The giant headline on this morning's Huffington Post is "There Were Warning Signs." The AP Article it links uses that old familiar phrase. "He was a loner." His teachers were alarmed by his "twisted, violence-drenched creative writing." He left a note.
A law enforcement official who read Cho's note described it Tuesday as a typed, eight-page rant against rich kids and religion. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.I guess the press and the officials have figured it out. Cho Seung-Hui was just like the Columbine killers. Nothing to see here. Move along. Of course, he wasn't just like the Columbine killers. They fed off each other. Theirs was a "group" atrocity. Most violence, from war to gang fights to domestic violence, is part of a group dynamic of some sort. Cho was utterly alone.
"You caused me to do this," the official quoted the note as saying
I have to wonder. How rare are young male "loners?" It seems to me in my long years I have known a lot of young male "loners" who didn't fit in. They stayed to themselves and brooded. They struggled with their aloneness. They were sad depressed figures. They were among my acquaintances growing up. For a while when I was about 15, I was one of them. Later, as a scout leader, I encountered several young "loners." Most of us made friends, recovered and led productive lives. It seems that for the loners I have known recovery started about the time they become valuable to the community and were accepted as men. Except for a very few who fought in Vietnam none of us killed anybody.
I also wonder whether Quentin Tarantino or Steven King were referred to psychological counselling by their creative writing teachers? Should they have been? Both have made millions of dollars writing stories that are very, very disturbing. Last I looked their body counts are all in their imaginations but their imaginations have produced stories read or viewed by millions of Americans. A mere glance at the history of American entertainment, it is obvious that tales of violence find a ready market for an industry aimed at the youth and young adult market. Violent "loner" fiction is a corner stone of American pop culture.
The pattern continues when we look at new media. Craig A. Anderson suggests that video games have been training young Americans to be violent. That may or may not be true, but I wonder if Anderson isn't studying an effect rather than a cause. There is and always has been a market for violence among young people.
I don't think the label "loner" and the references to his disturbing writings begin to explain why Cho killed 33 and wounded 30 more at Virginia Tech, but the label and the references do allow us to ignore trying to find out, and that seems to be important to a lot of people. Maybe we are afraid to look closely? Maybe we should?
