The Cho Factor, Part V

Victims and Victimizers

I ended our last installment by asking why young, deranged mass murderers believe that their only option is to kill others. We can’t hope to reduce the rampage of mass slayings in our schools unless we try to understand the root cause or causes of this phenomenon. And that requires us to be willing to reconsider our deeply entrenched beliefs in an effort to discover truth.

In this regard, it was no surprise to find that Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho was a loner who was constantly taunted when he attended Westfield High School in Chantilly, Virginia. He was teased for being shy and talking “funny.”

The incident that especially caught my attention was when a teacher threatened to give Cho a failing grade if he did not read to the class aloud. According to Virginia Tech student Chris Davids, who was a classmate of Cho’s in high school, Cho started to read in a strange voice that sounded “like he had something in his mouth.” Davids said that “As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, ‘Go back to China.’”

I am not saying that the taunting and teasing Cho experienced justifies killing anyone, let alone thirty-two people. But what I am saying is that, no matter how much some folks may dislike hearing it, the sad truth is that Cho himself was a victim long before he was a victimizer. The original victimizers were the high school kids who taunted him, humiliated him, and robbed him of his humanity.

And to the extent those students were not harshly punished (and, in my experience, such students rarely are), then it was the teachers – such as the teacher of the class in which he was chided to “Go back to China” – who were the biggest victimizers of all.

Longtime readers are already aware of my views on teacher-bullies. As I have said in the past, the greatest terrorist threat facing the U.S. is not from those unemployed Middle Eastern guys who revel in playing war games twenty-four hours a day.

If we were serious about the matter, we could eliminate that threat by banning them from our country and throwing up a Star Wars perimeter defense to render their nukes useless. But, due to a variety of personal agendas, people in high places actually want the U.S. to be engaged in no-win wars around the globe (e.g., Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and the Iraq War). Most people living today weren’t around to experience what it was like for the U.S. to fight to win in World Wars I and II.

In my view, the greatest terrorist threats to the U.S. are (1) the millions of kids who humiliate, taunt, and bully those who are perceived to be different or weak, and, worse (2) the millions of teachers who, at a minimum, allow bullying to go unpunished in their classrooms. And, in all too many cases, the teachers themselves are the worst bullies of all – either through their own actions or by sending not-so-subtle signals to the class hooligans that it’s okay to harass the oddballs and weaklings.

But wait. Does bullying really do that much harm? Aren’t the Seung-Hui Chos and the Dylan Klebolds and the Luke Woodhams rare exceptions? That’s was the position of a computer technician who was doing some work for me shortly after the Columbine killings. He said that even though he had been bullied throughout his school years, he never got so mad that he killed anyone. So, in his view, school killers have no justifiable excuse.

And he’s not alone. A few day ago, Voice of Sanity reader F.G. wrote: “At some point, I hope you will attempt to explain why those of us who were picked on in high school … did not go on a shooting rampage.”

And just today, Voice of Sanity reader T.S. wrote: “There are many people who live with emotional and mental problems, who come from broken homes, who have all kinds of problems in life, but they don’t go on murderous rampages.”

And that is the getting-off point for virtually everyone – especially the media. No one ever takes it to the next step. What step am I referring to? Stay tuned to find out. And as our journey continues, be prepared for a sharp turn in the road ahead, one that I believe will surprise you. Not necessarily please you – but surprise you.

Previous – Part IV, No Other Option

Next – Part VI, Quiet Suffering