On Cho Seung-Hui

It is the pre-eminent story of the week. The facts will be countlessly re-run. Sobbing victims will be shamelessly exploited for television ratings. Everyone will unveil psycological "experts" to tell us why someone would do such a terrible thing. School adminstrators and police will be blamed. Gun control will be argued by the political-types; indeed, the bodies were not even cool before both sides of the gun control debate were in full swing. In watching TV coverage of the video and pictures that were delivered today to NBC, the words "evil", "psycho", and "deranged" are oft-repeated. I get the strange, creeping sensation that I have heard this all before - and then I remember where. Most people can remember where they were on April 20, 1999. Not because this date is particularly important, but because it marks the time when Columbine High School was forever, and indellibly etched into the psyche of all Americans. The similarity of the situation draws obvious comparisons, even as the names Dylan and Eric appear in the Cho's manifsesto and video commentary. The same questions being asked today were asked then. An article in The Slate from April 2004 discusses the results of 5 years of psycho-analysis of Columbine killer Eric Harris: He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he's not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but "It's more about demeaning other people,"... Could this be similar to the VT case? We will never know for sure - the 2 Columbine shooters and the VT shooter are all dead, and unable to tell their tale. It is possible that Cho could have had any of a large number of motivations, but without a protracted and analytical dialogue, the motivation will remain forever the speculation of supposed "experts". Perhaps, however, studying the Columbine situation is the wrong approach. Not only did the shooters not have a chance to tell their story, but, as teenage students, they may not have been able to adequately express the motivation due to lack of experience and knowledge. There is another case that, while slightly different, offers much more insight into the mind of the perpetrator, both in terms of volume of information and in cogency of the dialogue. This is the case of Timothy McVeigh. McVeigh was convicted of the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. (In fact, the Columbine shootings were supposed to take place on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and the Waco disaster, April 19, but was delayed until April 20 due to bomb-making delays.) Between McVeigh's conviction on June 2, 1997, and his execution on June 11, 2001, he hosted scores of interviews in which he spoke at length about himself and his psyche. This may be as close as we can get to understanding people who do these things. In an interview with TIME that was done in the months preceding the trial, McVeigh cogently describes himself and his ideology. Quotes like this one show a high level of insight and understanding: ...it all has to do with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and the misconception that the government is obliged to provide those things or has the jurisdiction to deny them. We've gotten away from the principle that they were only created to secure those rights. And that's where, I believe, much of the trouble has surfaced... I think another aspect to that has to do with to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Their just powers. I believe we've lost track of what the just power of the federal government is and what it is not. There are too many things that are being given to a democracy that shouldn't be the subject of a vote, that are inalienable rights that are not to be decided by a central government. This is Jeffersonian-type stuff. McVeigh cites Jefferson as one of his favorite authors of "political philosophy" as well as Patrick Henry, John Locke, and Benjamin Franklin. It is hard to imagine that an evil, deranged individual could make insights such as the one above, or read, comprehend, and admire people like John Locke. Most Americans today don't even know who John Locke was (cheat link supplied if you're one of them). Throughout the interview, McVeigh shows high intellect and rational thought processes. This observation is echoed by Lou Michel, who spent 75 hours interviewing McVeigh and gave this interview to summarize his findings and to promote the book he would eventally write, American Terrorist. In the interview, Michel fields a question related to the sanity of McVeigh: Question: Do you think Timothy is insane? Lou Michel: No. It would make it very easy to cope with this as a country if McVeigh were a Charles Manson-type of killer. But the fact is he is a three-dimensional person and in a sense, it makes it even more frightening that a sane person would turn to terrorism to make his point against the government. I think underneath it all, many of us are afraid or frightened that a son of American suburbia would become the worst mass-murderer in US history. This seems to jive with the feeling I get after reading his afore-mentioned TIME interview. It is also interesting to ponder the implications of McVeigh's final statement before being executed. He cites a little-known poem by William Henley called Invictus. His verbatim copy of the poem as the entirety of his final words augment the statement that he made during his sentencing: THE COURT: Would you please come to the lectern to make that statement.You may speak, Mr. McVeigh. THE DEFENDANT: If the Court please, I wish to use the words of Justice Brandeis dissenting in Olmstead (my link) to speak for me. He wrote, "Our Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example." That's all I have. OK, those of you who didn't need the cheat link for John Locke, how many of you know Brandeis' dissenting opinion from Olmstead v. United States without looking? Maybe if you're a lawyer? McVeigh makes clear on many occasions that his disillusionment with the operations of the US federal government was his motivating factor. McVeigh wrote An Essay in Hypocrisy to explain his feelings in March 1998. Note the references to Iraq PRE-9/11. How was he so prophetic? Finally, Gore Vidal's essay The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh takes McVeigh's own essay and expounds on it to help describe world events. For Gore Vidal, who a Newsweek critic described as "the best all-around man of letters since Edmund Wilson", to be referencing McVeigh says much for McVeigh's argument. But does all of this justify his actions? Those of you who read here regularly know that I do not have any sympathy for the "justification" arguments used by our government for bombing, murder, torture, explotation, or any other act that is detrimental to humankind. I will extend McVeigh no greater leniency - I vehemently disagree with is course of action. However, for anyone who approves of governmental justification of the above, even when it is purported to serve "the greater good", than it becomes much more difficult to condemn McVeigh. But back to Cho and Virginia Tech - whether Cho had the level of insight and education that McVeigh had is unknown to me at this point. It is possible that he was just an "evil", "deranged" human being, or perhaps he identified with Eric Harris, and was "disgusted by the morons around him". Whatever the motivation, however, this type of violent reaction to a real or a perceived injustice is neither unique to this incident, nor is it likely to be eliminated by any sort of superficial government policy or determined populace action. I don't believe in people being inherently "evil". The conditions that allow this type of behavior to develop are inherent to society - the political, educational, and moral systems by nature segregate certian portions of the population. This segregation weighs on the psyche of the segregated individuals, and in some cases causes them to act out in destructive ways. I don't know that there is a way to eliminate this destructiveness, short of developing small all-inclusive, anarcho-communal societies where all members feel an inherent sense of worth and value, such as traditional 19th century American Indian society. I don't see that happening anytime soon.