This is probably going to draw a lot of criticism, actually, but comments are really welcome.
To follow up on Choad’s post which was a really interesting breakdown of the aftereffects of the Va Tech terror, I was just thinking about comparing it to some other disturbing things going on.

There are a lot of grief groups going on all over the country. There are quite a few at my school, and I’m sure they’re in full bloom in Madison, Urbana, New York City, San Bernardino, etc. etc. I’m starting to wonder what the hell the point is. I feel just as awful as anyone else about someone taking a gun blazing to SCHOOL and shooting kids trapped in a classroom– its awful and terrifying, but what do grief groups in Palo Alto, California accomplish? My friend said to me: “I think people try to find a reason to be sad and be a part of something”, and I actually agree. People want to show they’re concerned and grieving, but isn’t that doable in your own room?

Well, if you want something to grieve over, try what I think Lox wrote about in an email: The day Cho slaughtered a lot of his classmates, someone STRAPPED BOMBS to their OWN BODY, purposefully targeted and walked into the densest area of people, and BLEW HIMSELF UP along with everyone else, spraying blood, torn bits of flesh and bone, internal organs, arms, hands, skin, brain matter, etc. over a huge, public area. I think it was nearly 200 that died in Baghdad that day in multiple bombings. How mindbogglingly bizarre and twisted is that? And even more disgusting than taking a gun to school and shooting?

Check out McClatchey’s Iraq correspondents’ site that describes a bombing site with blood and guts all over the walls of a building. I can’t find the post but it’s still a cool blog to check out.

I haven’t experienced a school shooting or a suicide bombing, so I can’t say which one is more traumatic. But, the numbers say that nearly 200 died in one day in Baghdad and thirty some died in Blacksburg. Should we have had 7x the grief groups for Iraqi victims that day? No one even gives a damn about how many regular people die in Iraq these days. We’re numb to it. Virginia Tech is a huge fucking deal because a school shootings happen once every five years and they’re American and we might know some of the victims, but thirty EASILY die a day in Iraqi violence.

Go grieve over that.

There’s this game called Assassins that’s popular in certain circles at my school. I’ve never played myself, but it sounds pretty fun. The game involves “weapons,” “stalking,” “killing,” “dying,” and an elaborate real-life circular linked-list that shrinks until only the winner remains. Games can take weeks and often benefit from the stalker’s best friend, Facebook.

My friend runs campusassassins.com, which administers games. He and his website are in USA Today today, which is pretty exciting. But the focus of the article reduces that excitement.

Students urged to stop playing ‘Assassin’ game.

April 25, 2007 USA Today

Students are being urged not to play Assassins so that they won’t be mistaken for someone like Cho. I suppose this is a legitimate stance to take. It sure would suck if a kid with a watergun was mistaken for a kid with a gun.

But taking a step back, I ask myself “why does a fun and harmless game suffer because of the recent massacre?” Well it’s probably because the game involves “weapons,” “stalking,” “killing,” and “dying,” which are being mistaken as weapons, stalking, killing, and dying. The latter are unfortunate parts of our reality, but the former are strictly all fun and games.

Mistaking “killing” for killing reveals to me that our thinking about this issue is flawed. Telling Assassins to stop deals only with our aural experience of the bloodshed. “I don’t like to hear about violent or “violent” or whatever stuff, so please don’t do it.” Instead, the right place to look is to the oral experience of the bloodshed. Who is uttering those words and why did they pick the ones they did?

It’s understandable that the aural perspective would be mistaken for the oral one, similar as they do sound. But one is superficial and the other is substantial, and we all need to fixate on the substantial.