The Next Open Thread

by DemFromCT

Gut wrenching.

At least 22 people were killed today, some of them students, and about two dozen more injured during shootings at Virginia Tech, some of them in a classroom, the police said. A gunman was also shot to death, officials said.

The attack was the deadliest campus shooting in American history.

Up until today, the deadliest campus shooting in United States history was in 1966 at the University of Texas, where Charles Whitman climbed to the 28th-floor observation deck of a clock tower and opened fire, killing 16 people before he was gunned down by police. In the Columbine High attack in 1999, two teenagers killed 12 fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves.

A police official at Virginia Tech, Wendell Flinchum, said there were “at least 20 fatalities,” and that some of the victims were shot in the classroom. News of the number of the fatalities sent up an audible gasp in the news conference, said one television reporter in the broadcast.

I am old enough to remember the U of T clock tower shootings. It was that, and not Columbine, that occurred to me on hearing the news (just as Biafra and not Darfur crosses my mind when I think malnutrition... formative years, and all that). In any case, the idea of school as a safe haven is still ingrained in every parent. This strikes you in the gut no matter how far away you live.

There's other news, but not likely to be discussed much today, not after this.

Comments

[Melanie]

The students are neighbors and friends of mine. I'm absolutely stunned.

[bmaz]

There is an incredible decay afflicting the fabric of our society. It is sub-surface, but systemic. It is not the result of the false moral canards bandied about by conservative Republicans and neocons, but it is most certainly, at least in good measure, the direct result of the shameful policies and actions of said charlatans. They have put us at war with each other on domestic social issues, and at war with the world ideologically and militarily. If all the capital, both morally and financially, that has been wasted in the Iraq war, the culture war, the war on terror, the war on drugs, and all their other wars, had instead been invested in the betterment and equalization of opportunity for all memebers of our society, and building of the infrastructure necessary to accomplish that goal, we would be so much better off. There would be infinitely less depression, despair, disillusionment, dishonesty and every other breakdown of the individual that leads to the malaise of the whole. And maybe, just maybe, there would be peace and normalcy in Virginia today. There is a better way; and there must be a better day.

[TCinLA]

As Larry Johnson points out, today may be the most horrific mass murder in American history, but in Iraq, it would be "just another day in paradise."

This is not to belittle what has happened, but we Americans need to get a bit of perspective in our coddled existence. The situation we have allowed makes this look like the proverbial "Sunday school picnic."

Perhaps in the wake of this terrible event, we might think about that. We Americans - and I include the others who post here and read here - are not the Great Innocents we have been raised to believe we are.