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Don't say I didn't warn you.
R. and I were discussing the Fort Hood shootings. I was annoyed that commentators (and not just right wing ones, either) were pushing to label this "terrorism", when it seemed pretty obvious even before details came out that this was a disgruntled employee type incident, in which some guy who has trouble getting along with others/in life finally spews rage in the form of bullets around anyone who had the misfortune to be near him when he went off. Regrettable, and sometimes preventable, but not terrorism.
I was also annoyed because commentators were making out like this was somehow scary. Certainly, if you were there, but it's not like this doesn't happen a lot, and it isn't like this kind of thing is particularly new. He tossed off the UT sniper, who I had never heard of, so off I went to read about Mr. Whitman and his many victims. It would be _really_ easy to speculate based on some details that other people were maybe contributors to Whitman's Big Pool of Rage (lots of Catholics and Boy Scouts, in one case, a two-fer in the form of a Boy Scout Leader who went to seminary and remained a close friend. Maybe that should be "friend"?). Of course, they might not have been. From there,
it was one jump to the Bath School Massacre (holy moly, I'd never heard of that one) and then, predictably, wikipedia has a summary page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks
It goes way back (first one is Lenape warriors attacking colonials in 1764), but #5 really caught my eye. I would bet dollars to donuts I'm related to that guy. Here's a little contemporary coverage of what happened to him:
http://manitobia.ca/cocoon/launch/en/newspapers/TMT/1903/01/20/7/Ar00703.xml/Olive?query=henry
*sigh*
I didn't really _need_ a reminder that it's important to not get too crazy mad, but I suppose this qualifies as yet another one.
R. and I were discussing the Fort Hood shootings. I was annoyed that commentators (and not just right wing ones, either) were pushing to label this "terrorism", when it seemed pretty obvious even before details came out that this was a disgruntled employee type incident, in which some guy who has trouble getting along with others/in life finally spews rage in the form of bullets around anyone who had the misfortune to be near him when he went off. Regrettable, and sometimes preventable, but not terrorism.
I was also annoyed because commentators were making out like this was somehow scary. Certainly, if you were there, but it's not like this doesn't happen a lot, and it isn't like this kind of thing is particularly new. He tossed off the UT sniper, who I had never heard of, so off I went to read about Mr. Whitman and his many victims. It would be _really_ easy to speculate based on some details that other people were maybe contributors to Whitman's Big Pool of Rage (lots of Catholics and Boy Scouts, in one case, a two-fer in the form of a Boy Scout Leader who went to seminary and remained a close friend. Maybe that should be "friend"?). Of course, they might not have been. From there,
it was one jump to the Bath School Massacre (holy moly, I'd never heard of that one) and then, predictably, wikipedia has a summary page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school-related_attacks
It goes way back (first one is Lenape warriors attacking colonials in 1764), but #5 really caught my eye. I would bet dollars to donuts I'm related to that guy. Here's a little contemporary coverage of what happened to him:
http://manitobia.ca/cocoon/launch/en/newspapers/TMT/1903/01/20/7/Ar00703.xml/Olive?query=henry
*sigh*
I didn't really _need_ a reminder that it's important to not get too crazy mad, but I suppose this qualifies as yet another one.