It’s Just My Opinion

(Harris R. Sherline is a retired CPA/Business manager and executive that has lived in the valley for over 20 years. Harris also has an extensive background in the charitable works, having served on many non-profit boards, including seven years as Chairman/CEO of the Santa Ynez Valley Cottage Hospital. He stays active with business consulting and writing opinion columns on a wide variety of topics)

Thoughts About Virginia Tech

As I have gone about the business of living in the hours and days since the massacre at Virginia Tech, like many people I suppose, I’ve had a succession of reactions to this horrific event intruding on my consciousness almost nonstop.

Words and phrases have been popping into my head at random, often unwelcome, like: sadness, frightening, maddening, horrific, tragic, guns and gun control, insane, mentally ill, crazy, culture war, good and evil, morality, religious beliefs and values, parenting, freedom and individual rights, freedom of speech, safety, political correctness, education, failure, government, authority, police, security and protection, terrorist, passive, and courageous, media hype, over the top, profit motive and the “blame game”. There’s more, but these should give you a sense of the jumble of thoughts that have been dogging me.

I have no idea how long this might continue, but I suspect it will last a while longer. I know from experience that, as with all tragedies, it will gradually fade over time, at least until the next occasion when something equally or more horrific happens. Sitting at my computer keyboard just five days after Cho Sueng-Hui’s shooting rampage, as I tried to organize my thoughts I’ve been reluctant to expand on each word or expression in the list above. However, my thinking crystallized enough for me to at least make certain observations:

It didn’t take even one day for gun control advocates to call for laws that would remove all handguns from the general population. Never mind that there are already over 20,000 laws on the books at the federal, state and local levels to regulate and control the use of guns. Furthermore, there is compelling evidence that preventing people from having guns doesn’t stop criminals or crazy people from getting and using them, which puts the general population at an even greater disadvantage. It’s interesting to note that the Virginia Tech campus is a “gun free zone.” No guns are allowed on the 2600 acre campus except for the police, for all the good it did.

As usual, we were deluged with over the top, 24 - 7 reportage of this tragedy, but perhaps the most troubling aspect of the media’s coverage, at least to me, was NBC’s conduct in choosing to air parts of the video they received from the killer. No one needed to see that, especially the families and friends of those who were wounded or killed, and certainly not the public. I don’t see how watching a sick, evil person rant about their grievances against the world can have any redeeming value whatsoever. And I don’t see how it can inform or enlighten the public in any constructive way.

Perhaps mental health professionals can learn something from it, but certainly not the general public, and that includes me. Furthermore, broadcasting the video gave the killer exactly what he wanted, publicity and notoriety, which I believe was a significant part of his motivation – and will only encourage future crazies to follow his example. Someone once told me that he did not believe there were any truly bad people and that every conflict can be resolved without resorting to violence, especially war. That was probably one of the most nonsensical statements I’ve ever heard. I believe evil exists and that not everyone can be helped, cured or taught to resolve problems only in non-violent ways.

It doesn’t take much to understand that people like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the BTK killer and their ilk were or are truly evil and, as far as I’m concerned, the Virginia Tech shooter was evil as well. Such people cannot be helped with the sort of therapy that is normally used to treat garden variety neurotics. They are ticking time bombs, waiting for some flash point to occur and trigger their murderous acts.

One of the more troubling aspects of this terrible situation is the profit motive displayed by the media in its usual over-the-top, non-stop coverage. As the saying goes, “Anything for a buck.” This sort of thinking was clearly involved in what I suspect was NBC’s quest for TV ratings, which induced them to broadcast parts of the video they received from Cho. If there is any single overriding aspect of life in America today it is the blanket of “political correctness” (PC) that now smothers all freedom of expression in our lives and discourse. I am perpetually irritated by the never-ending barrage of “politically correct” rules we are subjected to nowadays, generally without rhyme or reason, other than to advance some political agenda.

To me, PC is BS. It is censorship and, like all forms of such control, it breeds hostility and antagonism. I, for one, have grown weary of politically correct demands and the PC straight jacket that has been wrapped around the minds and free expression of Americans. I hardly know anyone any more who feels free to openly express their opinions on many subjects today.

“Political correctness” influences everything we are supposed to think and say. It attempts to force the population to conform to some group’s notion of right and wrong as well as our personal conduct in almost every situation. But, the rules constantly change according to some desired political outcome, so we never quite know what we can do or say at any given time. The result is that we are living in a pressure cooker environment and, like all pressure cookers, if some of the steam is not released periodically, it eventually blows.

I believe that is what has been happening to our society and is one of the major reasons for the growing hostility and much of the violence we see around us every day. People are becoming increasingly disagreeable and hostile because they are no longer free to say what they really think and constant frustration causes many of them to act out in antisocial ways. PC thinking has become so pervasive that it has even led to laws that prevent colleges from notifying parents when there are serious problems with their own children, which was the situation at Virginia Tech. In spite of substantial evidence that Cho was a potential threat to others, the school could not notify his family, presumably because of his privacy rights.

We hear a lot of talk about the First Amendment and freedom of speech these days, but just how free are we to say what’s really on our minds? On one level, it appears that our treasured freedom of speech has evolved to the point of license. We can insult just about any individual or group we don’t like or disagree with, provided they are a suitable PC target. If you think about it, there is no longer any true freedom of expression, except that which is politically correct according to some constantly changing standard that is imposed by self-appointed PC arbiters.

Unless and until Americans stand up and insist on clearing the PC smoke screen that has been confusing and coloring their view of the world and the people in it, we can expect many more Columbine and Virginia Tech tragedies.

But, that’s just my opinion.