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Do We Have Care to Spare?
Thoughts on the
Virginia Tech Tragedy
Virginia Tech Tragedy
By Linda Sharp
Question: Is it less horrifying that nearly 200 people perished in one car-bomb-laden day in Iraq than 33 dying at Virginia Tech?
Answer: No, it's not.
But somehow I, like many of you, find myself in the hypocritical position of paying way more attention to each detail being revealed about Cho Seung and his victims than I do to the faceless, nameless scores in Baghdad who live and die this type of horror each and every day.
Is it a lack of perspective? A personal bias?
I don't want to think so.
Perhaps, I tell myself, I'm paying more attention to Virginia because more details are readily available about the massacre. Maybe it's the whole "a killer among us" angle. Maybe it's that it was – I hate to say it this way – but as opposed to the daily carnage in Iraq – unexpected.
Even President Bush's speech at Virginia Tech displayed a certain disconnect, an emotional disparity (not that this is history making for him, mind you), "As you draw closer to your families in the coming days, I ask you to reach out to those who ache for sons and daughters who are never coming home."
He called for the flags to be flown at half staff. And I agree that reverence, solemnity and honor be displayed toward those who perished on that campus. But why are the flags not permanently lowered? Surely the lives of the servicemen and women being taken each day overseas warrant such regard? And hundreds of innocents die around the clock in bombings and atrocities that go far beyond the nausea-inducing images of a mentally deficient narcissist with two handguns.
You know, after working late, I didn't get to bed until well after midnight last night. Yet as tired as I was, I stared into the dark, as images of the 32 innocent faces faded in and out in my mind's eye. And shadowing them all were the cold eyes of Cho, the same eyes of a shark – lifeless, unfeeling, uncaring, demonic in their emptiness. And maybe that is where I got some of my answer as to why I am overcome with heartache and suffused with steadily growing anger about Virginia, and filled only with regretful ennui at what transpired in Iraq yesterday.