIZOPHRENIA are thrown around as if they mean something. In fact terms like 'schizophrenia' mean nothing either subjectively or objectively. What the use of these terms really means is that we understand almost nothing about what it is to be human in every dimension.
Behind the expressed horror about Cho and his murder of over thirty people is the fear that each of us is capable of such behaviour. We yell out judgements about him because we are afraid of what lies in the depths of our own selves. If you doubt that consider the staffing of concentration camps in Germany, Russia and those run by the CIA. Where do they get the staff if not from the general population? The people who run these institutions are simply drawing on the madness that lies at the centre of virtually all of us.

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Our son told us tonight it turns out the shooter at VA Tech had high functioning autism.

High functioning autism and unrelenting school bullying without the correct emotional and mental support from family can equal a very deadly combination.

First off, Let me mention our son. He has high functioning autism. We are told in some ways he is a genius and could turn out to be the next Bill Gates. Time will tell.

What I do know from first hand personal experience is this: kids who have this disorder, whether it is the super high intelligence/high functioning variety known of Autism known as Aspergers Syndrome, or just high functioning autism, these kids have been given gifts in the area of intelligence to make up for the disorder. However, the severe trauma of being bullied day in and day out at school or anywhere one of these special needs kids is surrounded by other kids, can have dire consequences. No kid wants to be bullied, who in their right mind does? It is excruciatingly painful for any kid/teenager/young adult to be bullied and tormented. For a kid with high functioning autism/Asperger's syndrome all you need do is multiply the agony a "normal" kid would feel by lets say a million for the sake of argument, and you can possibly understand just what the ramifications can be.

In our case, 2 weeks after our son turned 14, (conveniently on my birthday), as the result of very severe bullying, consissting of physical, emotional, mental torment at school, he attempted suicide by hanging himself from a pine tree in our backyard. Thankfully, I had a very successful biz I ran from our home at the time. I was able to discover him and get him down in time to save his life. It was truly the most painful and horrifying experience I/we had ever been through. It took years for the flashbacks to stop.

Thankfully, when he reached high school, an incredible man, the head psychologist for our school district, got the school district to pay for our son to go to UCLA autism clinic to be tested. I say thankfully because by the time this opportunity presented itself, I had lost my successful business to corrupt
competitors, we never could have afforded the testing required. After a very lengthy battery of tests, he was diagnosed with high functioning autism/Aspergers syndrome by UCLA, and the missing puzzle pieces re: why he is the way he is, why he's is very much overly sensitive emotionally
finally fit into place.

The people in positions of power and control at his school, (and at this point I must conclude the same situation exists in all schools nationwide), refused to listen to us, to him. They refused to help. They turned a blind eye and a deaf ear, even on the day of his suicide attempt, we were yet again ignored. We had no idea he would attempt suicide, but we knew he was very troubled at school. We were ready to pull the plug and pull him out of school, but we didn't have a clue what we would do in terms of giving him an education if we did that and of course that could have resulted in jail time for us and the loss of 2 parents for him.

This is a huge problem in our schools. There are many good, wise and compassionate teachers, but their hands are tied. They are literally handcuffed and are simply not *allowed* to do anything that could really help these kids. There are not many compassionate counselors and administrators. Most of them appear to be self righteous, self superior, arrogant, control freaks. Sound familiar??? They are strict in the wrong ways, refuse to listen to parents or bullied kids. They've convinced themselves they are *the experts*, they know how to deal with your kid or mine, when in truth I doubt they could find their way out of a paper bag in an emergency! To be cont next section.

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Essentially, these people in positions of power, in my opinion, suffer from the same shortcomings as many people today. They look like adults, they walk like adults, they appear to be adults, but they really are not adults at all. Somehow they failed to grow up and gain the wisdom and attitudes of true adulthood.

We are lucky our son is alive and well and is now 19 years old and happy. The suicide attempt turned out to actually be a blessing in disguise for him. I won't go into details.

I'm only posting this message to make a point. The point is this: many in our culture no longer seem to value the sanctity of human life, compassion, empathy, unconditional love, accountability and responsibility. Just look at our government! I won't go there because I don't even want to get started.

People must return to a place in which they respect themselves enough to respect others and teach their children to have self love, self respect, respect, compassion and empathy for others. It is not our son's fault that he has high functioning autism making him a square peg amongst a sea of round ones. It is never the fault of the child afflicted with this disorder. Their brain is wired differently. They have no control over it. There is no medication they can take. These kids are also absolutely brilliant kids Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, Einstein, all of them had one thing in common. They each had Aspergers syndrome and our world would be missing out on quite a lot had it not been for the highly valuable contributions they each made.

It is beyond high time for humanity to return to the consciousness of compassion, empathy, unconditional love, honor, truth and a place where we all value the sanctity of life itself.

Too many people live in that place called denial today and think if they look the other way, deflect the truth, lie, hide behind something/anything, point the finger and blame others, a bad situation will simply go away. Bad situations will NOT go away unless the *reasonably minded people of the world* are willing to step up to the plate and do whatever is required to do the right things for the right reasons, stand up, speak out, perform random acts of kindness, especially for kids that are obviously different. Then and only then can we cause bad situations to go away.

I understand the torment that kid in Virginia must have gone through. I understand the horrible agony, the feelings of worthlessness, hopelessness/helplessness, rejection, abandonment, damned if I do, damned if I don't, with which he must have lived. Where was the help he needed? Where was the help for the kids who desperately needed it at Colombine? The insanity going on out there is the result of adults not being adults and not providing children with the tools they need to grow up emotionally healthy. Does anyone honestly think the kids that do the *bullying are emotionally healthy*. I don't think so. I daresay the kids with Aspergers are more emotionally healthy than the bullies are, until the bullies rear their ugly heads and go for the jugular. Aspergers kids finally reach the breaking point. They snap. They can't take the agony, the pain, the anger, and the horror of it all anymore.

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It does take a village to raise a child, even a normal child. It takes more than just a village to raise an aspergers kid. It requires more than just a set of parents, although the parents must be on top of everything at all times as best they can be. The parents of an Aspergers kid must have eyes not only in the back of their heads, but on each side of their head as well.

What teenager do any of you know who gives much credence to what their parents telll them?? The kids who have loving parents, like our son, have a better chance of making it as ours did. What about the kids with horrible abusive parents? How do they cope and survive if no one is willing to step up to the plate and help them??? There are some horrible, horrible parents out there who should never have become parents in the first place. I know this first hand, my mother was a wacko paranoid schizophrenic who never did a loving thing in her life. My father couldn't cope with it, he walked out when I was 6. Won't go into that part of the story. It took a village and a fabulous spiritual teacher, very, very hard work and dedication on my part, to save my sanity and life.

The only reason our son didn't hurt anyone else was the resolt of the love, constant attention, consciousness raising, being taught to have a "conscience", and the strict discipline he received at home. However, he felt so worthless, so hopeless and helpless he felt the only way out, the only way to stop the constant agony, was to kill himself. That is how painful the torment was for him. He could not bear one more minute of it. and he didn't tell us to what extent the torment was dished out until after the suicide attempt. This despite his *knowing* he could tell us anything. He was too humiliated to tell us all of it. Every time he tried to get help from someone at school, the finger of blame was pointed at him. What did he do to antagonize the kids? What had he done to contribute? He was constantly conditioned to believe it was all *his fault*. What he did wrong was to have aspergers syndrome, making him different from "normal" kids. His responses to situations were not the same as the "normal" kid. To this day his responses are still uniquely his. He just has a little more maturity under his belt now, although he is still immature for his age. One of the joys of aspergers is the fact that these kids are very immature when compared to their *normal* piers, but then how mature is it to be a bully?

Essentially his school counselor was a do nothing, let's play the denial game, let's blame the victim, lets add to his distress by punishing him for the bullying he's been subjected too. Get the picture? Who would survive under those conditions let alone thrive??? Our son found himself in trouble for
things *other* kids did all the time too. He watched as the other kids were not required one bit of accountability or responsibility for their behavior. He watched as they consistently lied to get themselves off the hook and because our son was the *oddball*, the powers that be chose to believe the bullies every time, despite evidence that backed up what our son complained about.

It's become fashionable in our society to blame the victim. I'm not saying everyone isn't accountable for every action they take. We are all accountable for everything we do, everything we say and everything we think. However, those kids who have committed these atrocities are kids who slipped through the cracks and did not get whatever it they needed to become emotionally healthy from any adult in their life. Perhaps their parents were overwhelmed, perhaps the parents themselves were in denial or worse yet, abusive bullies themselves?

Those adults who failed to contribute to the well being of troubled kids who ultimately wind up going off the deep end, share in the accountability and responsibility of the consequences.

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Rather than face up to what they have done or not done, like a real *adult* does, it is much easier to pass the buck, point the finger of blame at the kid who was bullied and tormented beyond all reason and then just move on with their lives as though they were just innocent bystanders.

I'm here to tell you that any adult who ignores a kid's plea for help, any adult who looks the other way, any adult who lives in that place called denial and simply refuses to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do is going to have to pay the pauper someday. One cannot go through life hiding in the paper bag of denial. One cannot go through life lying to themselves and expect everything will come up roses and they will be off the hook. It just doesn't work that way. Never did. Never will.

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Psychoactive drugs, man!

Over half of the mass murderers were on psychoactive drugs, since they became available for prescription, in the 1960's. Also, about 40% of children, since the 1060'a come from single parent homes, though Seung-Hui had loving and supportive parents, and a sister.

Seung-Hui was on the prescription meds. that are blamed for some suicidal and homocidal tendencies.

And, he walked out of the 'hospital' where the judge sent him, because the judge did not check the box for 'involuntary committment' that would have flagged all NCIS files under the "Brady Bill" and would have blocked his purchase of firearms and ammunition!

If you research another fact, you will find that the number of mass murders was at an all time high in the 1920's and 1930's, among farmers due to the 'dust bowl' and the depression!

Seung-Hui was definitely NOT bullied. One teacher spent hours of counceling over weeks, with him. Many reports of his aberrant behavior went up the chain of administration.

He was be-friended by teachers, and other students, until his psychotic behavior forced them to stop trying.

Seung-Hui was the bully, and reported many times to authorities in 2005 and 2006, for his 'weird' and vile aloofness.

The safest campus' on the planet are the post grad. police academies, Colleges, and Universities, that cater to police and Law Enforcement studies. Because, everyone is armed, criminals are cowed and fearful.

If schools were simply not "gun-FREE" zones, then someone over the age of 21 would be carrying concealed. Nothing says "Stop", like the proper display and application of deadly force!

911 gets you the police and coroner, for the bag and tag of the deceased. Concealed carry permit holders and armed citizens on their own property, stop a reported half million crimes each year in America.

There is substantial evidence that two to three times more crime is prevented due to the presence of armed citizens.

One armed professor or college student would have stopped Seung-Hui Cho's rampage. 32 dead, 29 wounded, because on Virginia Polytechnical campus, guns were outlawed, and only the outlaw had guns!

The facts are irrefutable. There is no way that you can collect some estimated 200 million firearms and deny all criminals any lethal weapons. The cats are out of the bag.

Now, deal with it.

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It would be convenient to have a rug under which to sweep Cho Seung-Hui, preferrably a metaphysical one so we could banish the image and significance of what the 32 dead at Virginia Tech. We could then go on with our distracted, neurotic lives and salve those nerves with television news about people faraway dying and how our way is right, because we're bringing them freedom, the same freedom that hippies and large corporations alike endorse.

The Big Silence

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Somany people here talked about how Cho was "a victim too" because he was bullied. The NY Times reports that he was disturbed from an early age. Bullying was not the issue, nor was it the cause of this tragedy. So perhaps, now you all can stop feeling sympathy for the murderer and put your sympathies where they rightfully belong: the 32 victims.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/us/22vatech.html?hp

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This article is the first I've encountered that is an honest analysis of why the Virginia Tech shootings took place. We need to take a good, long, hard look not only at school culture, but at our entire culture. For the past 35 years, I have worked with special needs adults in programs funded by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation, where it is the court-mandated policy to regard special needs people as INDIVIDUALS in every conceivable way. All aspects of treatment and education are focused on this one principle. It has long been my belief that public education needs to adopt this same policy and begin to respect ALL students in America as unique INDIVIDUALS with special needs to be addressed. This would result in smaller class sizes, less pressure to conform, less conflict arising from ethnic and religious differences, less anger, and less violence, to name just a few benefits. Would this cost more money? Of course it would. People don't think twice about upgrading their real estate or their home entertainment systems, yet, for some stupid reason, they hesitate to upgrade something so basic as education, yet education is what makes us who we are more than our stuff. America is in dire need of an attitude adjustment.

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See: The Smoking Gun

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"THIS RAP [BLAME] GAME"

Isn't it a little obvious that adults seem to blame the young, poor, and under-educated for all life's woes? How can a people that are systematically impoverished be to blame for all that the adults have designed, that's gone awry? It's like blaming the formerly enslaved, for being enslaved?

Weren't our youths (Rappers) first blamed for the culture of violence created by adults? Everywhere our kids look to have childhood entertainment, video games, WWF, Hockey, toys, aren't they revolved around violence as the root eye-catchers? Did kids design videos and violent sports?

Relatively, weren't our young also blamed (scapegoats) in the illicit drug trade? Maybe the government and/or adults know something I don't, but do our youths make All the connections for drugs to be flown in here; made in laboratories here; smuggled across borders? (Was Cho Seung-Hui on Ritalin? Let adults tell it, Rappers administered that drug to him, like many other American children who go-Cho/postal are prescribed?)

So-called, educated adults do all they can to acquire their personal riches, then do all they can to stagnate the growth of those financially challenged; hence, Music Industry moguls invented the rule of Rap, yet its the artist who get blamed for the lyrics? Politicians and the government design ways to take the jobs overseas ("slave/sweatshop wages"), but its the criminals and those that have to create their own jobs who get blamed for criminal acts? (People who are supposed to have served their time, paid their debt to society, can't be hired for adequate wages?)

Nikki (lady look like a dude) Giovanni is calling the VT shooter "mean," yet isn't it mean streets and mean conditions that made, and continue to formulate and define N. Amerikkka? Instead of blaming the shooters and killers, let's start to examine the conditions and root causes. For those who say there's no excuse for taking another person's life, try putting yourself in such conditions as abusive (sexually, physically, verbally) prisons; concrete ghettos; starvation; homelessness; wrongful termination; homoSINsuals/ pedophiles molesting your children; self-defense, survival ultimatums?

Notice Ms. Giovanni never blamed her fellow school authorities for lacking the [adult] intelligence to intervene in Mr. Cho's mental wrangling's? Just like Law Enforcement does, I see this finger-pointing happening now on a legally protective scale. Whenever something takes place where lives are lost, and Security personnel could be culpable, the issue is never to solve and turn all stones, but to "CYA (personal job preservation)." All they ever try to do is keep the wealthy entity from being liable; likewise, protect themselves from being included in the possible suit--by blaming the "killer" and not the conditions. MLKJ-Muhammad might call it, "man's inhumanity to man."

The established and status quo benefactors feel its a violation of the rule of the wealthy to judge and criticize those in their income bracket, or those at the income level they're trying to reach; so the easy-way-out is to blame the underprivileged, less fortunate, and institutionally under-educated. Those lower-classed individuals are easy to prey upon by the rich and wealthy, for whose going to represent them? Blessedly, Thee Almighty's Wrath, in a number of forms.

Grow-up adults. You're really pointing your fingers in the mirror when you say, how "bad today's kids are." The Holy Books say the youth shall inherit and run the earth--it's already REVELATIONing (in effect). At least a lot of them can accept responsibility for their faults.


"MC" St. Joseph










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The president of Virginia Tech made certain his safety was ensured during the massacre.

Making of a Massacre
Quiet and disturbed, Cho Seung-Hui seethed, then exploded. His odyssey.

As Steger and his lieutenants debated in the University Board Room in Burress Hall at around 9:45 a.m., a police report came in: there had been another shooting. Steger thought he heard something that sounded like gunshots. He looked up, he recalled to NEWSWEEK. He wondered if the noise was coming from a nearby construction site. Then he noticed police running toward Norris Hall. Steger ordered security to lock the doors to the president's office. "I thought it could be a target," he says.

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...for killing others.
None, none, none.

P.S.

He was a student at an American university.
He had access to an education.
He had access to buying things on the Internet through Ebay.
He had many educational resources.
He thought himself better than he was.

(Good riddance of bad rubbish.)

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Blaming "society" or antecedents all the way back to Adam for bullying makes a a difficult problem totally intractable. It is the perennial copout for bullies, including the narcissistic monster who chased terrified students down and murdered them. He was armed, they were not. He was intent on murder, they were not. He was the bully par excellence, they were not. His meandering self-justification broadcast on TV showed someone utterly and totally absorbed with one thing - himself. Crime will always thrive unchecked while everyone but the person who actually commits the crime is blamed for it. Bullying is created by bullies. Bullying other people is a personal decision. Those who make this decision need better disincentives. Interpreting their arrogance as a "cry for help" or a critique of "society" is not a disincentive at all, it is an incentive. A lot of guesswork goes into whether this guy suffered bullying. Might he not, instead or in addition, have had long experience of getting away with bullying? In an article published in Scientific American some years ago, "Violent Pride", social psychologist Roy Baumeister argued persuasively that violence and bullying are characteristic of losers who fancy themselves and react violently when their own inflated self-image is threatened. Hard to find the article on line but it is referred to at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-esteem

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Not another one of these Jesus freaks. They're just as looney as the people who commit these crimes.

They find a way to make homosexuality the root cause of every tragedy. Give it a rest, St. Joseph. No one's buying your Jesus Juice here, buddy.

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Most Americans pretend to be shocked by what seem to be random killings in schools, in the workplace, and in the home. Yet ours is a culture that gives lip service to piety and yet glorifies violence. From the violent films, television programs, video games, and actual "shock and awe" newsreels of bombings inflicted on people in other countries, we are being inundated with violent images. How surprising can it then be that a social outcast decides to act out his frustrations in a manner he believes will gain him respect? The fact that many postings on the internet by young people express admiration for Cho's rampage are evidence that the killer got what he desired. Will getting rid of the images of violence decrease it? I doubt it. The images are the result of violent impulses--otherwise these images would not be so popular. Controlling those impulses will be all the more difficult if we use a theological term such as "evil" to describe them. That tactic puts an end to the search for the causes of the widespread violence in our society; and without knowing the causes, we are helpless to do anything about it.

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I've lived through it. I know what I’m talking about. Our son has turned out to be a wonderful person as the result of the hard work we devoted to his upbringing. He doesn't carry anger and resentment for all the bullying he was at the receiving end of. His dad, myself, our son, one fabulous school district psychologist, the fabulous *group* of autism expert teachers who run special classes in High School for kids with high functioning autism and Aspergers, and a great therapist get the credit for how he had turned out.

(on a side note: cases of autism have exploded. It used to be one in every 10,000 children had autism. By 2001, those odds skyrocketed to one in every 166 kids. There are experts who say a possible cause is the mercury used to preserve the immunizations our children are required to receive just so they can attend school. Kids born with the autism gene are much more sensitive to the mercury, there bodies cannot throw it off and it kicks the autism gene into full gear).

The administrators and counselors of his Jr. High get absolutely no credit at all. They failed him completely just as most seem to fail any kid who is bullied because they are different. If you're different and happen to be in Jr. High School it's as though you wear a sign on your back that says "I'm a loser, bully me", and those who should be the adults letting the kids know who's boss watch and pretend they are adults.

So when I say the adults who allow this kind of behavior to go on, do nothing but run their mouths, defend themselves, pretend to be experts on childhood behavior, enable the bullies at every turn and therefor share in the responsibility and accountability when there is a horrible outcome, I'm not just talking out the side of my head. I know what I'm saying and from personal experience.

The saddest thing of all is all this insanity is completely avoidable. Right action on the part of the adults in control can turn it around. Do many kids survive bullying and turn out better for it? Sure there are many kids who turn out better for it. Our son is one of those kids who did turn out better for it, because he got THE RIGHT KIND OF HELP FROM THE RIGHT PEOPLE. One teacher spending hours of counseling over weeks with him is simply not enough for a kid with autism. This does not constitute the right kind of help. Some teachers and kids befriending him is not the right kind of help either. All of it, regardless of how noble, is like putting a band-aid on an erupting volcano! These *special needs kids" need a lot more help than that. They need special classrooms with an entire group of teachers trained in the symptoms and effects of high functioning autism.

There is no medication for kids with autism either. If a kid has autism and is misdiagnosed with something else, as frequently happens, and is given medication, that is absolutely the WRONG path to travel. Giving medication to a kid with autism is like pouring gas on a fire. (cont)

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Mark, this is a brilliant take on the school massacre at Va Tech and the shooter's motivations. Everyone keeps shaking his/her head at what could have caused this event to occur when the answers seem quite clear as you state them. Further, it is the sheer naivete of students to even consider that those around them are in acute pain, reflecting how many scarred students have basically bcome invisible but not impervious to retaliation at some point. No, not all bullied students will become random shooters - but each time this happens, the 'me generation' of self-absorbed, too often overly indulged students are shocked and stunned to discover that everyone else is not just like them.

Having taught for many years, I have witnessed exactly what you describe: the antiseptic school environment (interesting parallel with parents' offices), the 'in-crowd's' dominance over others, the barbaric cruelty toward kids who were different, and the insensitivity of administrations' turning a 'blind eye' to what goes on within their environments. Nothing in this disaster has surprised me other than I'm surprised that it hasn't occurred more often.

The one thing we can be sure of, though, are the vulture msm journalists who feed off every tragedy offering up what they think we're supposed to believe. They are doing the same thing with the 2008 election.

School environments and curriculums need to be entirely overhauled and a revolution needs to result, changing the way bullies are allowed to get by with bullying - it's a phenomenon in the UK as deep as in the US. There are no easy answers - where has common sense gone?

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