where were you/what were you doing/what were you feeling/when?

[sabotabby]

It's perversely fascinating reading LJ several days after a tragic newsworthy event. Most people on my friends list, for example, are aware at some level that 35,000 children die every day from preventable diseases, and this is a tragedy, but none of us blog every day about the 35,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases. It's usually the unexpected mass deaths that fire up the collective imagination.

Well, we don't know those children. But most of us don't know anyone who went to Virginia Tech either, but a lot of us are overwhelmingly upset and touched by the lives and deaths of people we never met. I'm disinclined to say anything cynical about that; I mean, I have that same reaction. (And check out the spike in the numbers of LJers who were "sad" or "shocked" over the past few days.)

At any rate, I have a theory that a lot of us react to high-profile tragedies in bizarre ways that we tend not to talk about. Accordingly, a poll:


[Poll #969519]

Comments

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

Yeah, gun control might not have helped in that case but it is still a good idea. I don't know how someone gets to the point where more guns is always the answer. WTF?

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[sabotabby]

A lot of people think that they could have played the hero, even otherwise sane people. (And John Derbyshire, of course, who is far from sane.)

But it's one thing to fantasize about how you could have saved the day and another thing to push for political changes based on that fantasy.

Re: way more than you wanted to know

[florence-craye.livejournal.com]

The only thing I can think more guns would have caused is a lot more shootings, even on smaller scales.

On your second point: exactly. But I guess that's what the republicans are all about. "If only I had a gun, I could have stopped that abortion!" Ugh.

[one-serious-cat.livejournal.com]

As far as the decision of some polemicists to think like a mass murderer and blame the victims, I think James Bowman needs to be thrown into the middle of the circle with Steyn and Derbyshire to be pointed and laughed at. Bowman, author of Honor: a history, probably has no more shame than the other two, but he's had to deal with far less public scrutiny. Just a thought.

[sabotabby]

Ewww, why did I go look that up?

Just for that, I see your Bowman and I raise you a Nathaniel Blake:

Something is clearly wrong with the men in our culture. Among the first rules of manliness are fighting bad guys and protecting others: in a word, courage. And not a one of the healthy young fellows in the classrooms seems to have done that. …

Nice theory, except that the second victim did just that, which was how he became the second victim.

What's wrong with these people?