In general, I don't really like pontificating off unique and/or extreme events. (For example, Koreans have extremely low murder rates, so this mass murder isn't at all representative of a general pattern for them. Cho may well have doubled the Korean murder rate in America for the year, or even decade.) The sample size for these type of events is too small to determine a previously unobserved trend.
Nonetheless, let me toss out a bit of wholly unwarranted speculation about the influence of recent South Korean pop culture. South Korean movies and music (e.g., hip hop by returning Korean Americans rappers with street cred in Asia because they grew up on the mean streets of San Marino or wherever) are super cool now in Japan. The trendier Korean movies are, I hear, awfully violent. I made it through about ten minutes before fleeing of the popular South Korean film "Oldboy," which makes Quentin Tarantino's movies look like Erich Rohmer's. It's part of a series with "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," which I managed to avoid completely. (Not all South Korean films are quite so carnage-filled.) I have no idea if the shooter was a fan of pop culture developments in the country he left when he was about ten, but it's a possibility.
A more likely connection to pre-existing social patterns is between this loner who first shot a coed whom he considered his girlfriend (while the poor girl seemed to disagree), and the frustrations caused by the Dating Disparity.
Or then again, he may have just been plumb crazy, so speculating won't get us anywhere. We shall see...
A Taiwanese-American reader adds:
"On Virginia Tech, I don't think the media has really examined why the gunman majored in English and his working-class parents let him pursue a major that has very little job prospects and therefore prospects for good relationships with women. Most students of his social circle are urged to find a good major for a good job such as accounting, medicine, law, pharmacy, engineering etc. I recently had a conversation with an older Chinese gentlemen and he said, in his days in Taiwan, if a young man majored in in the humanities, it was impossible for him to find a wife."
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
Posts
89 comments:
I honestly wouldn't be surprised if this guy was beginning to develop schizophrenia or had a brain tumor. His roommate described how he would frequently find Cho blankly staring at the walls in their room.
I seem to remember that the largest mass shooting in history happened in South Korea. But I don't have nexis & googling only yields information about this shooting. Perhaps someone with a nexis account can verify this.
Pretty much everything you need to know about South Korea and its extremely dysfunctional culture can be found at occidentalism.org
In particular look for the "Finger Chopping Wacky" posts. They're very revealing.
South Koreans now seem to have the gold and the bronze for gun using spree killing, with a borderline retarded Australian with an FN FAL taking the silver. New guy seems to have knocked a Japanese guy from 1938 into 4th place, though that guy used a samurai sword for most of his killings, so he gets style points at least. It's interesting, though, that while the world at large associates Americans, with our easy gun availability and frontier history, with spree killings, while in reality east Asians hold 3 of the 4 top spots.
I suspect there is an inverse correlation between number of killings and the size of killings -- more disciplined cultures that have fewer murders on average might tend to have more spectacular ones when somebody finally snaps and runs amok. Kind of like how it took the Germans to organize a really huge Holocaust, or how Rwanda is among the best organized countries in Africa.
tommy is on the mark... the kid absolutely showed signs of schizophrenia. with all the bullshit being spoken about this event --the worst is listening to that despicable gasbag geraldo rivera try to invoke all the mental strength his 2 digit iq can muster to express how inexpressible a "monster" this kid was-- the bottom line is he was simply a pitiful schizophrenic, who turned viokent, as they sometimes (though rarely) do. he should have been taking his zyprexa, but how can you force him? (giving a schizphrenic an anti-depressant is dangerous, as it does nothing to cure their psychoses, but gives them more energy to act upon them.)
the columbine killers were certainly more interesting, more "evil", since they seemed to be acting more in accordance with a nihilistic philosophy.
Here is one of Steve's links:
http://www.bitterasianmen.com/
That website is devoted to the 'dating disparity' Sailer has wrote about.
Whenever there is a mass killing, you can almost bet the house the man (and lets face it, rampages are generally carried out by men) who did it will not have a girlfriend/wife. Extremely lonely men do not commiserate with other men like women do with each other, they seldom will find solace in homosexuality if they are not so inclined for mere companionship either. They get major-league pissed off.
There was some dude in Montreal or Toronto a couple of years back who shot 28 women because "feminists ruined his life" or some such.
Diana,
Here is the Wikipedia link to spree killer. It confirms what you said (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spree_killer):
Notably large spree killings in history include:
* Tsuyama massacre (Japan, 1938) - Mutsuo Toi, using an old Japanese rifle and swords, killed twenty-nine and then himself.
* South Korea, 1982 - Woo Bum-Kon killed fifty-seven and then himself, using grenades and a high powered rifle.
* Port Arthur massacre (Australia, 1996) - Martin Bryant, using two semi-automatic weapons, a CAR-15 and an L1A1 SLR, killed thirty-five.
* Virginia Tech massacre, (United States, 2007) - Cho Seung-hui killed thirty-three people, including himself, using a Glock 9mm and a .22 caliber Walther P22.
the "dating disparity" is certainly real, but i would avoid the temptation to apply it to this case. it's fun and easy to say "asian loser didn't get pussy, snapped," but if you watch the interview with his roommates, you'll see how much this guy was suffering mentally, you'll see that he didn't talk to men or women. he simply refused to talk (a common symptom of paranoia), even to people trying to befriend him .
Steve as a film buff you are doing yourself a great disservice by avoiding Sympathy For Mr.Vengeance. The subject matter of the film{involving the accidental death of a young child}is more disturbing than the limited onscreen violence.I watched this movie back to back with Walk On Water and the respective themes made for a perfect double-bill. Don't let your feelings about the violence in Old Boy keep you from seeing this film. Brian
Why the unsubstantiated attack on English Majors? I understand the appeal an MD offers, but really, I understand that the income of English majors is hardly the lowest of any college concentration
"Whenever there is a mass killing, you can almost bet the house the man (and lets face it, rampages are generally carried out by men) who did it will not have a girlfriend/wife."
I'm not so sure about that. Although Tim McVeigh was a loner, his co-conspirator Terry Nichols, was married (as for the probable third, Middle Eastern, terrorist, I don't know.
Also, the Columbine killers weren't friendless either. I think at least one of the two killers had a girlfriend, and both were part of their own six-person clique, the "trench coat mafia". As Chris Rock pointed out, "Their were six of them -- I don't have six friends now!"
In this case, the just-plumb-crazy theory advanced by some commenters is starting to sound more plausible. Well, we shall see ...
Steve:
"Kind of like how it took the Germans to organize a really huge Holocaust"
Coincidentally, it appears that one of the heroes of this massacre was a Holocaust survivor -- an Israeli engineering professor who bought time for his students to escape by blocking the classroom door, until he was shot through the door and killed. Also brings to mind the Israeli wrestling coach who tried to do the same at Munich, and suffered a similar fate, though unfortunately his actions didn't end up saving any of the athletes.
Completely ignored by the entire media is this odd coincidence:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/2005/04/005697print.html
about Yong Ki Kwon, a Virginia Tech South Korean who is serving 11 years for "federal conspiracy and weapons charges". He was a convert to extremist Islam. Cho had the words "Ismail Ax" on his arm, which might have some Muslim connection.
the above link
This dude wasn't a Muslim. I don't like people crashing planes into buildings into my country but give criticism where criticism is due.
I do sometimes wonder if fewer people would have been killed if the Germans weren't so organized. OTOH, as people here have pointed out, the Russians managed to kill lots of Ukrainians despite being woefully incompetent at social organization.
There was a shooting of this type in Finland in 1999, although only three people were killed in the end.A woman, Sanna Sillanpää, went to a local gun club and tried to kill everyone inside.She was later deemed by the court to have been a paranoid schizophrenic.
The only common nominator with the Charles Whitmans of the world that I can think of is that they were all fucked in the head.You look at these cases and the initial cause that made the gunmen "snap" is always something that would have been a mere irritation for most of us.
If the 1965 immigration reform act had not been passed, these students would still be alive.
The mass murder at Virginia Twch should be seen in the larger context of the economic and racial dospossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
There are no cultural,economic,demographic and ecological reasons for importing thousands of South Koreans.
America is quite capable of being labor self-sufficient like she was in the past. But this gets right to the heart of the issue. If the 1965 immigration refrom act had not been passed, labor would have become scarce, and as a consequence, the greedy cheating class would have life and death power over NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN WORKERS.
This fucking little gook,his korean gook family and the thousands of of other post 1965 korean gooks should never have been allowed into OUR AMERICA.
The problem is post-1965 asian legal immigration.
The bigger atrocity is the economic and racial disposession of NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISYIAN AMERICANS.
Legal immigrant Koreans are actively involved in the economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS.
BRING BACK THE CHINK EXCLUSION ACT.
JUPITER
A WHITE AMERICAN backlash against asians would be justfied.
BRING BACK THE CHINK EXCLUSION ACT
Jupiter
OTOH, as people here have pointed out, the Russians managed to kill lots of Ukrainians despite being woefully incompetent at social organization. And those people are making a bogus point. The Ukrainian famine was also organized by Ukrainians, as well as Jews, Poles, Georgians, ethnic Germans etc. And millions of Kazakhs, Russians, Tatars, and many others, died in famines across the USSR at the same time or shortly thereafter. Viewing Soviet Communist mass murder in ethnic terms is not always helpful. Also prior to the Holocaust, violence in Germany was probably higher than in England. And the English don't seem to run amok that often. And in any case "Germans" are not really as homogenous as most of the other ethnic groups in Europe - the German tribes include people with considerable admixtures of slavic/baltic (in the East) and mediterranean (in the South) stock. It may in fact be the lack of homogeneity that made Germans particularly conscious and defensive about "racial purity."
Since it would be politically incorrect to focus on the fact that the shooter was Asian, I won't be surprised if the media focuses on the fact that he was possibly schizophrenic. I really feel sorry for the good schizophrenic people of the world who will be stereotyped as killers and discriminated against because of this shooting.
More on the English major thing:
“Although Mr. Cho told his roommate he was a business major, the university said today that he was an English major.”—NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/17/us/17cnd-ROOMMATE.html?em&ex=1176955200&en=384398c19ad2e6eb&ei=5087%0A
And here’s a theory from a reader at Hot Air:
On a chat room of (mostly Asian) engineers that I’m on, someone posited that the killer was probably a “real major” (i.e., engineer, scientist, etc.) who played too many video games, “got horrible grades and had to transfer to english.” This hypothesis was put forth by someone who didn’t know about the killers’s anti-engineer department ramblings, so I’d say it’s a pretty decent speculation that he wanted (and failed) to be an engineering major. It would explain the note.
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/04/17/breaking-abc-news-ids-gunman-as-seung-hui-cho/
Considering how atrocious the guy's writing was, Alex's hypothesis seems reasonable. Also, given his high achieving sister, and Korean parents in general, it is doubtful his parents are the kind of people who went through the trouble of immigrating to the US just so their son could learn to write really awful plays. I won't be surprised at all to find out he originally had a harder major.
Actually, wasn't one of the riots that you people in LA do so well triggered by a Korean shopkeeper murdering a Black American girl, unpunished?
This man by all accounts was non-communicative. Odds are he barely spoke to his parents. They probably didn't know what he was studying at school but were just relieved that he had been accepted into a university. They lived on hope.
This man was mentally ill. How did he get accepted to Virginia Tech? Who wrote his letters of recommendation? How was he able to stay enrolled?
Wrote About Death and Spoke in Whispers
"Cho declined to leave and said, "You can't make me."
If the 1965 immigration reform act had not been passed:
the 1993 attack on the Twin Towers never would have happened
9/11 would never have happened
The massacre at Virginia Tech never would have happened
A nine year blond hair blue eye child in the America South never would have had an ax rammed in his face by a peruvian spic.
This is a very short list
The greatest act of legal immigrant asian violence against NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICA:their active participation in the economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
BRING BACK THE CHINK EXCLUSION ACT!!!!!!!!!!
Jupiter
While Cho emigrated from South Korea at age 8, I wonder if the anti-Americanism that is rampant in SK (and rampantly ignored by the U.S. media) might have played a contributing role, making it easier for Cho to justify his choice of targets.
Disorganized but informative background on South Korean attitudes towards the U.S. here.
Jupiter, remember to display your name at the beginning of each comment.
Besides posing a very serious threat to the racial interests of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS, Chink/gook LEGAL IMMIGRNATS also pose a very serious threat to America's wildlife and biodeiversity.
Do you think Koreans would tolerate WHITE AMERICAN YOUTH working at Hyundai? I think you all know the answer to this question.
Vdare.com commentator and ugly Bull-Dyke Brenda Walker always seems to miss the bigger issue which is racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
She seems more concerned that non-white immigrants are hostile to the legalization of homosexual marriage.
Jupiter
Schizophrenic is just a fancy technical sounding word for "pretty darn cuckoo." What does that doctor on Bugs Bunny say? "Yup, he's crazy alright."
Saying the guy was schizophrenic is a non sequitor.
On the face of it, this was yet another super-achieving Asian kid who dreamed of being an engineer and failed, taking lame writing classes instead (and lying to his roommate and probably his parents about it). Men often become depressed and withdrawn when they fail in a major life/career aspiration and enter a downward spiral. But most of these guys either get back on track, or just live a quiet life. This kid had a 99/100 chance of being just another quiet oddball student.
Whether pills (drugs) would have helped or hurt, who knows. I bet if this kid were religious, he would have pulled through. Funny that no one mentioned that.
[i]Kind of like how it took the Germans to organize a really huge Holocaust..[/i]
Steve, leave it alone. You risk offending the Holocaust revising segment of your readership. This is a time to come together to heal.
Big group hug everybody.
steve sailer, you are one retarded ass motherfucker.
The kid was mentally ill. At one time people would keep a kid like him hidden but today in America we try to keep them integrated. There are costs and benefits to this integration. (BTW it was the same at Columbine where the perps where on meds for mental disorders.)
I for one think that on net the integration is good in the net but I am open to the other side.
Jupiter, Im sure Brenda's hert is in the right place. Its hard to get left leaning European-Americans to face up to their own dispossesion, but remind them of how the vibrant newcomers dont like gay marriage and protecting the environment and she might get somewhere.
That would be Brenda's heart. Thankyou.
That would be Brenda's heart. Thankyou.
Reminds me of the U2 song, Two Hearts Beat As One.
i don't understand why people think english is not a real major and that people with english degrees are unemployed. it is a real major and english majors get jobs after college like everybody else. most engineering majors don't become engineers after college. they take jobs in sales and other fields where they don't build anything.
now we have somebody who thinks schizophrenia is not real. schizophrenia is real. it seems to be caused by deformed brain structures or brain malfunctions. scientists are studying it with MRIs.
the schizophrenia idea seems possible. a psychologist could look at his writing and tell whether it was borderline schizophrenic.
Are English majors real? Are scientists studying that with MRIs?
What is reality?, said jesting Pilate, and would not wait for an answer.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia
"Schizophrenia (from the Greek word σχιζοφρένεια, or schizophreneia, meaning "split mind") is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes a mental disorder characterized by impairments in the perception or expression of reality and by significant social or occupational dysfunction. A person experiencing schizophrenia is typically characterized as demonstrating disorganized thinking, and as experiencing delusions or hallucinations, in particular auditory hallucinations."
In other words, nutty as a fruitcake, to use another technical term.
"Diagnosis is based on the self-reported experiences of the patient, in combination with secondary signs observed by a psychiatrist, clinical psychologist or other clinician. No laboratory test for schizophrenia exists. ... Current psychiatric research into the development of the disorder often focuses on the role of neurobiology, although a reliable and identifiable organic cause has not been found. In the absence of a confirmed specific pathology underlying the diagnosis, some question the legitimacy of schizophrenia's status as a disease."
The only difference between calling acting like a fruitcake "demonic possession," "madness," and "schizophrenia" is that possessed people get sprinkled with holy water, the mad are locked away in padded cells, and schizophrenics are dosed up with drugs. All of these treatments are basically equally useless, except insofar as they shield society from fruitcake behavior.
At the end of the day, it's just a word for people who do and say bizarre things, and we don't know what they heck we are dealing with. Of course now everything has to be dressed up in Greek terms so it sounds "scientific." A rose by any other name...
I would have thought by now that Brenda would have pounced on the wildlife/biodiversity issue.
The transvestite-no joking about this- legal immigrant Alexander Cockburn once made a plea to allow the Grizzly-Ursus?- back into California. This will will never happen in a state with a large asian population. The asians would hunt down the Grizzly for its gall bladder. Bear gall bladers are part of asian pharmacopeia. Bear gall bladders are belived to enhance sexual performance. If the Grizzly Bears were reintroduced into California, the LEGAL IMMIGRANT asians would wipe the species out for its gall bladder,hoping that the Grizzly's gall bladder will add fire power to the asian breeding machine..... done with intent of racially dispossessing NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
Interestingly, in the Wall Street journal last august there was a front page article about a coinflict in Northern California between immigrants seeking affordable housing and local environmentalist who were oppose to the idea of paving over endangered spieces habitat for immigrant housing.
The day of reckoning is comming very soon for American enviromentalist.
LAs sprawls right up to the surrounding mountain ranges which are the only remaining habitats for plant and animal species that occur nowhere else on the planet. Asian,hispanic and muslim legal immigrants are packed in -very often three families a home- right up to the boundary separates LA suburban sprawl from protected habitat.
This is the price that America pays for not being largely labor self- sufficient.
The slaughter at Virginia Tech can be understood in the same context.
If America had remained largely labor self sufficient, the slaughter at Virignia Tech never would have happened. Neither would the first attack on the twin towers in 1993 and 9/11. And the little White Boy-nine years old-would have had an ax embeded in his face by a peruvian spic.
AMERICA should have developed home-grown talent for medicine,engineering,computer programming and science. From places such as Appalachia-home of VA TECH-instead of importing gook bastard predatory Koreans.
There is one solution to the Korean bacillus in OUR AMERICA:BRING BACK THE GOOK EXCLUSION ACT!!!!!!!!!!!!!
JUPITER
The only difference between calling acting like a fruitcake "demonic possession," "madness," and "schizophrenia" is that possessed people get sprinkled with holy water, the mad are locked away in padded cells, and schizophrenics are dosed up with drugs. All of these treatments are basically equally useless
There really should be a cost (e.g. that of a postage stamp), to post on these boards. It might prevent cretins from popping off the stupidest shit.
Anti-psychotic drugs are extremely successful, jackass.
(The typical problem is that schizophrenics, especially the paranoid kind, do not like taking drugs given to them by doctors, and fall off the wagon).
SFG,
I do sometimes wonder if fewer people would have been killed if the Germans weren't so organized. OTOH, as people here have pointed out, the Russians managed to kill lots of Ukrainians despite being woefully incompetent at social organization.
Of course, the Ukrainians constituted a definite geographical bloc. Jews were interspersed throughout society. The Ukrainians were in a position to be killed through sheer incompetence. Killing the Jews required their identification and isolation.
Schizophrenics get to the point where they can't even talk, if the condition is not treated. The difference between a schizophrenic on medication and off medication can be like night and day, in my limited experience (knowing someone who is schizophrenic).
Jupiter,
If I remember from a few blog posts ago, you are a descendant of German and Italian immigrants to the US in the 1800s. Your racist rants are always tiresome , but your "NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICAN" comments are now hypocritical, as well.
Aspirins may also cure a headache, but lack of aspirin is not what caused one's head to ail in the first place.
Steve, there's nothing that the love of a good woman won't cure. That's why one imagines you, like Sisyphus, happy.
The Ukrainians were in a position to be killed through sheer incompetence.
So it was all just bad luck?
I'm not an expert on schizophrenia, but I am intimately familiar with it as it, and paranoia, run in my Dad's family.
When I was a teenager, I researched it a lot and my cousins and I talked about it a lot because we were afraid of going crazy. If we could just make it to 16, we would breathe easier and if we made it to 17 we would be home free.
My aunt was a full blown schizophrenic and she was committed at age 16, I believe (back in the early 60's). During a home visit, she once threatened to assassinate Kennedy when he was President; she also took a butcher knife and stabbed my Grandfather in the back. I read that a good expert can tell as early as age 5 whether a person has childhood onset schizophrenia, but regular people can only tell by at age 16. Legally, if I remember correctly, you must be an adult to be classified as schizophrenia. Adult onset schizophrenia, again if I remember correctly, shows up in a person's mid 30's. Of course, there is also the environmentally caused schizophrenia that can show up in people at any age.
Schizophrenia and paranoia kind of go together (like eczema and asthma). My Father had 6 brothers and sisters. One was the full blown paranoid schizophrenic, Two more sisters were touched with paranoia but without the schizophrenic features. Out of 21 cousins, only one seems to suffer paranoia.
My Dad's family is extremely intelligent and wealthy, but people who marry into the family or befriend it will often say to me, "Man, your family is weird." or "There's something not quite right about those people". They are usually referring to my paranoid aunts and the children of one of them.
I am suspicious of the schizophrenia angle because he's probably too old. I guess it's possible that he had high functioning schizophrenia, took drugs, and it was kept secret? Paranoia can go much longer without being diagnosed, at least that's my family's experience.
http://blog.vdare.com/archives/2007/04/17/unfounded-fears-of-backlash-fly-around-the-world/
Unfounded Fears of Backlash Fly around the World
Cute. "Cognitive elitism" at work; just what America needs - smarter, more orderly race-hucksters and demographic colonists.
Wait and listen for crickets chirping, rather than indignation, from "our" media.
And why would asian "Americans" fear a backlash?
Maybe they fear that NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICA might one day explode with rage over the fact that LEGAL immigrant asian rat bastards are actively participating in the economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
Maybe the rat bastard LEGAL IMMIGRANT asian understands that THEY have gotten away with murder for over thirty years and that a WHITE BACKLASH against THEM is justified and long overdue.
Jupiter
schizophrenia is real. people who think legitimate pschology terms are not real strike me as similar to the people who were diagnosing stomach ulcers in the 70s when my dad had life threatening internal bleeding from them.
"Stomach ulcers are caused by stress. Reduce the stress in your life. Also, take these antacids."
stomach ulcers were just another way of saying "stress" until about 1982 when two australians discovered that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria destroying the lining of the stomach. they got a nobel prize for this in 05.
schizophrenia is real, and it is caused by a few particular brain structures becoming deformed, leading to strange behavior.
The Ismail Ax comment relates to a novel by James Fenimore Cooper, about a character named Ismail who takes an ax and a gun into the Wilderness.
So, the shooter was at least organized enough to recall some of his studies (it's unlikely he would have read this on his own).
Reports indicate his "plays" revolved around a son molested by his father who kills him with gruesome weapons (chainsaws and hammers). Everyone who knew him thought he was disturbed. The UT shooter Charles Whitman had a brain tumor the size of an orange in his head. Unknown if this guy had something organic in him.
The larger question: to prevent this can we just lock people up if they're crazy and forgo Civil Rights absolutes? Or allow CCW of selected/vetted students/staff on campus?
Sadly most of the students and faculty were passive. Only the Holocaust Survivor (blocking the door with his body so his students could escape) and a few others (who kept the door shut against the shooter's return after he'd shot a few of them seem exceptions.
IMHO this is not surprising. Americans and Westerners in general seem to assume safe, middle class, orderly lives will never be interrupted by violence and death. Thus we tend to go around in a state that the late Col. Jeff Cooper called "Condition White" that is profoundly unaware of our surroundings and never scanning for potential threats etc. Made worse IMHO by the need in the classroom to focus intently on the material being presented in the classroom.
Over and over and over again you see the same things said as were said in offices during shooting attacks (or 9/11) ... that it was extremely hard for people to even perceive the threat and thus act.
IMHO globalization means both cheap stuff from China in your Wal-Mart and lots of violence even in perceived "safe" middle class areas like an office building, classroom, etc. where the expected abstract focus makes perception of real danger extremely difficult. We are probably seeing this shift away from our Cold-War interruption of globalization and the shrinking of the world so that goods or violent people can show up on our doorstep at any time. Which may have signfiicant impacts on the ability to work abstractly and in a focused manner.
Yes I know the shooter was a legal resident, the Columbine shooters US Citizens, but I'm looking at the larger issue: why did no one jump this guy as he reloaded?
IMHO because the mental models imposed by places like offices and campuses preclude aggressive physical action. It's no accident that more aggressive, "masculine" type guys in more "lower class" institutions: the Pearl MS school shooting where the Vice Principal ran back to his truck to get his gun (and heroically faced down the shooter who was driving to the nearby Junior HS) or the Appalachian School of Law shooting where three men ran back to their cars to get their guns and subdued the shooter at gunpoint (one was an off-duty Cop) or the PA school shooting where a shopkeeper used his shotgun from the store to stop a school shooter from getting away all had folks who were less focused on abstract operations.
The most distinctive trait of schizophrenics, more than their delusions or their paranoia or even their anti-sociality, is their sheer mechanicalness. As their schizophrenia deepens, they become almost robotic.
As for the 'Ismail Ax' thing, it isn't even clear if that is the appropriate spelling. Some news outlets are giving it as 'Ismale Ax.'
There is a racial angle to this, in that if he were white, his strange patterns of behavior would not have been so readily overlooked. People expect East Asians, especially immigrants, to be quiet and shy (also non-violent), so no-one really 'got' how psychotic and out of touch with reality this kid was.
Whoever said that about not finding a wife because of being an English major is crazy. Since when is developing critical skills necessary in EVERY career an undesirable quality in a mate? That is preposterous if people really believe that.
the solution here is to allow the faculty to carry concealed pistols on campus. people object to students carrying handguns, but there is no good reason to object to professors carrying pistols for their own protection.
there were several professors in norris hall where the shooter killed 30 people. if even one of them was armed, he could have stopped the guy before he racked up 30 kills. instead, the professors were reduced to blocking his path with doors and desks.
it makes no sense to strip even the faculty of their ability to defend themselves in states where concealed carry is legal. they have high IQs, high salaries, families, research that they care about. they are exactly the people who should be allowed to be armed, if anybody. allowing them to carry pistols if they want is a no brainer.
we could make handguns illegal in america, which seems reasonable, but a determined attacker like this guy will just buy a shotgun, which are inexpensive, and easier to get that pistols.
i'm in the middle on guns, but no gun control fanatic is going to tell me that MORE gun control is the best response here. LESS gun control is the best response here. indeed, the gun control people got EXACTLY what they wanted at virginia tech. the police legally took everybody's guns, so nobody was armed.
"I am suspicious of the schizophrenia angle because he's probably too old."
I have heard of people first being diagnosed with schizophrenia in their forties. If he almost never talked (and tended to whisper when he did speak) it could have been because he was thought blocking.
People can develop schizophrenia at any point in their lives, but the early 20s are, far and away, the most frequent age for the onset of schizophrenia. Cho was 23. That would be within the expected age range.
A forensic psychologist (ABC News) finally talking sense:
"What then leads you to believe Cho had schizophrenia?
How he related to his roommate was just too bizarre to be depression. The bizarre content of his plays — mashing a half-eaten “banana bar” in someone’s mouth, the hypersexual, nihilistic (death obsessed) obsessions in the absence of depressive guilt or tearfulness are another clue. The progressive decline of a period of years. Those with schizophrenia, especially in their earliest years, are not readily recognizable as such — their condition is evolving. But here was someone who, as early as 2005, was carrying himself so strangely that he was a spectacle. The depressed withdraw and disappear. Those who are so peculiar in their manner so as to be inappropriate (taking cell phone pictures of his teacher, speaking inaudibly, pulling a cap low over his eyes) exhibit signs and symptoms more indicative of schizophrenia. He was communicating in a rambling manner reflective of what we appreciate as autistic thinking — characteristic of schizophrenia. In a similar vein, Mr. Cho’s stilted communication in his homicide note (deceitful charlatans — not the language of a 23-year-old college kid) is also the manner of a schizophrenic’s communications, as is his pronounced delay in responding to questions."
A lot more can be said, of course.
Incidentally, that silly black "poet-in-residence" with the weird blond hair ("Nikki Giovanni") who spoke at the convocation yesterday disagreed, calling the fact that he was troubled “crap." But I don't know how much her judgment is worth;
frankly, Cho's play "Richard McBeef" showed more literary merit than the "poem" she closed yesterday's ceremonies with.
IMHO this is not surprising. Americans and Westerners in general seem to assume safe, middle class, orderly lives will never be interrupted by violence and death.
And, fortunately, this is quite a reasonable assumption. If by "violence and death" you mean violent death at the hands of someone else, the risk of this happening for most of us middle-class types is vanishingly small.
Anonymous also asks why no one jumped Cho while he was reloading and suggests:
IMHO because the mental models imposed by places like offices and campuses preclude aggressive physical action.
Again, yes, and quite reasonably so. A tendency to physical aggression is not a productive quality in most settings in a generally safe, middle-class society.
While I understand your point, would you really want either of the above two things to be different? Most of us enjoy the fact that - despite the headlines and sensationalist 24-hour news channels - we live in a safe, non-violent world. In fact, we are privileged to do so; it a huge step forward in civilization and one of things that sets us apart from the citizens of many poor countries that most of us live such safe, secure lives.
I agree that the downside of this security is that most of us are not prepared for violence when it makes a sudden appearance in our lives. From a broad social perspective, that seems a small price to pay (although obviously the victims at VT paid a high individual price).
The solution here is to allow the faculty to carry concealed pistols on campus.
The solution, that is, until a faculty member goes nuts or simply murders a colleague or three in frustration at his failure to get tenure or because one of them was sleeping with his wife or for some other crazy-ass reason. You have to arm everyone or no one for your "solution" to be effective.
Jupiter,
If I remember from a few blog posts ago, you are a descendant of German and Italian immigrants to the US in the 1800s. Your racist rants are always tiresome , but your "NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICAN" comments are now hypocritical, as well.
Not to mention that Christianity is Semitic in origin, something
which many of Jupiter's fellow
neo-Nazi losers now realize and thus reject it for that reason. Besides being a semi-literate, racist sack of shit, Jupiter also appears to be mentally ill, which is another reason why he should be ignored.
"The solution, that is, until a faculty member goes nuts or simply murders a colleague or three in frustration at his failure to get tenure or because one of them was sleeping with his wife or for some other crazy-ass reason. You have to arm everyone or no one for your "solution" to be effective."
yes, because college professors, with their high IQs and extremely low rates of violent crime, are totally prone to doing any and all of these things.
and of course they would never just wait until they were off campus to kill somebody with a gun. taking guns out of their hands only on college campuses, but allowing them to be armed when they leave the campus, totally stops them from killing any of their colleagues.
you sound like a typical gun control fan. you have no idea how concealed carry works. the possibility that anybody could be armed is how it works. it deters.
any professor who wants to carry in a state where it is legal should be allowed to do so on any college campus. this makes even more sense in urban colleges.
this is, probably, the suggestion that makes the most sense out of anything anybody will bring up in the long, bitter gun control debate that is about to happen in the presidential campaign.
Jupiter: most of the shooters were white males. If anything, this shows Asians are so well assimilated they're beginning to engage in white forms of destructive behavior. ;)
As for native talent in academic fields, I don't think American anti-intellectualism helps matters any, nor do the lousy financial rewards for scientific fields.
Oh, and drop the caps and quit talking about the 'gook exclusion act'. Then you can be seriously debated the way Svigor is. I don't like the guy's politics but he knows how to spell and argue.
Ah, but you see, according to JUPITER's neo-Nazi "logic", it's different when whites do it.
That's why it's also no use explaining to him that World Wars I and II were mainly started by Western countries (and I'm sure he'll just blame "the Jews" for both anyway).
I also brought up World Wars I and II because of JUPITER's belief that "gooks" and nonwhites in general are more likely to be violent than whites are, even as he hypocritically supports violence himself.
- Asharak
One more thing:
Regardless of how anyone feels about immigration and mulitculturalism, the blame should be put on the incompetent VT campus cops who decided to let students to go class after they found out about the first two shootings and the gunman was still on the loose.
- Jeremy
Whether or not most of the shooters are White Males is beside the point.
If the the 1965 immigration reform act had not been passed, the WHITE TEENAGERS who were murdered by this korean gook would be alive today.
There was and is no economic,cultural,demographic and ecological reason justification for importing thousands of Koreans into OUR AMERICA.
You should be a lobbyist for the piece of shit Bill Gates.
NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS already working in the engineering and tech fields. Since 1972, Native BORN WHITE AMERICANS have been driven out of the tech fields. The scale of this expulsion has increased significantly over the years. NATIVE BORN WHITE TEENAGERS no longer see the tech jobs as way of having long term middle class economic security.
American anti-intellectualism isn't the problem. LEGAL asian immigration is the problem.
Thr slaughter of the NATIVE BORN WHITE VA Tech students was a direct consequence of the low wage labor strategy of the neo-liberal Bush and Clinton adminstrations.
Asians could have been kept out of America. There would have been a LABOR scarcity..possiblY a severe one. And NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS would have bennefited greatly as they did in the past from a severe labor scarcity.
The greedy cheating class, throughout US history has always been terrified of severe labor scarcities. This an old battle in American history.
NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS are not interchangeable with the predatory gooks from Korea.
Fuck all you asian bastards.
BRING BACK THE GOOK EXCLUSION ACT!!!!
The slaughter at VA tech is a direct consequence of a importing asian scab labor into OUR AMERICA which has resulted in a massive transfer of wealth and power away from NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS to the greedy cheating class. Try challenging the abusive bossman at work when you know full well there is a very long line of asian and muslim scab labor ready to replace you.
SFGs comments are typical of the slurs directed towards NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS that come out of the mouths of predatory asian legal immigrants,rootless cosmopolitan Jews and evil scum such as Bill Gates.
Chinks and other predatory gook bastards do not belong on America.
Jupiter
anybody who doesn't trust college professors to carry guns is a gun grabber in my opinion. that has to mean that they would not trust anybody with a gun. they might, in a strange contradiction, trust the police with guns more than they would trust college professors, which makes no sense.
i trust a 45 year old, 150 IQ engineering professor with a research department to get trained and licensed to carry a pistol a lot more than i trust the average 25 year old, 105 IQ police recruit.
there are thousands of average IQ cops who mishandle their guns and hardly ever train to shoot them. cops and ex-cops are much more likely than college professors to assault, murder, and rape people. they are caught doing this on a regular basis.
did people see some of the dumb, fat police officers that showed up on the scene at virginia tech? you can't seriously trust some of these people more than the engineering professors who were killed.
the police did do a good job of taking everybody's guns away though, so they're at least good for something.
JUPITER, I've been avoiding replying to you directly, but I would like to point out that I'm not a "Hindu turd." In fact, I'm of Irish/German descent ("Asharak" is a character from a fantasy novel series).
But it's no surprise that a demented moron who pretty much posts the same thing over and over again would take everything literally.
Jody wrote:
yes, because college professors, with their high IQs and extremely low rates of violent crime, are totally prone to doing any and all of these things.
You mean as opposed to the wildly dangerous students? I wrote what I did because Anonymous had said:
the solution here is to allow the faculty to carry concealed pistols on campus. people object to students carrying handguns, but there is no good reason to object to professors carrying pistols for their own protection. (Emphasis mine)
In fact, neither college students nor college professors are especially violence-prone unless they are flat-out nuts - something that could happen to faculty, student, staff or other member of a university community.
My point was not to advocate taking guns away from people but rather to point out that arming only one segment of a population but not the other(s) was no guarantee against violent death.
Cho has been in this country since he was 8. For all practical purpose, he was culturally American. I doubt he speaks Korean with any fluency. He was an English major. Report have surfaced that he listens to rock, pop & classical music. So to blame the South Korean culture, esp. its cinema, is a reach.
To bring up the "dating disparity" is also mind boggling. As if black dudes who gets their fair share of nookies don't commit crimes.
Sailer will be Sailer, a bigot is a bigot.
Koreans are not interchangeable with NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
No back to blamming THE JEWS. Since at least 1945, JEWISH organizations were hell-bent on changing US immigration policy with the intent racially replacing NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS street by street,town by town,city by city and state by stae by state with non-whites.
The mass murder at VA Tech was made possible by the race replacement policy that major Jewish organizations forced upon the majority NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN MAJORITY.
America is not an idea nation. Millions of Koreans who live in Korea and who have migrated to OUR AMERICA are not interchangeable with the majority NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN population of AMERICA.
JUPITER
Jody,
You are making so much sense today I find myself agreeing with you. I also always thought that the hard-core gun control crowds' comfort with armed police was a little odd. It's not simply an IQ thing -- there are, I'm sure, high-IQ cops. It's more that the types of people who become cops tend to be the types of people left-wing gun control advocates wouldn't want marrying their sister, moving in next door, or coaching their kids, etc.
When I was in the Army Reserve, I served with a lot of cops (mostly NYC cops, but some NJ and CT ones as well), and I got along with them fine. But any NYC liberal who heard these guys talk candidly -- the racism (e.g., from Puerto Ricans directed at Dominicans and American blacks), the matter-of-fact recollections of beating suspects, etc. -- would choke on her H&H bagel.
nothing is a guarantee against violent death, but having the option of a concealed pistol is better than being legally disarmed for certain.
if the faculty has the option of being armed, they have a better chance of resisting muggers, kidnappers, rapists, and of course in this case, rampaging students. the option of being armed is even more attractive when you consider there are hundreds of female professors, as well as hundreds of college staff who work in high crime cities.
it is not true that everybody either has to be armed or disarmed. let's turn the question around. why would it be OK for ONLY the police on a college campus to be armed? the average police officer is younger, less intelligent, and more likely to assault you than the average engineering professor. why should the young guy with an average IQ and perhaps a quick temper be the only guy who gets to have a gun? what about the older smarter guy with more at stake?
i see the objection that students should not be allowed to carry pistols. who wants to see the football team and basketball team with pistols? who wants drunk frat boys accidentally shooting themselves?
but i can't see any good reason why a college professor who is licensed and trained to carry a pistol in his state should not be allowed to do so when he is at work.
i see the objection that students should not be allowed to carry pistols. who wants to see the football team and basketball team with pistols? who wants drunk frat boys accidentally shooting themselves?
but i can't see any good reason why a college professor who is licensed and trained to carry a pistol in his state should not be allowed to do so when he is at work.
I agree with the second paragraph but disagree with the first as a blanket statement. What about graduate students? A 25-year-old female biochem grad student who works late in the lab every night probably needs protection more than a 9-to-5 English professor (no offense to English professors).
Why not set an age limit, rather than an occupational limit?
Cho has been in this country since he was 8. For all practical purpose, he was culturally American. I doubt he speaks Korean with any fluency. He was an English major. Report have surfaced that he listens to rock, pop & classical music. So to blame the South Korean culture, esp. its cinema, is a reach.
I think the guy was just nuts, but I have to wonder how many Asian immigrants you've ever met? It isn't unusual to find immigrant families from countries like Korea and China still very much immersed in their original cultures and value systems. Who cares what kind of music he listened to? There are plenty of people in Asian countries that listen to American music.
Whoever wondered about the connection to Korean pop culture, take a bow. In the NBC video, Cho strikes a pose with a hammer right out of "Oldboy."
The guy was clearly off his rocker. However looking at some of the comments that were made from the package that was sent to NBC, it seems that a lot of it was religiously based and had very little to do with any sort of influence of pop culture but I think religion had much more of an influence in his mind. A lot of ranting and raving about the suffering of Christ and diatribes against the spoiled and wealthy. He probably was just simply mentally ill to begin with and fundamentalist values that a lot of S. Koreans hold did not help.
Holy crap. Steve totally called the !
- JM
Should be:
Holy crap, Steve totally called the Korea cinema connection!
http://tinyurl.com/2mvvrr
- JM
Jenn --
Guy was Asian. Asian guys rate low on the desirablity scale all things being equal because of their slight physiques. Bruce Lee endured torture essentially to get the "hooded" I.E large Chest and Back muscles to appear more masculine on screen.
Sad but true.
What's astonishing is how one survivor recounted how the guy shot them, left, and they just lay there moaning, did nothing when the guy RELOADED (they could hear him) and then shot them again. Astonishing.
More guys willing to fight could have saved lives. Lives of people who needed and deserved saving.
Gun control is a non-starter as a working solution. It might make people "feel good" but that's it. We couldn't keep booze out, can't keep drugs out, won't be able to keep cheap Russian, Eastern European, Chinese, Latin American, and every other gun making country from sending guns here illegally. It's a bonanza for crooks of every country to ban guns in America (see England and their gun ban and resulting plague).
Prohibition did nothing but make American beer crap and all gun bans would do is destroy American gun manufacturers.
Ironically, the school had no problem threatening with expulsion a student with a legal CCW caught on campus. This guy Psych-Cho: stalked two women, set fire to his dorm, scared the hell out of his Prof and classmates, and was committed. Cho was never threatened with expulsion.
Why?
Fear of an anti-Discrimination lawsuit. Guy was Korean. If he'd been White he would have been out (and deservedly so, he was a nut). But unfortunately our PC legal system kicked in.
Essex: your assumption rests on the idea that the past will repeat itself exactly. I don't think so: globalization, mass movements of people and ideas, increasing atomization and de-socialization, and rapid change all tend to lead to more violent worlds. You assume that poor people with no chance to achieve wealth without violence will simply stay put and stay poor. An assumption not borne out by history.
I think there needs to be a balance. Not quite so much abstract thinking and more "doing" when and only when it becomes needed. People including strong young men were paralyzed and passive while Elderly Holocaust Survivors ACTED.
What does that tell you? A profound passivity from socialization leading to unhappy results all around. The West is rich. Most other places are not. They certainly have the ability absent strong young men willing to stop them to come and take what they want. The passivity indoctrinated by American Culture is IMHO dangerous, more dangerous than nuts like Cho.
[This should be the wake-up call that Arthur Conan Doyle saw with the Titanic: i.e. the vulnerability of the British Merchant fleet to submarine warfare, a warning btw that made him very unpopular at the time though he was right.]
Essex: most CCW require psych evaluations along with clean background checks and training. Such people who are approved are no more likely than police to go crazy.
You argue that we have "ended history" and have reached Nirvana. I tend to believe that distributed and asymmetric threats mean we have turned a new and violent phase in history. Sadly. Akin to the first Viking Longboat at Lindisfarne.
Ask the monks what being rich, weak, and helpless gets you.
I think we can all agree that the massacre at VA Tech was another example of the blessings of diversity.
How would America have ever of survived without the massive wave of post-1965 asian legal immigration? Quite well actually.
Jupiter
Thanks to anon who posted about the "Condition White" - absolute lack of environmental awareness. Great term. Yes, and great double meaning.
Nobody debates that crazy is real. Nutty as a fruitcake is real. Crazy and dangerous - very real (fortunately, very rare). "Schizophrenia" - is a technical sounding term used to reassure us that the "experts are in control."
The point is that middle class Americans who live in perpetual "Condition White" - the same virtual reality where all races are exactly the same, men are just like women, the "experts" have everything in control, and so on.
Calling a dangerous fruitcake a "schizophrenic" instead of just "a nutty maniac" adds nothing, but adds to this false sense of security. It's trust in the "experts" who understand fruitcakes not much more than medieval exorcists did. If anything, they know the signs in more detail. They do not know any neurological structures responsible, they just guess. That's like medieval lists of which "demons" were responsible for which nutty behavior. It is useless, except that is gives trusting "Condition White" sorts a false sense of security.
In other words, it's official BS. Something iSteve readers should be a little more skeptical of.
Anon and anon Condition White
Two excellent posts. The floodgates have been open to a torrent of pop psy/shrink corprate psycho babble.
At the level of nitty gritty mind brain analysis as to why Cho shot up VA Tech, I put at the top of the list the psychotropics that he was on. Cho was on the same psychotropics as Andrea Yates, the teenagers who shot up Columbine HS. In fact, in all of the HS shootings over the past ten years everyone of the teenagers involved were on psychotropics. So was the mother who murdered her family in Boston a few years ago. We should expect more of these slaughters in the future.
People are way to trusting if the "experts".
However, I also belive it is a very good idea not to increase the scale of problems that already exist.
Without the passage of the 1965 immigration reform act the Koreans wouldn't be here,cho wouldn't be here and these NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN teenagers would still be alive.
The 1993 and 9/11 attacks on the twin towers wouldn't have occured either.
Non-White legal immigratin is of 0 bennefit the millions of ordinary NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
Post 1965-immigration is bringing about very rapidly the complete economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
LEGAL immigrant koreans are active participants-INCLUDING CHO'S PARENTS- in the economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS.
If it weren't for the passage of the 1965 immigration reformm act and Korean legal immigrant racial politics, the NATIVE BORN WHITE STUDENTS who were slaughtered by the korean legal immigrant Cho would be alive today.
Jupiter
Jupiter,
In your disturbed and hypocritical view of who belongs in the United States, I would be several rungs higher than you, based on my ethnicity and ancestors' role in the founding of this country (you being a descendant of 19th century German and Italian immigrants to the US and all). Now please explain your rationale for the "NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICAN" crap? Unless it's just that you're a racist pig, in which no reply is necessary and I'll not worry about paying any attention to you or your rants ever again.
German-Irish ancestry. I'm mostly Irish.
My rationale:I was born into a nation that was-and continues to have a NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN MAJORITY. I want to keep it that way.
Immigration enthusiast resort to all soughts of bizzare "arguments" to justify the economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS.
NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS are under no obligation tolerate their economic and racial dispossession through open borders non-white legal immigration.
Legal immigrant chinese,koreans,hindus,sikhs,pakis and other muslim groups, hispnanics and africans along with their "american" born children are actively involved in the economic and racial dispossession of NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN AMERICANS.
LEGAL IMMIGRANT asians,hispanics,muslims and african legal immigrants are waging demographic warfare against the majority NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN POPULATION OF AMERICA.
Asians,hispanics,muslims and africans are politically organized around their racial interests. On websites such as counterpunch-owned by leftist, transvestite and english legal immigrant Alexander Cockburn-hispanic,muslim and asian political activist openly wage race war against the majority NATIVE BORN WHITE CHRISTIAN POPULATION OF AMERICA(CHECK OUT JUAN SANTOS POSTS OVER AT COUNTERPUNCH DURING THE MEXICAN STUDENT REVOLT LAST SPRING IN CALIFORNIA AND ARIZONA)
Leftists,liberals and corporatists-these are the folks who either worship the homosexual and traitor Jorge W Bush or the testosterone-flushed- bull-dyke Hillary Clinton and her war criminal husband-encourage the race-based politics of asians,muslimsafricans and hispanics.
You are worthless, deracinated placeless person. Pathetic
Jupiter
Thought experiments
Probability that South Koreans would tolerate hundreds of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICANS RECENT COLLEGE GRADS working at Hyundai in South Korea:0
Suppose that thousands of young South Korean college grads were forced to compete with hundreds of NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN RECENT COLLEGE GRADS-lets say from VA TECH. Suppose that every single one of the NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN RECENT COLLEGE GRADS were hired by Hyundai in South Korea.
What would be the probablity that the young South Koreans living in South Korean would murder the LEGAL IMMIGRANT NATIVE BORN WHITE AMERICAN RECENT COLLEGE GRADS who were hired by Hyundai in Soul South Korea? 100 percent withoout a doubt.
Probabilty that young Koreans would murder the Korean version of Julian Simon(without the frozen severed bald head) who argued that this would be a major bennefit to South Koreas youth? 100 percent without a doubt.
Jupiter
Jupiter,
Your thought experiments, and the answers you provide, are pure bunk. A 100% chance South Koreans would murder Americans who worked in their country? Are you serious?
I am not arguing for open borders to America or a "take one, take all" mentality. I think immigration reform is very important and very necessary. But your derogatory comments about every ethnic group except white, Christian Americans makes any valid points you have absolutely irrelevant. I will now put this discussion to rest (to the joy of anyone still reading comments from this blog post) and allow you to have the last word.
This is all an isolated incident. If there were 100's of Cho's running amok in the States, it would be a different story. For now, he's a tragi-comic figure, like the Kim Jong Il. Back in Hirohito's heyday or to American GIs caught behind enemy lines in Asia, none of this seemed humorous.
Anyone who thinks the Hyundai example is hogwash is simply naive. PC orthodoxy isn't observed in Asia.
When it's one guy, it's a tragic but inconsequential massacre. When it's lots of guys organized with a figurehead, it's a bigger problem.
Immigration should be reciprocal. For every US green card or amnesty granted someone from Korea or Mexico, a reciprocal business license or work permit should be granted to an American citizen or business entity over there. Quid pro quo.
"Anyone who thinks the Hyundai example is hogwash is simply naive. PC orthodoxy isn't observed in Asia."
I am not naive for believing that South Koreans will murder Americans working at a Hyundai plant is hogwash. Period. This is the most insane example I have ever heard.
Post a Comment