17 April 2007
Events happen in this instant message, cell phone ubiquitous, 24-hour news society, that demand our immediate interaction. So I feel compelled to comment. I remember when Charles Whitman fired on students from the University of Texas Tower in Austin in August 1966. He killed 15 and wounded 31. Vietnam was just getting good and reved up in our national back ground. Richard Speck had systematically killed eight student nurses from South Chicago just weeks earlier in July, 1966. President Kennedy had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald just 32 months prior, also in Texas. The world had gone insane.
Maybe the world was always insane but by then the outside world insanity was becoming closer because radio was already being ubiquitous and television was close behind. Something began to become closer to home by the mid-Sixties. It was like a lurking evil. I am sure an evil has always been out there. It just manifests itself different to its environment. Slavery and the carnage of the Civil War one hundred year prior were brutally graphic to the participants. The world was insane then too.
Since Oswald, Speck, and Whitman it is easy to lose track of the many domestic killers since. There have been names along the way, John Wayne Cassy killed 33, Jeffery Dahmer killed 17, Timothy McVeigh killed 168. There have been killings in businesses, work places, McDonald’s, cafés, and Post Offices. So many, the term “Postal” has permanently entered our language to describe someone going nuts and killing people. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 and wounded 24. The 19, 9-Eleven terrorists killed 2,973 people. Bombers in Iraq kill dozens every day over and over. The number of people killed in Virginia would not equal the number killed in Iraq every day. We are up to present time. The world has still gone insane.
Yesterday a man at Polytechic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) killed 32 and wounded possibly 28. The world is still insane. The media will beat us to death with this latest act of insanity for weeks – replete with theme music. Their big media satellite vans are already arriving on scene. A Pentagon size map of the campus is on the TV screen. The only person on earth possibly breathing a sigh of relief today is Don Imus. He is gone from the relentless headlines and talk show diatribes most likely now for good.
Aside from the obvious reassurance that the world is still insane, there is a couple of observations that people will not like. There observations speak to a condition that seems to defy society and can not seem to be stopped. My observations of it speaks to me living so long to see it over and over again.
Observation One: If one lone person wants to wreak havoc on a society, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can not always stop it. Refer to current Iraq where soldiers are on every corner (I have seen them) and the Oklahoma City tragedy.
Observation Two: There were already a number of law enforcement on the Virginia Tech campus due to the early killings on campus. By the time the second wave of killing started I noticed the video from the cell phone camera by-standers revealed the arriving law enforcement were dressed like a combat wardrobe section from a military supply catalog. All those cops, all those shinny cars, all those mass casualty trailers, all those ambulances, all those machine guns, snippers in helmets and bullet resistant vests, dogs with their combat clad handlers – and 32 people died, another 30 were wounded. The shooter – well he killed himself they say.
Having worked in protective service for 10 years with 9-Eleven right in the middle of that time frame, I know the government has dished out millions of dollars to law enforcement for fancy equipment. They all arrived on scene, hundreds of militarized police from a dozen agencies. Millions of dollars of new shinny Homeland Security equipment spruin the campus. This is something I was schooled by a wise protective service instructor to notice as a “vanity army.”
Yet, the killer did his evil deed, and did it in the midst of an army fit for a king, and when it was all said and done he killed himself. To make matters worse, the symbiotic campus within the city lends itself to a mindset of habitual safety. Students go about their business often even oblivious to the traffic they cross.
You can bet your last AK-47 bullet that the bad guys around the world have not missed this nuance. Oh yes, I saw for myself that in Iraq and the Middle East that they have more news channels than we do. They “ain’t got no” running water or electricity, but the dish televisions run on generators and everyone has three cell phones. The world’s insanity remains intact.
This week’s Wisconsin soldier to remember is Mathew Schram, a major in the Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment. He was killed on May 26, 2003 about 100 miles northwest of Baghdad in Haditha, Iraq. His resupply mission convoy came under attack from gunmen who opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns. The Brookfield native was 36. He was in ROTC while at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater before joining the Army in 1989 and participating in the first Gulf War 12 years prior.
3,311 Americans have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
71 Wisconsin Soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Spring 2003.
Daily Dadio 