Danny ChaiI have nothing original to add about the VTech shootings. It’s just really sad. I will say though I never worried about potential backlash against Koreans/Asians, and was surprised anyone did. My only reaction was sadness. But it seems that everyone I know had the backlash fear reaction so I’m alone on this. It’s a legitimate concern. I wonder though if people had the same reaction after 9/11, concern about a backlash against Muslims, or if there’s an instinctual self-preservation defense thing working on a group level. I dunno.
I also strongly agree with Charles. I found it odd how the media reports immediately compartmentalized Cho as being really different, a foreigner (Jieun has ranted at length about why they keep calling him Cho Seung-Hui. He’s been in the U.S. since he was 8. He’s clearly fluent in English. He signed his papers “Seung Cho”. I thought it was an intentional thing, another way to make him seem different, but the Explainer suggests it was just confusion, and some media outlets are switching how they refer to him), possibly autistic, etc.
I agree with Charles. We want to demonize people who commit acts of evil to distance ourselves from them, convince ourselves that they are fundamentally different from us. And we ask why. Why it happened, how people like that arrived at where they are. The truth is, we are not fundamentally different from them, we are all fallen, all have the capacity to do evil, and the simple answer to why men to evil things is because men are sinful. Few people commit acts of such atrocity, but the difference is one of degree, not quality.
Seung Cho was human, just like me. That I’m ever able to do anything good is a measure of the grace of God. And I still do some pretty screwed up things.