Who could have seen this awful tragedy coming?! Besides all the people who did, of course.
Published by punkass marc May 7th, 2007 in Deaths, Governmental Failures, Media hackeryTerrorists could strike again at any moment — you don’t, nay, CAN’T know when it’ll happen again.
We were caught completely unawares by the villainy on 9/11… except for those memos floating around indicating plane-based attacks by al-Qaeda were imminent. Oh, and those briefings in which certain a “high level” government official told analysts they had covered their asses by explaining the same thing.
IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN ANY TIME ANYWHERE WITHOUT WARNING. At least, that’s what the media and certain fearmongers in the White House would like to have us believe, even though we actually did have plenty of warning even before we turned up our espionage, torture, and paranoia to 11.
But it isn’t just foreign terrorist boogeymen we’re supposed to fear — I’ve heard the same tropes rolled out in conjunction with the Virginia Tech killings by Seung-Hui Cho. Talking heads on multiple networks have droned on and on that ANYONE at ANY TIME could be the next Cho, and that we should all be very afraid. Certain state governors are so convinced of this they believe we should carry loaded weapons on us in church and at bars just in case.
Of course, Cho didn’t just act without warning, either. Not only did his neighbors and classmates know he was deeply creepy, but he was found to be a threat and ordered by the courts to receive mental health treatment:
The gunman who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech failed to get the mental health treatment ordered by a judge who declared him an imminent threat to himself and others, a newspaper reported Monday.
Seung-Hui Cho was found “mentally ill and in need of hospitalization” in December 2005, according to court papers. A judge ordered him into involuntary outpatient treatment.
What happened? Well, it turns out no one followed up on the court’s orders. Mental health officials and the court itself failed to enforce the ruling.
You can’t sum it up any better than this:
“The system doesn’t work well,” said Tom Diggs, executive director of the Commission on Mental Health Law Reform, which has been studying the state mental health system and will report to the General Assembly next year.
Our court system labeled Cho a risk and ordered him to be put away but no one actually did it… which is kinda like how our president knew we were at risk before 9/11 but failed to act.
Our media and our government create the perception that plane terrorists and gun terrorists spontaneously appear and perform acts of horror like silent ninjas skipping over tripwires. But the truth is that the alarm has almost always been sounded. The only question is whether anyone bothered to respond to it.
Fear is the only thing they have left to sell us. Unfortunately, there are still many lining up to make their purchases.
So true. Which is weird, because in theory, people don’t _want_ to be scared.
But if people didn’t believe danger was lurking everywhere, they’d have to face up to living in a police state.
Our current police state — now that’s something to fear.