21st-Century Vox

No One Is to Blame

I debated all week over whether to make my entry about the tragedy at Virginia Tech. I grew up in VA and my parents and both brothers went to Tech so it is a very sensitive subject for my family, but one that I feel is necessary to speak about. Please read this post knowing that I have nothing but well wishes for the families and sympathize with the horrible things they are going through.

It is unfortunate that in the aftermath of tragedy people’s first reaction is to look for someone to blame. After 9/11, the United States basically went to war with just about everyone – even ourselves. The FAA cracked down on airplane safety adding more security, limiting things that could be carried on, adding excessive check-in processes, delaying take-off times, and all the changes may have done more harm than good. I remember that on my way to an ice-skating competition my partner and I were not allowed to bring our skates on board because they could be used as a weapon. We checked them, of course, but the luggage was lost and neither of us got them in time to compete.

Simple stuff like that became overly complicated, and when you make the process harder, people become more stressed and then that’s when real problems begin. Small inconveniences built up and people began to blame the FAA, and then the hijackers, and then the Arab Nation itself, which turned into big-time racism and all because a few people had the desire to hurt others. Racism against people from the Arab Nation was at an extreme level and people were arrested and wrongfully persecuted because we were looking for someone to blame and were afraid that it would happen again. The truth is that all the security in the world could not have stopped the mission that those men were on. If they were willing to die to see those things carried out, do we honestly believe that a few extra security measures would have stopped them?

My grandmother, as crazy as she was, God rest her soul, sent us gas masks for Christmas because she was worried about another attack. We lived in fear because we felt that we hadn’t done enough to stop it. We blamed the government, the airports, the Arab Nation, when only those directly involved were truly to blame.

Now the same thing has happened in the Virginia attack. People are scared, and they begin to react irrationally. A student was arrested at the University of Colorado because during a class discussion he said there were certain things about the shooter that he felt sorry for and identified with. This was a class discussion where people should have felt free to speak their opinions, yet he was arrested for evoking his inalienable right to freedom of speech. Another student was arrested at a vigil for wearing an ammunition belt. The belt turned out to be a piece of fashion the student wasn’t even aware was weapon-associated. Tacky? Yes, but hardly a reason to go to jail.

Simon Cowell had to publicly apologize for rolling his eyes after it was mistakenly thought he was being unsympathetic to the shooting at Virginia Tech. Remember what happened to Natalie Maines following her joke about the president? She got death threats because people were scared. Are we willing to go through that again? Security is being beefed up at schools all over the country just like it was after the Columbine massacre, but is it necessary? Are we willing to live in a police state because one lone nut killed people? Seung-Hui Cho wanted to strike fear in people, are we going to let him win?

It is important to remember tragedy in the past so hopefully we never have to face it again, but I don’t want to live in fear. I don’t want to persecute people for their beliefs if they're different from mine. I don’t want to live in a country where I can’t voice my thoughts without fear of being arrested or hated. NO ONE IS TO BLAME. Not the police who didn’t react quickly enough according to some, not the school who didn’t close down the campus in time, not the parents, or Koreans, or anyone except the person who pulled the trigger, and he’s dead.

We should come together to support each other in a national tragedy like this and not point fingers to assign blame. We can’t predict the future, and I don’t want to live in a society where everyone is so fearful of each other that they overreact to situations. I want to expect the best from others, and I want to trust that other people expect the best from me. If something happens to me, I want to at least know that I lived free while I was alive. BLOG HARD!

It’s always a business doing pleasure with you.

– Dylan Vox

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