A Retrospective, of sorts

Yesterday I got my second Pfizer Covid 19 vaccine shot.  So in either 2 weeks (via CDC guidelines) or 1 week (via Pfizer guidelines) I will be fully vaccinated.  That is good news and I am thankful for that.  But I can't decide what that really means for me.  After a year of life being on hold, what activities will I actually resume?  What degree of "normal" will I be comfortable with and how soon?  I really don't know and I don't know how to know.  That got me thinking about the past year and the future.

By chance, I happened to watch a video this afternoon that really just had an affect on me.  It actually brought a little tear to my eye (full disclosure, if you know me, you know that's not especially hard to do).  The video was of Hozier singing Bridge Over Troubled Water last June in a dark, empty stadium with a socially distanced orchestra playing.  And while I still ultimately prefer the original Simon and Garfunkel version of the song, to me, this version just seemed to so embody this past year - the darkness, the emptiness, the distance, but also the message of the song, that you have someone there for you in the darkness.  It was just very moving.

I can't help but wonder, when I look back on this time in my life, how will I remember it?  If my grandchildren ask me what it was like to live through the Covid 19 pandemic (because they will likely all be too young to really remember it for themselves), what will I tell them?  I would love to be able to show them that video, and maybe I will be able to. There has been a lot of darkness and uncertainty, with more yet to come, I'm sure.  But there have also been points of light.  While we lost my mother-in-law to Covid in January, we also found out we are going to have another grandchild this coming August.  While we have lost a whole year of being able to visit with one granddaughter, and much fewer visits with our other granddaughter, my husband and I have grown even closer than we were before the pandemic started.  In many ways we've been able to return to what our relationship was in the beginning, when we first met and fell in love, and that has been a wonderful blessing.

Also, one year ago yesterday, I wrote a post about putting the pandemic's death toll numbers in perspective with other causes of death.  According to the New York Times, as of today the US death toll stands at 541,037, which puts it within the estimated range given a year ago, and stands at slightly less than the 2017 total for cancer deaths.  Somewhat interesting to look back at, for whatever it's worth.

Fear and healthy respect

Things are really getting to me.  The funny thing for me is that my life really hasn't changed that much because of the pandemic.  Before all this started, I went out a little more than I do now, but not much.  My life was mostly spent at home with the people who live in my house, and it still is.  But all the uncertainty has really begun to weigh on my mind.  I find myself doing COVID-19  math with Alabama's numbers and the US numbers -  what percentage has been tested, what percentage of those tested are testing positive, what percentage of those testing positive are dying.  The percentage are relatively small (for Alabama they are 2%, 7%, and 3% respectively), but somehow that still isn't comforting. 

I wish that we could transition from fear (or denial) to a healthy respect for the virus and the situation.  I wish that I knew what activities were actually safe and which weren't.  Is it really okay to get take-out from a restaurant?  Am I really safe if I wear a mask in public and wash or sanitize my hands once I'm out of public?  Does wiping down my groceries really do any good?  But with so little reliable information out there it seems difficult to know, so fear remains the dominant emotion and healthy respect is difficult to achieve. For society as a whole it seems even more difficult, with some groups in total denial of gravity of situation and, as with most things these days, people's opinions being influenced by their political inclinations. 

I know that in general, people just want things to return to normal as quickly as possible, but as my priest said earlier in the pandemic, things won't go back to normal.  There will be a new normal, which is, as of yet, unknown.  Unknown is hard to deal with, at least for me.

Putting things in perspective

As I've mentioned here before, I have generalized anxiety disorder.  One way that I try to combat my anxiety is to put things into perspective.  That's not always easy to do, mind you, but I try.  With all the fear and speculation swirling around due to the coronavirus (SARS CoV2) and it's resulting illness (COVID 19), my brain has been tending to waffle between "It'll be okay" and "We're all going to die."  So in order to deal with that, I've been looking at some numbers to try to put things into perspective.  Here is what I have found.

A New York Times article from March 13, 2020 reports a possible US death toll for the virus ranging from 200,000 to 1.7 million people,

Between 160 million and 214 million people in the United States could be infected over the course of the epidemic, according to a projection that encompasses the range of the four scenarios. That could last months or even over a year, with infections concentrated in shorter periods, staggered across time in different communities, experts said. As many as 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die.

These are disturbing numbers, no doubt.  The article does, however, say that these numbers were from the end of February and do not take into account the measures currently being applied to mitigate the situation.

Taking these numbers as my guide, I started looking at some statistics.  The most recent absolute numbers I could find for US mortality on the CDC website were for 2018.  In 2018, the total mortality in the US from all causes was 2,839,205 (source).  This is an increase over the previous year and our death rate has continued to increase, slightly, from 2008 to the present, according to Macrotrends.net.  For a breakdown of the numbers among the top 10 leading causes of death, I had to look at the 2017 numbers (no idea why those are the most recent on the CDC website).  These are the numbers I found:

Heart Disease = 647,457
Cancer = 599,108
Accidents = 169,936
Chronic lower respiratory disease = 160,201
Stroke = 146,383
Alzheimer's = 121,404
Diabetes = 83,564
Flu & Pneumonia = 55,633
Kidney disease = 50,633
Suicide = 47,173

A little perspective.  The lower number of the estimate (200,000) would be more than those who died in accidents, but less than those who died of cancer or heart disease.  If it was the higher of the estimated numbers, it would be comparable, though slightly below, the total of the top 5 causes of death combined.  These are all staggering numbers, but at least now I have a little perspective of what those numbers actually mean.

I did find another article, this one from the Washington Post dated March 11, 2020, that had a much wider range in its estimate.

His team put together a simple table that looks at various scenarios using case fatality ratios ranging from .1, similar to seasonal flu, to .5, a moderately severe pandemic, and 1.0, a severe one. The infection rate ranged from 0.1 percent of the population to 50 percent. That put the range of deaths at 327 (best case) to 1,635,000 (worst case). The deaths would not necessarily happen over a month or a year, but could occur over two or three years, he said.

What struck me (other than the wildly lower best case numbers) were that these deaths could take place over a period of 2 to 3 years.  If it were the worst case scenario numbers but over 3 years, it would actually make it lower than the number of death from heart disease in that same period.  Still a terrible loss of life, and I'm a firm believer in the "Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee" philosophy.

Hopefully a little perspective will help me to keep calm and carry on.  But as Douglas Adam suggested, the last thing a person really needs is perspective...

[Upon putting his wife into his newly created "Total Perspective Vortex"] To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.  (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe p. 77)

We have a Culture Problem

Part of the problem with sexual harassment in this country comes from the fact that we have a culture problem.  Our culture tends to glorify, or at least condone, the sexual mistreatment of women.  In the case of Al Franken, grabbing and kissing a woman without her permission, we have very iconic examples.  Take for instance, the famous picture of the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square at the end of WWII. This was not his girlfriend or even someone he knew.  He was half drunk and happy that the war was over and celebrated by kissing "the first nurse he saw" even though he was on a date with a completely different woman. 

So on this joyous and unbelievable afternoon, George ran from Rita — the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen — grabbed the first nurse he saw, spun her around, dipped her and kissed her. Rita was just steps behind them, and in the photo she’s beaming.

This picture is celebrated as culturally significant and romantic, but the woman being kissed was not too happy about it at the time.

The kiss did kind of bother someone else, though: the woman in the nurse’s uniform, Greta Zimmer, who wasn’t even a nurse. She was a 21-year-old dental assistant from Queens, who, having heard rumors about the end of the war, walked over to Times Square from her office on Lexington Avenue. George says he was so drunk, he doesn’t even remember the kiss. Greta says she’ll never forget it. [...] She isn’t sure how long she was standing there; maybe minutes. “And then I was grabbed,” she says. “That man was very strong. I wasn’t kissing him. He was kissing me.”

And, of course, the movies are filled with scenes where a man grabs a woman and kisses her, she slaps him, then she kisses him back, which gives the impression that it was really okay all along and that being forcibly kissed without permission is what all woman secretly want.  This is a problem and sends a bad message.

Now Senator Franken has said that his actions, including the photo of him groping the accusers breasts while she sleeps, was done in the name of comedy, but that is no excuse.  Whether done for celebratory, comedic, or sexual reasons, it is wrong to kiss or touch a woman sexually without her permission. Period.

And, of course, there is the man who will probably soon be the newest Senator from my home state, the great state of Alabama, Roy Moore.  Now I can't think of any good examples of Hollywood glorifying a sexual relationship between a man in his 30s and a girl of 14, but there is probably one out there somewhere.  But there are examples of people defending his behavior as not really a problem. Oh wrong, maybe, but not really a problem. 

A reporter defending Roy Moore appeared to compare the sexual misconduct allegations against the GOP Senate candidate to stealing a lawnmower.

During a CNN interview on Monday, Brandon Moseley, a reporter at the Alabama Political Reporter, argued that allegations such as the ones being leveled at Moore shouldn't disqualify the candidate. He noted that the accusation detailed in a recent The Washington Post report, in which a woman claimed Moore made sexual advances on her in 1979 when she was 14 and he was 32, would count as a misdemeanor in Alabama at the time.
"Does that make it OK?" anchor Brooke Baldwin asked.
“No. But again, if, you know, Roy Moore had stolen a lawn mower when he was 21, that’s bad, but that’s not a reason, 50 years later, to all of a sudden, you know, throw him off the ballot or let Mitch McConnell pick the next senator of Alabama," Moseley said.

Now I grew up in Alabama, so I was once a 14 year old girl in Alabama. It was the 80s not the 70s, but I doubt attitudes were much different between the two time frames.  The legal age of consent was 16, but 14 year-olds were sexually active.  There were older guys that hung out at high school football games and high school dances trolling for younger girls, and many didn't care if they were underage or not (just as people have said Moore did).  And the problem is, many of the girls parents didn't seem to mind either.  In fact, when my older sister was 15 she met a guy who was 21 at a high school dance and started dating him.  My parents allowed it.  When I was 14 years old I dated a guy who was 19 years old and my parents allowed it.  In both cases, I know for a fact that they were looking for someone that was young and malleable so that they could make them into what they wanted as a wife or girlfriend.  In the case of my older boyfriend, his girlfriend before me was 14 and his girlfriend after me was 14.  It is that age where the girls have all the look of an adult woman, but often lack the maturity or strength of mind that comes with adulthood.  That makes it perfect for the unscrupulous male predator, and don't get me wrong, that is exactly what they are - predators.  Just like Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty fame.

A video on YouTube shows Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, in 2009, urging adult men to marry 15 and 16 year old girls who will “pick their ducks” and not their pockets.

 And the problem is, even though Alabama law technically recognizes this as a crime, our culture tells us that it is really okay, that there is really no harm done.  That is wrong.  There is harm done.  And in fact, back in the 80s (I don't know about now) it was legal for a 14 year old to get married with parental consent.  So it wasn't okay for a 14 year old to consent to sex, but it was okay for her parents to consent to it for her.  I'm sorry (okay I'm not really sorry), but that is WRONG! In fact, apparently in Louisiana, marrying the underage girl was a way to get out of statutory rape charges. Again, see Phil Robertson as an example:

Robertson has a history of messing around with underage girls.  At age 20, he was having sex with a 14-year-old girl who got pregnant and was forced to marry her at 16 to avoid going to prison for statutory rape in Louisiana.

 So, if we are going to do something about sexual harassment in our country, we need to address our cultural issues with the topic, not just our laws.  We need to socialize our young males to realize that forced affection is not true affection and a woman's (or girl's) body is her own to make her own decisions about.  And if she is not of legal age to make those decisions, then they shouldn't ask her to make them, they should keep their hands to themselves!  And, in fact, it goes both ways.  Women should not be forcing themselves on men or boys either.  Remember, your body is your own, and your rights end where someone else's nose (or lips, or breast, or vagina, or penis, etc) begins.  It's not funny, it's not romantic, and it's not okay.

New York City flyby ill advised, to say the least

Via CNN.com, Official who OK'd N.Y. flyby accused of 'felony stupidity'

After a YouTube video showed panicked New Yorkers scrambling as a Boeing 747 flew frighteningly close to the lower Manhattan skyline, a former Homeland Security adviser questioned whether the man who approved the flyby should remain in his White House office.

Fran Townsend, who advised President George W. Bush for more than three years, called the move "crass insensitivity" in the wake of 9/11.

"I'd call this felony stupidity. This is probably not the right job for Mr. Caldera to be in if he didn't understand the likely reaction of New Yorkers, of the mayor," Townsend said Tuesday on CNN's "American Morning."

Louis Caldera, director of the White House Military Office, quickly apologized for Monday's incident after the planes prompted workers and residents to evacuate buildings in New York and New Jersey.

I have to say that I agree, felony stupidity is an appropriate descriptor here. If it is not stupidity on the part of the person authorizing it, then it is sadistic. Let's hope for stupidity.

The end of the strike

Via CNN - Strike over, Hollywood writers head back to work

Striking Hollywood writers will be back at their keyboards Wednesday after voting overwhelmingly to end a 100-day walkout that essentially shut down the entertainment industry.

[...]

"The strike is over. Our membership has voted, and writers can go back to work," said Patric Verrone, president of the WGA's West chapter.

[...]

It's unclear how soon new episodes of scripted programs will start appearing, because production won't begin until scripts are completed, the AP reported.

It will take at least four weeks for producers to get the first post-strike episodes of comedies back on the air; dramas will take six to eight weeks, the AP said.

Honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about the strike being over. On the one hand, there are some shows that I will be happy to see return with new episodes, but on the other hand, I have so little time to watch t.v. as it is, it will just put me that much farther behind. Good thing I have TiVo!

Standoff at Clinton office ends peacefully

Via Yahoo News and AFP - Hostage-taker at Clinton office surrenders

A man claiming to be armed with a bomb took over one of US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton's campaign offices for more than five hours Friday before surrendering to police.

The man, believed to have a history of mental illness, walked into the New Hampshire office at around 1:00 pm (1800 GMT), taking three women, a man and a baby hostage and reportedly demanding to speak to the former first lady.

[. . .]

US media said that Eisenberg was well known locally, had a history of mental problems and wanted to draw attention to the state of psychiatric health care in the United States.

One has to wonder about such a stunt. What exactly is the point of pretending to (the articles says it was actually road flares not a bomb) try to blow up the campaign office of a presidential primary candidate that is more likely to actually do something about his supposed issue of concern than what the current administration is doing? Well, I guess if he really is mentally ill then logic might not be the place to look for an explanation.

Sean Taylor dead at 24

Via the Chicago Tribune - Redskins' Taylor Dies Day After Shooting

Washington Redskins safety Sean Taylor died early Tuesday, a day after he was shot at home. He was 24. Family friend Richard Sharpstein said Taylor's father told him the news around 5:30 a.m.

[. . .]

Taylor was shot early Monday in the upper leg, damaging an artery and causing significant blood loss.

When you first hears that someone has been shot in the leg you don't normally think of it as being a potentially fatal wound if treatment is received right away, but obviously it can be. My prayers go out to his family and friends, especially his baby daughter who will never really get the chance to know her father. What a tragic loss.

Redskins' Sean Taylor shot in the leg

Via WaPo - Redskins' Taylor in Critical Condition After Shooting
Redskins' safety Sean Taylor was shot at his Miami home early this morning and is in critical condition. The motivation for the shooting is still unknown. I'm sure there will be regular updates at WaPo and other news outlets.

FOX News and the "Don't Tase Me Bro" video

On Thursday I was at a local auto dealership having my new car serviced. I was waiting in the waiting room reading a book while they serviced the car. Like most local establishments in my hometown that show news channels, the television was tuned to FOX News (Ugh!). I was generally trying to ignore the TV and read, but then a news story came on about the "Don't tase me bro" incident in Florida and it caught my attention. The story was about the fact that the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement had found that officers to be within their rights to use a taser on the student (Andrew Meyer). As part of the story they replayed the latter part of the video where Meyer is being dragged off and then shocked with the taser. The news caster (I don't know who he was, but it was around 10:15ish in the morning) who was telling the story commented that he could just watch that video all day long and commented that Meyer should have "taken it like a man" instead of yelling like that. I was thoroughly disgusted. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the video (or are just like the news caster and enjoy watching it) here is the whole video:

Now I know that the video went viral and obviously many, many people enjoyed watching it, but I certainly couldn't imagine watching it all day long or even over and over multiple times. And particularly the tasing scene is something I don't want to watch again. What strikes me about the commentary is that if that guy were to be tased I have a hard time imagining that he would "take it like a man". My guess is that he would be suing the cops that did it just like Meyer is doing.

Now I can see that Meyer was over stepping the bounds a bit with his questioning (or his introductory commentary as it were), but John Kerry said that he wanted to answer the question. Plus, if his commentary was totally out of bounds then people like Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh ought to be tased as well. They talk over people and make wild accusations all the time. If anyone who is rude or just has ideas that conflict with the mainstream should be arrested and tased then shouldn't we all just get to walk around with tasers all the time and tase most everyone we see?

It seems to me that if Meyer wants to be a journalist some day he is going to have to refine his questioning skills, but it hardly seemed like behavior that deserved being arrested for. Plus, if they weren't arresting him for it, how could he be charged with resisting arrest?

RIP - Leona Helmsley

Via the BBC - US property tycoon Helmsley dies

US property tycoon Leona Helmsley, who was famously quoted as saying "only the little people pay taxes", and was later jailed for tax evasion, has died at 87.

Mrs Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer home in Greenwich, Connecticut, her publicist said.

A bad situation gets worse

Via WaPo - 3 Mine Rescuers Die, 6 Others Hurt

A cave-in Thursday night killed three rescue workers and injured at least six others who were trying to tunnel through rubble to reach six trapped miners, authorities said. Mining officials were considering whether to suspend the rescue effort.

It was a major setback on the 11th day of the effort to find miners who have been confined at least 1,500 feet below ground at the Crandall Canyon mine. It is unknown if the six are alive or dead.

It is such a tragic situation when those who are trying to help rescue others get injured or killed during their efforts.

This whole ordeal seems to underscore the danger that is still very much associated with coal mining. I am reminded of a commercial that ran a year or so ago advertising coal. The commercial featured young, hard-bodied men and women, scantily dressed, and working in a coal mine. The tag line was something like, "Coal (or coal mining, I forget) never looked so good" and the point was to promote clean-burning coal. My husband and I both found it greatly ironic that the song they chose to use in the commercial was "Sixteen Tons".

Now while it may be true that coal burns cleaner now than it once did, mine safety rules have increased and I assume miners no longer have to live in mining camps and "sell their souls to the company store", it seems hard to imagine that coal mining could even come close to the glamor that commercial implied. These recent mine collapses would seem to bolster my position on the subject.

And of course I'm aware that the commercial was never intended to be an accurate representation of coal mining, nor is it likely that it was intended as a miner recruiting tool. It was simply a way to make the consumer feel less guilty about over-consuming fossil fuels. I wonder if recent events will have any affect on the consumer mind-set.

Ask and ye shall receive

Yesterday, over at Poliblog, Steven Taylor noted an article that mentioned the fact that many of America's bridges received the same rating (structurally deficient) as the bridge that collapsed in Minnesota. In a comment to the post I wondered which bridges they were. Well, today my sister emailed me an answer. Via MSNBC - State by State: 'Deficient' or 'Obsolete' Bridges. The linked page features an interactive map of the US with each state color coded by the percentage of bridges rated 'deficient' or 'obsolete'. If you click on a state you are then directed to a list of the major bridges in that state that received either of those ratings. It is very interesting.

Irony Anyone?

Via WaPo - Outsourcing the Picket Line: Carpenters Union Hires Homeless to Stage Protests

The picketers marching in a circle in front of a downtown Washington office building chanting about low wages do not seem fully focused on their message.

[. . .]

Although their placards identify the picketers as being with the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters, they are not union members.

They're hired feet, or, as the union calls them, temporary workers, paid $8 an hour to picket. Many were recruited from homeless shelters or transitional houses. Several have recently been released from prison. Others are between jobs.

[. . .]

The carpenters union is one of the most active picketers in the District, routinely staging as many as eight picket lines a day at buildings where construction or renovation work is being done without union labor.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see the irony in using non-union labor to protest the use of non-union labor?

On the one hand, it is nice to see that there are groups out there that are willing to hire the homeless and ex-cons. On the other hand, I feel like this whole thing says something not too good about our society at the moment. The bottom line here seems to be all about the bottom line. In other words, they don't want to have give up their own paid time to go protest. They just want to pay someone else to fight their battles for them while they continue with life as usual. To me at least, that does not say anything good about them.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I will say that my father-in-law was a union carpenter for much of his career in carpentry. His local union was very good to him and has continued to be very good to my mother-in-law since his death.

Libby NOT going to prison after all

Via WaPo - Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence

President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case. Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.

I suppose this shouldn't come as a surprise. In reality, Bush had no reason not to pardon him. It's not he's worried about it affecting his approval rating or anything.

Paris is not out of the woods yet

Via the BBC - Paris Hilton must return to court

A Los Angeles judge has ordered Paris Hilton to appear in court on Friday morning to determine whether she should be returned to jail.

The celebrity heiress was allowed to leave jail on Thursday, only three days into a 45-day sentence for violating probation on a drink-driving ban.

She was given an electronic tag and ordered to remain under house arrest for the remainder of her sentence.

Her release on unspecified medical grounds sparked widespread criticism.

She is due in court at 0900 (1600GMT) on Friday, where Judge Michael Sauer, who sentenced her to jail at her trial in early May, will hear the case.

[. . .]

When Hilton was originally sentenced to 45 days for violating probation on a drink-driving conviction, she was told there was no prospect of early release.

Judge Sauer had also specifically ruled that she could not serve her sentence at home under electronic monitoring.

Even if she was suffering from some medical condition (most likely claustrophobia), I'm not sure why it should be a get out of jail free card. If so, is it a get out of jail free card for any poor schmuck who comes along? I have to agree with Al Sharpton on this one:

Civil rights leader Rev Al Sharpton condemned the release as showing the "double standards" of the US legal system.

"This early release gives all of the appearances of economic and racial favouritism that is constantly cited by poor people and people of colour," he said. "There are any number of cases of people who handle being incarcerated badly and even have health conditions that are not released."

I certainly hope the judge makes her do her full time in jail.

Rest in Peace

Via WaPo - Television Evangelist Falwell Dies at 73

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, the television evangelist who founded the Moral Majority and used it to mold the religious right into a political force, died Tuesday shortly after being found unconscious in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said. He was 73.

Ron Godwin, the university's executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. "CPR efforts were unsuccessful," he said.

The videos and the backlash

Via the NYT - NBC News Defends Its Use of Material Sent by the Killer

NBC News fought back yesterday against a growing backlash over the way it handled the pictures and writings of the student who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech.

Steve Capus, the president of NBC News, strongly defended the network’s decision to broadcast the material.

I watched some of the videos yesterday and I will admit I had mixed emotions about NBC's use of them. My initial response was similar to Rosie O'Donnell's. I saw a video clip of her saying that by airing the video they were playing into Cho's plan. They were helping to make him famous. However, my next thought was that people want to see it. People want to know why he did it and if the media has access to information that can help people figure that out, they have the right to show it.

There was more to the story than just the fact that NBC aired the video. What struck me after watching some of the video clips from NBC was how they were using them. There was one video I watched yesterday (and I would link to it but I can't seem to find it this morning) of Chris Matthews talking to someone and the still pictures from the manifesto are just looping on screen behind them. To me this just seemed to be in poor taste. Okay, maybe show them, but why keep looping them?

Maybe the video confession/manifesto should have been saved for the experts only. Maybe we should focus more on the victims and less on the killer (and that thought actually occurred to me early on Monday). Maybe that would remove some of the motivation of future mass murderers if they knew it wasn't a way to get their stories told. But that just isn't the way the human mind works, or at least the American mind. We want to know and we think we have the right to know.

The rest of the world reacts

WaPo - Va. Killings Widely Seen as Reflecting a Violent Society

Officials, newspaper columnists and citizens around the world Tuesday described the Virginia Tech massacre as the tragic reflection of an America that fosters violence at home and abroad, even as it attempts to dictate behavior to the rest of the world.

From European countries with strict gun-control laws to war-ravaged Iraq, where dozens of people are killed in shootings and bombings each day, foreigners and their news media used the university attack to condemn what they depicted as U.S. policies to arm friends, attack enemies and rely on violence rather than dialogue to settle disputes.

It is difficult to know how to react to such reactions. On the one hand, it gives some insight into how the citizens of other countries feel about the U.S., that their condolences are tempered with a dose of "but it was your own fault." But to some degree I have to agree. Our culture is awfully violent and some of the blogospheric reaction to Monday's events shows that our view of reality has become skewed by exposure to movie violence (Poliblog has some good commentary on the subject with links to examples). And I personally am in favor of stricter gun laws.

However, on the other hand, the article quotes an Iraqi who makes a good point, but not the point that I think he intended to make:

"We did not have this violence in the Saddam era because the law was so tough on guns."

No, they didn't have that violence, they had a ruthless dictator. And although I do not believe that the Second Amendment to the Constitution should be interpreted as broadly as it currently is, I think it was designed to defend against situations exactly like what existed in Iraq under Saddam.

More info on Cho

Time has an article with some more info on Cho - The Making of a Mass Killer

H/T: Poliblog