Like everybody else, I’ve been examining the mass killings at Virginia tech in the light of my own experience. The usual debate over the control of firearms is already under way, but I’d like to see some input from the membership on some ancillary points.
The media already seem determined to portray the shooter as an overly-introverted geek. With the exception of his ethnicity/extraction, he fits the pattern of the lone single male — one of the few stereotypes still approved for dissing by the politically correct.
The fact that this individual spent his earliest years in a non-Marxist, but still strongly-repressive society, that his major was English rather than a technical subject, that at age 23, he was about to make the transition from a college-dominated rural community to what a friend of mine calls “a daily big long first period with a stiff cut policy and a dress code”, and that he apparently resented the advantages given to his peers by accident of birth — all of these need to be aired out at least as much as the availability of a weapon.
Some years ago, after a previous career imploded, I started out again in a call-center environment. Although some previous technical exposure got me the job, I learned slowly and painfully that limiting the scope of support and making sales pitches brought faster advancement than straight technical skill, and that mandatory additional training did not lead to higher pay or less structure.
And I also learned, after bringing these inequities to the attention of some co-workers, that when your thinking isn’t acceptable in this environment, you might not be directly disciplined……but you might become a pariah.
Unfortunately, within that portion of the “new economy” where the “new sensitivity” is an unwritten law, calls are already being raised for greater security. That means more interference in one’s daily schedule, not to mention the higher cost. I’m wondering if my next trip back to my alma mater for Homecoming will involve a metal detector or two on campus.
When confronted by behavior deemed as anti-societal, the usual response of the clique of political correctness is to further restrict the freedom of all in the hope of ensnaring the dangerous loner. But I fear that no matter how intricately this plan is organized, it will simply create a more exteme example to fall between the cracks.
Ethnic diversity and the emancipation of women are by far the greatest sociological advances of our time. But any great change invariably provokes a negative reation from a few misfits, and the self-feeding smugness of many of those currently in power in our campuses and workplaces occasionally spills over, with grim consequences.
