Massacres and Other Atrocities

Context Often Missing in Media Presentations

Massacres and Other Atrocities

by

William W. Wraith

 

April 2007—Blacksburg, Virginia has thrust upon the American people an atrocity the like of which they haven't seen since the Oklahoma City bombing.  Flags fly at half-staff and hands cover hearts as we pause in our mourning.

      As we pause, perhaps we should wonder why we deem this incident of mass murder a singular abomination, worthy of stopping the world with several days of round-the-clock media coverage, when just on the horizon other atrocities abound that dwarf even 9-11.  Have we lost our focus?  Have we grown so accustomed to the face of atrocity we rarely recognize its disposition until it falls bloodied on our doorstep?

      Let us give this Virginia Tech Massacre some context:

      First, let us remember that the 32,000 people who yearly lose their lives to guns in the U.S. comprise fully 83% of all gun deaths occurring in the 26 developed nations.  That the Virginia Tech Massacre now stands as the worst single incident of gun violence in U.S. history is indeed significant, considering how much competition there has been for this dubious distinction.

      While the outpourings of good-hearted Americans are understandable and warranted, we should recognize this incident born of mental illness, when weighed against the darker evils confronting us, ranks low on the scale of brutality wrought by human aggression.

      Let's think big.  What if three jumbo jets were to crash and burn in the United States every day?  Surely, this would garner as much attention as the killings in Virginia.  Yet the tobacco conglomerates achieve such a daily kill rate, decade after decade pushing addictive substances on the public with approval of a bought and paid for government.  Deaths pile up, born of greed, and we say nothing.  In this case, averting our eyes and zipping our lips amounts to complicity.

      "How could it happen here?" asked the legions of newshounds descended on Blacksburg.  One reporter described the loss as "thirty-two narratives of accomplishment and limitless hopes gone in two bursts of gunfire."  Well said, this near-perfect expression of the horrid reality.

      Why, even the President of the United States is "shocked and saddened."  Even the dullest among us cannot help but experience a state of revulsion when confronted by such carnage.

      But, why do we stop to care so deeply only about massacres in which the victims are relatively few, where we can see what promise died with them, where we can hear the testimonials of their families and the grief that accompanies them to their graves?

      Now I would ask all you good-hearted readers to keep in mind the victims in Virginia, their faces, their dreams vanished in a hail of bullets, their families struggling to understand the senseless loss, wondering how their lives will ever again assume a semblance of normality.  Feel, if you can, survivors' doubts that they might ever be able to distance themselves from the memory of that horrifying few hours at Virginia Tech that changed their world forever.

      With all this in mind, think of others in situations similar to these victims and their families:

      Think of the two million Iraqi refugees who've fled their homes in the past four years and imagine that, had the United States been similarly invaded, this would mean twenty-four millions of us, eight percent of our families on the move carrying little more than the clothes on their backs.  Place the American refugees in a world where, over a four-year period, the United States had suffered fifty disasters—sufficient to create the number of refugees—just like the flooding of New Orleans.  In addition remember that, while trying to rebuild these fifty destroyed cities, there is a civil war ongoing, with shootings and bombings everyday destroying the lives on many more packed jumbo jets than ever could the tobacco interests in their most profitable years.

      And in the middle of this Iraqi civil war, envision all these poor souls fleeing to other countries or to, they hope, less deadly provinces.  Imagine how what hospitals existed in the beginning—just prior to the United States' invasion—have been bombed, closed for lack of doctors, run out of all sorts of equipment and supplies.  In short, the wounded and the infirm have not even the emergency health care the poorest people in the United States today rely upon in times of uttermost need.

      Think how the Iraqis feel who've lost family, lost homes, lost limbs, lost face.  Lost everything.  And name, if you can, one difference between those lost people and those people—both victims and survivors—we so cherish because they are connected to the Virginia Massacre, and call the United States home.

      What difference, I ask?  All the blood in both cases is red.  All the anguish is heart wrenching, no matter the country of origin, the color of skin, or the religious affiliation.

      And why "no matter"?  Because we are all people, one in essence.  Is this fact forgettable?

      And what the cause of the refugees?—of the ever expanding civil war that threatens to engulf the whole Middle East?  Why, the invasion of Iraq by the self-appointed world's policemen is the cause.  And we, dear taxpayers, are complicit, in that we have elected, then reelected the Bush regime, who thought it could use our army like a toy they had won in a raffle.

      Is it not our complicity that blinds us to the atrocities we've brought on other cultures?  If we could but see the faces of their dead and hear a little about their accomplishments while they still lived, would we without question consider financing their misery on one hand, while on the other hand weeping and gnashing our teeth over the good people who died violently at the hands of an insane man at Blacksburg?

      One observer said of the killer in Virginia, "He made choices that destroyed the lives of so many, and it's going to be felt for years to come."  I ask you, dear reader:  Don't these words more aptly describe the George W. Bush regime—infected as it is with imperial hubris—than one sick fellow in Virginia?

 

 

Reviews

[Rylan Batten]

You make some strongly opinionated points and you also support them very well. As far as political essays go, this is a very solid piece. However, you may want to revise on the diction just a little.

One mistake almost every writer makes when writing this sort of thing is asking too many questions throughout--while in some places they can be thought provoking, in others they can break the flow of the piece and take away from the impact of the writing. I'm not saying yours does that, but you may want to watch real closely for that.

Also, your tone throughout seems a little bit laid back for being so critical. Try stating your opinion strongly--just put it out there, say what it is, and why. This may help make this a more memorable piece.

All of these are mere suggestions, and you can take them as you like. Overall, a very well written piece.
Thanks

--Rylan

[Leah D]

Very sharp and well-reasoned. I agree with you entirely. It's the same illness in the individual and the culture at large -- alienation. When it's dressed in a suit and tie and has billions of dollars and a mighty military machine at its disposal, it's merely politics -- can be labled controversial, perhaps, but not insane; thank you for calling madness by its name. The cure is indeed to see our fellows as individuals -- someone has to do it first. Compassion just could be contagious too.

[Aaron M. Anderson]

Your sentiments are admirable, and much of what you say is well-grounded. Your vocabulary and sentence structures are quite superior to many of the other political essays featured on this site.

I applaud you for making me double-check my personal convictions concerning these subjects. Four years after having first read this essay, I am constantly reminded of it.

Yours is a very passionate essay, and finely worded. Thanks for this submission!