Still, I can only imagine how many times, as dkon mentioned, some poor student still clearly in shock has been asked, "How do you feel". Let's just all concede for the moment that within 24 hours of such an event, if not much longer afterwards, the answer is some strange combination of too many things to describe and nothing at all. The human brain is not meant to deal rationally with these kinds of things. They put us into shock, which is a real condition, not just some kind of metaphor. I seem to remember that when many Simon's Rockers were asked inane questions by the media, they realized that by inserting a few choice four letter words in the midst of otherwise cogent thoughts, they could piss the hell out of annoying TV reporters. I personally didn't act so mean to them, but in my defense, I was stoned on Percocet at the time.
Someday, I'd like to ask reporters why they ask people how they feel after virtually all events, both positive and negative, when such a question is fundamentally unanswerable. I've got a theory, of course. Whatever gets answered, it feeds into our sense of vicarious experience, which many in the media will mistakenly label "empathy". We wish to know how victims feel so that we may imagine ourselves in their place, as noble victims, just like we can imagine ourselves as Super Bowl winners, hurricane victims, children waiting for loved ones to come home from war, etc. It's pure, simple, utterly vapid vicariousness. We never actually feel what the interviewee actually feels, nor could we. Feelings are fundamentally intangible, no matter how carefully we describe them. For all the inanity, I understand why people want to empathize with people celebrating...it's kind of obvious. Vicarious victimhood scares me, though. People love to assume the role of victim. The Christian right talks about being persecuted in America, ignoring the fact that they basically run the show at the moment. Lou Dobbs, a very wealthy man, bashes immigrants every night on behalf of the poor American worker. Let's not get started on how many of society's ills are blamed on the gays (or minorities, or immigrants, or looking further back, Jews, women, Irish, Italians, Catholics, etc.). Playing the victim is a sickness in American society; having not really suffered squat (being average in America puts a human being at the pinnacle of the species' frickin existence on the planet so far), we need to assume others' tragedies in order to assuage our survivor's guilt, or in this case, our guilt with regard to luck of our birth. I am always struck by the obsession America has for the holocaust, not within the Jewish community but outside it as well. Honestly, it's not done to keep the memory alive, it often just means that we need a godawful big tragedy on which to project ourselves, and that one is the clearest. Frankly, anyone who bemoans the situation of the German Jews and then bashes any minority or ethnic group...well, hypocrisy just doesn't describe it.
Today's media obscenities were produced by a couple of Right wing bloggers who do humanitiy's reputation a great deal of harm. John Derbyshire of National Review (h/t Ana Marie Cox):
As NRO's designated chickenhawk, let me be the one to ask: Where was the spirit of self-defense here? Setting aside the ludicrous campus ban on licensed conceals, why didn't anyone rush the guy? It's not like this was Rambo, hosing the place down with automatic weapons. He had two handguns for goodness' sake—one of them reportedly a .22.and Nathanael Blake of Human Events Online (h/t ThinkProgress):
At the very least, count the shots and jump him reloading or changing hands. Better yet, just jump him. Handguns aren't very accurate, even at close range. I shoot mine all the time at the range, and I still can't hit squat. I doubt this guy was any better than I am. And even if hit, a .22 needs to find something important to do real damage—your chances aren't bad.
Yes, yes, I know it's easy to say these things: but didn't the heroes of Flight 93 teach us anything? As the cliche goes—and like most cliches. It's true—none of us knows what he'd do in a dire situation like that. I hope, however, that if I thought I was going to die anyway, I'd at least take a run at the guy.
College classrooms have scads of young men who are at their physical peak, and none of them seems to have done anything beyond ducking, running, and holding doors shut. Meanwhile, an old man hurled his body at the shooter to save others.It never ceases to amaze how the pro-war right, having gotten us into a war for which they have literally made no sacrifice whatsoever, instantly project themselves into the role of the heroes they idolize but have already proven they could never emulate. Honestly, in a shooting, people go on pure instinct, there's not a rational thought in sight. Perhaps if either of these wastes of phosphorus had some actual law enforcement or military training, they might be able to react like they so fervently believe they would in their Dirty Harry-esque wet dreams...but they fight evil using their keyboards, bashing those of us who often suggest that just because our soldiers are courageous doesn't mean they need to be sacrificed to our quixotic national nightmare. Here, rather than take on the role of victim, they actually project themselves into heroism, and woe unto the rest of us mortals who fall short of their delusional estimates of their own self-worth. Honestly, when you haven't done jack shit, the least you can do is shut the hell up when talking about a group of students who just faced the most horrible event of their lives. It's just utterly reprehensible.
Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that. …
Like Derb, I don’t know if I would live up to this myself, but I know that I should be heartily ashamed of myself if I didn’t. Am I noble, courageous and self-sacrificing? I don’t know; but I should hope to be so when necessary.
In closing, here's a tip for both our media and our chickenhawk critics: try asking "Is there anything you'd like to say?", or even better yet, "What would you like people to do in response to this?" You see, rather than being badgered or accused of cowardice in the face of a threat only a chickenhawk blogger could hope to overcome, you could always allow the traumatized students to express themselves in their own words or describe how we can help them. In the end, this is actually better than allowing them to help us by allowing us to suffer without pain or consequences...I just don't see it ever happening.
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