Sunday, April 22, 2007
The tragedy next time
Perhaps readers will not welcome more words about the Virginia Tech shootings, but the case still gnaws.
Many of the mysteries surrounding this sad episode have finally achieved resolution. Why (many asked) didn't the cops lock down the campus after the first shooting? A few hours after the massacre, I offered this theory: "The cops arrested the wrong guy after the first incident. Now, they are loathe to admit that they made a mistake." Replace "arrested" with "questioned" in that sentence, and we have our answer. After the first round of gunfire, a friend of victim Emily Jane Hilscher told the cops that the young lady's boyfriend was a gun enthusiast -- and upon learning this, Blacksburg's answer to Inspector Lestrade did the Conclusion Hop. The police were questioning the boyfriend, even as the main event began.
Police always blame a spouse or lover. Usually, that presumption holds true. Sometimes it doesn't.
And yet I remain puzzled. Seung-Hui Cho (the family appears to prefer the western name order) seems to have singled out Emily Hilscher -- yet nothing connects the two. Indeed, to this day, the local authorities refuse to state definitively that Cho killed her, although his gun was used in the crime.
NBC partially broadcast the murderer's videotaped confession. Although many feel that the killer's video should not have been made available to the public, I wish that we had seen those materials in full. In the expurgated version, Cho refers to some event or series of events in his life which triggered his rage. But what was that trigger?
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Cho's "creative" writings make obsessive reference to pedophilia, a fact which has led many to speculate that he had suffered from abuse. But we have no other evidence for this idea.
His plays remind me of the great controversy over Sigmund Freud's work: Were his patients genuinely abused, or did they (as Freud eventually concluded) create imaginary scenarios? Many modern critics of Freud chastise him for doubting the reality of the incest reports he received. However, I have had more experience that I ever cared to have with dissociative individuals, and I can assure you that there are a lot of people out there who do not recognize the line between fantasy and reality. They confuse that which they have read with lived experience, and they fasten onto delusions of victimhood as an excuse for personal failure.
Cho was an unsuccessful English student with no real future. He must have compared himself to his older sister, a Princeton graduate who went onto a prestigious position. In Cho's "Richard McBeef," the young protagonist accuses the titular character of pedophilia and "conspiracy." But -- and this is a telling point which many have ignored -- Cho indicates that the accusations are unfounded.
According to boyhood friend Kim Gyeong-won, Cho was fairly well socialized during his elementary school years. After he entered middle school, something happened -- either an abusive episode occurred, or he became jealous over his sister's growing success, or some other factor played a role. We will probably never know.
Well, Newt Gingrich claims to know: He blames liberals. I suggest you try to read (or at least to skim) the transcript of Newt's argument, if it can be called an argument. His words simply make no sense. In fact, I think that if you compare the ramblings of Newt Gingrich and Seung-Hui Cho, Cho comes across as rather more coherent.
We know now that this young man had set off all sorts of warning sirens. He had been sent in for psychological evaluation, and one teacher found his behavior so disturbing that she refused to have him in her class. Thus, the larger question raised by this incident is: How does our society deal with those who have lost their grip on sanity?
Some say that one out of ten people in this country become untethered from reason. I don't know if that statistic is accurate, but I do believe that, at one time or another, most people reading these words will have to deal with a friend or family member suffering from severe mental health issues.
At this point, discretion forces me to be vague. The case closest to my "circle" involved a woman who once was a well-regarded nurse. Call her Casie.
Over the course of several years, Casie's behavior became erratic -- severely disturbed. Hospitals suspected (but never proved) that she was stealing drugs; thus, she became unemployable. She lost custody of her children.
While still employed as a nurse, she had once cared for Betty Ford. In gratitude, the former First Lady graciously sponsored Casie's stay in the famous rehabilitation clinic bearing her name. Although I'm no fan of Betty Ford's husband, I will always revere that lady for her kindness to Casie.
One day, I took Casie's children to visit their mother at the center. Near the entrance is a "meditation chamber" which, I jokingly opined, would be a marvelous place to drop acid. "Everyone says that," Casie told me. I asked if she had spotted anyone famous, and she whispered a few words about a certain television actor. Her daughter overheard. Later, as we toured the grounds, the little girl suddenly pointed and shrieked, in a voice loud enough for all of California to hear: "Look! It's him! It's...."
(Obviously, I can't finish that quotation.)
Alas, the stay in rehab did no lasting good. Substance abuse was not the real issue.
Casie became suicidal and engaged in acts of self-mutilation. Then she became violent towards others, at one point attacking a very elderly man. After these episodes, the cops would take her away for observation, but she was never held for more than three days.
Everyone presumes that the mentally ill can be institutionalized if they become a threat to themselves or to others. Don't believe what you hear. Our underfunded mental health system quickly transfers patients to the street or into jail. Casie ended up in the latter.
Today, those few Republicans who bother to address our mistreatment of the mentally ill invariably blame the situation on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In truth, it was that era's conservatives who most fervently embraced the drive to de-institutionalize the mentally ill. I can discuss this history at greater length at some later point, if need be.
For now, this much is clear: Seung-Hui Cho needed help. Medication may or may not have normalized his behavior. He may have required life-long observation, or he may have been eligible for release after only a few weeks. But he needed treatment; he needed removal from society.
That is not a post-hoc judgment. His instructors understood the problem well before the massacre.
Alas, we warehouse our mad in prisons and homeless shelters. We won't spend money on more humane options.
Which means that similar tragedies await us.
Many of the mysteries surrounding this sad episode have finally achieved resolution. Why (many asked) didn't the cops lock down the campus after the first shooting? A few hours after the massacre, I offered this theory: "The cops arrested the wrong guy after the first incident. Now, they are loathe to admit that they made a mistake." Replace "arrested" with "questioned" in that sentence, and we have our answer. After the first round of gunfire, a friend of victim Emily Jane Hilscher told the cops that the young lady's boyfriend was a gun enthusiast -- and upon learning this, Blacksburg's answer to Inspector Lestrade did the Conclusion Hop. The police were questioning the boyfriend, even as the main event began.
Police always blame a spouse or lover. Usually, that presumption holds true. Sometimes it doesn't.
And yet I remain puzzled. Seung-Hui Cho (the family appears to prefer the western name order) seems to have singled out Emily Hilscher -- yet nothing connects the two. Indeed, to this day, the local authorities refuse to state definitively that Cho killed her, although his gun was used in the crime.
NBC partially broadcast the murderer's videotaped confession. Although many feel that the killer's video should not have been made available to the public, I wish that we had seen those materials in full. In the expurgated version, Cho refers to some event or series of events in his life which triggered his rage. But what was that trigger?
(To read the rest, click "Permalink" below)
Cho's "creative" writings make obsessive reference to pedophilia, a fact which has led many to speculate that he had suffered from abuse. But we have no other evidence for this idea.
His plays remind me of the great controversy over Sigmund Freud's work: Were his patients genuinely abused, or did they (as Freud eventually concluded) create imaginary scenarios? Many modern critics of Freud chastise him for doubting the reality of the incest reports he received. However, I have had more experience that I ever cared to have with dissociative individuals, and I can assure you that there are a lot of people out there who do not recognize the line between fantasy and reality. They confuse that which they have read with lived experience, and they fasten onto delusions of victimhood as an excuse for personal failure.
Cho was an unsuccessful English student with no real future. He must have compared himself to his older sister, a Princeton graduate who went onto a prestigious position. In Cho's "Richard McBeef," the young protagonist accuses the titular character of pedophilia and "conspiracy." But -- and this is a telling point which many have ignored -- Cho indicates that the accusations are unfounded.
According to boyhood friend Kim Gyeong-won, Cho was fairly well socialized during his elementary school years. After he entered middle school, something happened -- either an abusive episode occurred, or he became jealous over his sister's growing success, or some other factor played a role. We will probably never know.
Well, Newt Gingrich claims to know: He blames liberals. I suggest you try to read (or at least to skim) the transcript of Newt's argument, if it can be called an argument. His words simply make no sense. In fact, I think that if you compare the ramblings of Newt Gingrich and Seung-Hui Cho, Cho comes across as rather more coherent.
We know now that this young man had set off all sorts of warning sirens. He had been sent in for psychological evaluation, and one teacher found his behavior so disturbing that she refused to have him in her class. Thus, the larger question raised by this incident is: How does our society deal with those who have lost their grip on sanity?
Some say that one out of ten people in this country become untethered from reason. I don't know if that statistic is accurate, but I do believe that, at one time or another, most people reading these words will have to deal with a friend or family member suffering from severe mental health issues.
At this point, discretion forces me to be vague. The case closest to my "circle" involved a woman who once was a well-regarded nurse. Call her Casie.
Over the course of several years, Casie's behavior became erratic -- severely disturbed. Hospitals suspected (but never proved) that she was stealing drugs; thus, she became unemployable. She lost custody of her children.
While still employed as a nurse, she had once cared for Betty Ford. In gratitude, the former First Lady graciously sponsored Casie's stay in the famous rehabilitation clinic bearing her name. Although I'm no fan of Betty Ford's husband, I will always revere that lady for her kindness to Casie.
One day, I took Casie's children to visit their mother at the center. Near the entrance is a "meditation chamber" which, I jokingly opined, would be a marvelous place to drop acid. "Everyone says that," Casie told me. I asked if she had spotted anyone famous, and she whispered a few words about a certain television actor. Her daughter overheard. Later, as we toured the grounds, the little girl suddenly pointed and shrieked, in a voice loud enough for all of California to hear: "Look! It's him! It's...."
(Obviously, I can't finish that quotation.)
Alas, the stay in rehab did no lasting good. Substance abuse was not the real issue.
Casie became suicidal and engaged in acts of self-mutilation. Then she became violent towards others, at one point attacking a very elderly man. After these episodes, the cops would take her away for observation, but she was never held for more than three days.
Everyone presumes that the mentally ill can be institutionalized if they become a threat to themselves or to others. Don't believe what you hear. Our underfunded mental health system quickly transfers patients to the street or into jail. Casie ended up in the latter.
Today, those few Republicans who bother to address our mistreatment of the mentally ill invariably blame the situation on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. In truth, it was that era's conservatives who most fervently embraced the drive to de-institutionalize the mentally ill. I can discuss this history at greater length at some later point, if need be.
For now, this much is clear: Seung-Hui Cho needed help. Medication may or may not have normalized his behavior. He may have required life-long observation, or he may have been eligible for release after only a few weeks. But he needed treatment; he needed removal from society.
That is not a post-hoc judgment. His instructors understood the problem well before the massacre.
Alas, we warehouse our mad in prisons and homeless shelters. We won't spend money on more humane options.
Which means that similar tragedies await us.
joe, you're right to remain concerned, and especially right to focus on the social contributions to this incident. pretty appalling that conservatives take this as an opportunity to assert - and very aggressively (has anyone seen pat buchanan bellow about this??) - that this never would have happened if every student had been packing iron. geez. do these people even allow for one second to think these insane ideas through to their logical conclusions?
of course, the faults within the mental health system are cavernous. if you haven't read foucault's 'madness and civilization,' you'll realize that the problems did not start with american conservatives. it's a very old tendency of western culture to wish away all imperfections and impurities, like nietzsche's appollinian order driving out the dionysian chaos.
what we miss is how important the mentally ill are for confronting us with our loss of humanity and compassion. there is a case to be made that even institutionalizing them 'for their and society's own good' is ultimately counter-productive. cho and others like him suffer from the pains of being not 'of' society. they know they miss the boat and don't fit in, and they construct their delusions not as excuses, but because their minds simply do not operate like those of the majority of ...'us'. ? dare i include myself in there? how dare any of us, really?
institutionalizing relieves society of the responsibility for these folks, which i have to say i don't believe will ever help the ill, not fully and not really. the most successful recoveries of extreme bipolar/manic patients and schizophrenics are those whose family members refuse to be replaced by professionals, and insist on being the patients' major sources of help and healing.
it is this impulse that is required of society, not only for the problem of how to deal with these patients, but for the problem of their very occurrence. i often see these people as reminders that, by ignoring them or sending them away, we are simply moving too fast down a myopic path to nowhere.
and that last scene in 'king of hearts' just flashed before my eyes.
again, joe; thanks for recognizing the import of these issues. again, you show the depth of your heart.
of course, the faults within the mental health system are cavernous. if you haven't read foucault's 'madness and civilization,' you'll realize that the problems did not start with american conservatives. it's a very old tendency of western culture to wish away all imperfections and impurities, like nietzsche's appollinian order driving out the dionysian chaos.
what we miss is how important the mentally ill are for confronting us with our loss of humanity and compassion. there is a case to be made that even institutionalizing them 'for their and society's own good' is ultimately counter-productive. cho and others like him suffer from the pains of being not 'of' society. they know they miss the boat and don't fit in, and they construct their delusions not as excuses, but because their minds simply do not operate like those of the majority of ...'us'. ? dare i include myself in there? how dare any of us, really?
institutionalizing relieves society of the responsibility for these folks, which i have to say i don't believe will ever help the ill, not fully and not really. the most successful recoveries of extreme bipolar/manic patients and schizophrenics are those whose family members refuse to be replaced by professionals, and insist on being the patients' major sources of help and healing.
it is this impulse that is required of society, not only for the problem of how to deal with these patients, but for the problem of their very occurrence. i often see these people as reminders that, by ignoring them or sending them away, we are simply moving too fast down a myopic path to nowhere.
and that last scene in 'king of hearts' just flashed before my eyes.
again, joe; thanks for recognizing the import of these issues. again, you show the depth of your heart.
The Police thought(according to most statistics) that the shooter knew the the victim. There was an eyewitness that saw a vehicle leaving the scene. That promted the police to assume that the shooter left the campus.
Cho did leave the campus to mail his video to NBC (it is assumed).
The eyewitness could have seen Cho leaving(or someone else). The police followed the most logical senario (not the bazare one). Cho could have made this young woman the object of his desires or rage without any real relationship ever existing.
Cho's stories and refrences to pedophilia could be his way of rebeling against authority and not actual abuse. Asian parents are notorious for pushing their "SONS" to become successful(introduce a successful sister and the pressure multiplies).
Middle school in some ways determines where a young person stands and sees himself in the future. I do not find it puzzling that Cho's down hill spiral started then.
He was probably an independent thinker of sorts that did not find any validation from any adults in his life.
There are many ways one could look at this incedent and come away with points to remember or learn from; however, I am afraid that this along with many other such incidents will become the political talking points of one or the other of our partisan and "PRO-PROFIT" parties.
Our healthcare system remains broken and our young people remain ambivalent about their mission. The "American Dream" haunts them as they try to become "MEN".
These young people are told to conform(regardless of thier background) to a norm that dictates un-caring/un-incumbered/un-felling/un-concerened view that only rewards selfishness and profit mongering above all else.
What should a young male,short, small, shy, burdened with racial or religious or ethnic bagage do reach the American Dream?
At some point some of them become violent.
Cho is a victim as much as his victims were( I am not defending killing).
All I am saying is that he(Cho) was a victim as much as he was a killer.
The hatred, the rage, the self-justification in exerting pain is manifest today in our "LEADERS" from Carl Rove to GWB and Gonzales.
Cho did leave the campus to mail his video to NBC (it is assumed).
The eyewitness could have seen Cho leaving(or someone else). The police followed the most logical senario (not the bazare one). Cho could have made this young woman the object of his desires or rage without any real relationship ever existing.
Cho's stories and refrences to pedophilia could be his way of rebeling against authority and not actual abuse. Asian parents are notorious for pushing their "SONS" to become successful(introduce a successful sister and the pressure multiplies).
Middle school in some ways determines where a young person stands and sees himself in the future. I do not find it puzzling that Cho's down hill spiral started then.
He was probably an independent thinker of sorts that did not find any validation from any adults in his life.
There are many ways one could look at this incedent and come away with points to remember or learn from; however, I am afraid that this along with many other such incidents will become the political talking points of one or the other of our partisan and "PRO-PROFIT" parties.
Our healthcare system remains broken and our young people remain ambivalent about their mission. The "American Dream" haunts them as they try to become "MEN".
These young people are told to conform(regardless of thier background) to a norm that dictates un-caring/un-incumbered/un-felling/un-concerened view that only rewards selfishness and profit mongering above all else.
What should a young male,short, small, shy, burdened with racial or religious or ethnic bagage do reach the American Dream?
At some point some of them become violent.
Cho is a victim as much as his victims were( I am not defending killing).
All I am saying is that he(Cho) was a victim as much as he was a killer.
The hatred, the rage, the self-justification in exerting pain is manifest today in our "LEADERS" from Carl Rove to GWB and Gonzales.
p.s.
joe, the placement of 'cho' at the end instead of the beginning of his name is actually common, if not the norm, for asian immigrants to western countries. his family had lived here for almost 15 years, so they adopted the norm for their new home. not at mysterious. it's easy to imagine that it eliminates the perpetual error made by americans to call asians by their surnames because it comes first in the sequence.
npr did a short piece on this issue, written and read by a south korean reporter. the network made the decision to conform to the standard of south korean immigrants, as well as the way in which cho listed the sequence on his legal papers, drivers' license, etc.
worth knowing....
joe, the placement of 'cho' at the end instead of the beginning of his name is actually common, if not the norm, for asian immigrants to western countries. his family had lived here for almost 15 years, so they adopted the norm for their new home. not at mysterious. it's easy to imagine that it eliminates the perpetual error made by americans to call asians by their surnames because it comes first in the sequence.
npr did a short piece on this issue, written and read by a south korean reporter. the network made the decision to conform to the standard of south korean immigrants, as well as the way in which cho listed the sequence on his legal papers, drivers' license, etc.
worth knowing....
As I understand it, the name order is usually left to the family to decide. University documents followed the Asian practice of placing the family name first, which is why the initial news reports used "Cho Seung-Hui." Later, it was revealed that the family had adopted Western practice -- which is, as you say, pretty common.
Have you folks heard of the possible spook connection to Cho? His older sister, a Princeton graduate, is employed by McNeil Technologies, a Pentagon intelligence and security contractor under the same Veritas corporate umbrella as Dyncorp! See this blog for the best discussion of these connections. Wayne Madsen has also reported much the same information from apparently a different -- South Korean -- news source.
Another interesting correspondence related is the similarity in poses of Cho swinging a hammer with a character in a popular South Korean film, Oldboy, a film that is about forced drugging, psychological torture, and split personalities. Does that scenario sound familiar to anyone?
One of the things that struck me when I heard the recording of Cho, released by Cho to the media supposedly between shootings, is how uninflected and monotonous was Cho's voice. I thought "Isn't this how someone psychologically programmed, perhaps by hypnosis, sounds?"
Any thoughts?
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Another interesting correspondence related is the similarity in poses of Cho swinging a hammer with a character in a popular South Korean film, Oldboy, a film that is about forced drugging, psychological torture, and split personalities. Does that scenario sound familiar to anyone?
One of the things that struck me when I heard the recording of Cho, released by Cho to the media supposedly between shootings, is how uninflected and monotonous was Cho's voice. I thought "Isn't this how someone psychologically programmed, perhaps by hypnosis, sounds?"
Any thoughts?
