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Why do people always blame the victim?
My mom is watching Oprah in the other room. They are talking about the Virginia Tech shooting.
"Oh, you should have caught this guy earlier because of such and such writings he did, and he was obviously unstable."
It sounds suspiciously like another claim I have heard.
"They should have gotten Hitler right after the Beer Hall Putsch." or "Mein Kampf should have been a warning!"
After the Beer Hall Putsch, everyone just thought Hitler was this insane little man who was a member of this obscure political party. There were no signs that he would be dangerous to anyone but himself. No one read Mein Kampf until he got into power. And why would they? Who would care about this weird little man at this time? But of course, as people always do, they blamed the victims when he began his plight. They blamed, and still blame, Germany for not catching him at this stage. And people are blaming V. Tech for not catching their shooter at that stage.
"Now that 34 people, in the Columbine and Virgina Tech shootings, are dead," Oprah pleaded, "Will someone finally do something about it?"
We know that politicians and media take events like this to "prove their point", but this is going much too far. People don't realize that V. Tech is the victim, just as Germany was the victim in WWII. There was nothing more they could do. And how can one say that we should "take care of someone" just because they might become dangerous one day? The whole idea is just gross. I'd be interested to hear if anyone disagrees with me when I say that people that make any of the above claims are wrong.
"Oh, you should have caught this guy earlier because of such and such writings he did, and he was obviously unstable."
It sounds suspiciously like another claim I have heard.
"They should have gotten Hitler right after the Beer Hall Putsch." or "Mein Kampf should have been a warning!"
After the Beer Hall Putsch, everyone just thought Hitler was this insane little man who was a member of this obscure political party. There were no signs that he would be dangerous to anyone but himself. No one read Mein Kampf until he got into power. And why would they? Who would care about this weird little man at this time? But of course, as people always do, they blamed the victims when he began his plight. They blamed, and still blame, Germany for not catching him at this stage. And people are blaming V. Tech for not catching their shooter at that stage.
"Now that 34 people, in the Columbine and Virgina Tech shootings, are dead," Oprah pleaded, "Will someone finally do something about it?"
We know that politicians and media take events like this to "prove their point", but this is going much too far. People don't realize that V. Tech is the victim, just as Germany was the victim in WWII. There was nothing more they could do. And how can one say that we should "take care of someone" just because they might become dangerous one day? The whole idea is just gross. I'd be interested to hear if anyone disagrees with me when I say that people that make any of the above claims are wrong.
Comments
Likewise, anybody with half a brain that read the things this kid wrote should have realized there was something severely wrong. I'm not a psychologist, but a reading of his two plays told me that there was something medically wrong with him that required therapy or, more likely, medication. He was not being creative; he was being fucked up. Someone should have noticed, and someone should have done something.
However, I can't see blaming someone in a punishment sense for not catching this. This is a lesson better learned by everyone, and I should think it will hit hardest with those that would have passed his writings off as being creative or some similar nonsense; I'm all about college being an institution of higher learning, but you really need to keep things in a real-world perspective too.
I'll admit, there are cases of crazy people, and their craziness is verifiable by their crazy art, literature, etc. But there are also tons of sane people who display some imagery that may be described as "disturbed" or "f*ckd up" in their works. Also, on the sexual note, many people write erotic literature. Politicians even write erotic fiction!! I know that this man was disturbed, but this fact should not be taken solely from his writing.
Sorry, I just had to get that off of my chest.
It's disjointed, poorly written, and somewhat incoherent. It more resembles a rant than it does anything else. If you seriously read this writing and don't think that it's definitely off, you really need to look at it more closely.
Seriously, someone hands you something like that? You check up on whoever wrote it. In this case, just looking at him (silent, no friends, deliberately so) would have set off alarm bells (and it did and...apparently that wasn't enough). If Jhonen Vasqez' work wasn't as polished and thought out as it is, I'd be worried about him, too. If JTHM was a bunch of amateurish sketches on paper from some weird lonely dude, yeah, I'd wonder. But as a professionally bound book, well, I assume he's okay since obviously whomever he's working with to produce the book will have checked up on him. Additionally, JTHM is a polished cohesive work with a sense of humour - obviously intended to entertain and entertain by disturbing people. Even in the example you describe: it's disturbing but the mode of death and the explanation for it is creative and, to the correct sense of humour, amusing. JTHM is drawn in a style that makes it obvious that it's not meant to be taken seriously. It has a purpose other "HEY LOOK GUYS I'M ANGRY(insert bajillion exclamation marks)".
Of course, it's also possible that he genuinely had terrible English writing skills (not being a native English speaker, as far as I can tell) but he was in his third year of an English course so I'm assuming he could have done a lot better.