JONNYQUEST'S BLOG
By the numbers
Wednesday, April 18, 2007 8:49 PM
We sit as a nation, yet again shocked and horrified by another spree killing. Of the families of the victims, we can only imagine their pain and grief. My blog is not for them. I could never put together words sufficient to comfort them in any way. Except to say “I’m sorry”.My blog has to do with why we are continuously, consistently surprised by incidents like this. Somewhere Michael Moore is bellowing “I told you so!’ at his television set. CNN doesn’t hear him. Al Gore sits nearby and rolls his eyes; nobody really believes documentaries. Unless they’re about animals; Steve Irwin smiles. Do we really need to do the role call again? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_massacres http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_massacres Schools, colleges and universities, restaurants, post offices, factories, mills, events and on and on. People who have snapped. People who get their hands on the means to do bodily harm. People who might be sitting right next to us. I had a high school teacher who later went on to kill the superintendent who fired him (not my school; he had moved on). There was a Prozac connection. But there’s always something. Evil music, video games, the wrong crowd, disgruntlement.
For some not listed here, the pressure to succeed doesn’t take a lot of lives when facing failure, it takes only one. We’ve had a number of those since I’ve worked at the University of Michigan. Not even Regents are immune are immune from the Sirens’ Call. But why the surprise? Wherefore the shock? Haven’t we been treated to enough of these events to sing, “Oops there goes another murder spree, oops there goes another murder spree now; [beat] 'Cause he had high hopes, he had high hopes, he had high apple pie, in the sky hopes…!” There is a gross imbalance in our little part of the cosmos, our narrow view of the world. There is an old journalistic saw that states, (since I’m paraphrasing, I won’t use quotes). The farther away a story occurs, the higher the number of casualties there needs to be for us to consider the event newsworthy, i.e. “significant”.
Some statistics are slipping under the radar. Of course, my news junkie days have long since come to their middle, so maybe I just missed out and someone’s been all over this. I’ve just picked a very, very few of the newsmakers. These for me represent the most haunting, most notorious, of the larger group. Virginia Tech is burning way more candle power on the news than Baghdad, isn’t it? And I just can’t help weigh the 3300 American troupes in Operation Iraqi Freedom against the almost 3,000 9/11 victims. In Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan we knew what we were about, and that was a direct response to 9/11. The subsequent deaths in Iraqi Freedom were for…And most of us have heard of Kent State, but how many have heard of Jackson State just a week and a half later, with its darkly ironic Lynch Street?
Who can sleep at night with these figures running through their head? It’s supposed to be our leadership, and maybe some are Sleepless in Seattle and some are experiencing Awakenings, but many are sound Sleepers or in a Coma.
Locales/Dead/Wounded
This week
Virginia Tech University (April 16, 2007) 33/15
Baghdad (April 18, 2007) 191/250
University of Texas (1966) 15/31
Manson Family (1969) 9
Kent State (1970) 4/9
Jackson State (1970) 2/12
Jonestown (1978) 913
Waco (1993) 79
Oklahoma City Bombing (1995) 168/800
Heaven’s Gate (1997) 39
Columbine (Not including the 2 perpetrators) (1999) 13/24
9/11 (2001)
New York City 2,749
• World Trade Center 2,602
• American #11 88
• United #175 59
Arlington 184
• Pentagon 125
• American #77 59
Shanksville, PA 40
• United #93 40
Total (Not including the 19 hijackers) 2,973
Military Operations (2001-2007)
• Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) 380/1,141
• Operation Iraqi Freedom 3,311/24,314
Total 3,691/25,455
Add to the list some famous serial killers, mass murderers and spree people and my what a group. And these are just the most famous:
Aileen Wuornos, Andrew Cunanan, Atlanta Chi
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