WTF!!!!!! - Virginia Tech

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: ShockwaveVT
The guy was seriously mentally ill (schizophrenic) and it resulted in extremely odd and anti-social behavior. Certainly some of his fellow classmates picked on him because of this, but there were also plenty of people who attempted to treat him like any other person, only to have their friendly advances spurned. Most people will give an odd guy a chance, but after a couple attempts to be friendly are rebuffed and the guy constantly acts like an asshole, they will write him off as a wierdo jerk and treat him like one. It all adds up to a loss of respect from his peers, and near-total self inflicted isolation. Don't think for a second that this is the fault of his classmates, its his mental illness that led to his ostracization and eventually to his psychotic actions.

You can't exactly come to that conclusion that it was due to his illness that he was quiet and thus caused the chain of events. We do not know if his illness came first or if it was developed due to the harassment he received. His roommate was on MSNBC earlier talking about how although he didn't talk much to his current roommates, he did converse more frequently with his previous roommates. This just adds another factor to an equation that'll probably never be completely understood when it comes to understanding Cho's mindset.

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: StormRider

Originally posted by: jinduy

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath

Originally posted by: jinduy
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.


what a crock of bs that people said they left him alone and didn't do ne thing to him. not saying that's a valid excuse for going postal but i wish some of those students would be honest.

No excuse, not at all.

But wow, what happened to tolerance and diversity? What happened to teaching kids to brush it off and not care what other people say about them and all that stuff?

I don't know that this is the case here, but people like Cho are bred here in the USA every day when our K-12 schools teach our young children that they are special and perfect and that their self esteem is impenetrable.

And they go out into the real world and can't cope with people who are rude or don't give them the special treatment and accommodation they were taught to expect.

Every person has their limits. He seemingly tolerated the mistreatment throughout Middle School and High School and most of College. I'd imagine something pushed him over that edge between his sanity and insanity.

He's also, to begin with, an introvert which means he will always have a harder time being accepted and asking for help. It's not an excuse but it's his reasoning and whether you agree with it or not, I imagine it plagues the minds of many children. I doubt Cho was looking for special treatment but being moved from your native country at a young age and then to encounter ridicule and racism on a macro scale will do wonders on ones mental growth.

agreed. i found it a bit unrealistic how the vt students were portrayed to be all perfect and left him 'alone'. i'm certain he got picked on a bit and he finally reached that point that sent him into rage. i know i've felt rage where i've gotten into fights in high school. cho just happened to hold it in to friggin long, tho.

I'm a socially reclusive person and based on my personal experience in college (Maryland) my feeling was that the VT students did not really pick on him. From my experience College kids don't act like that. They probably ignored him because he was a withdrawn person. I wouldn't be surprised if he was picked on in middle school and high school however. That's the way young kids are but most usually change in college. I think he kept it bottled up inside him. He was introverted and shy and socially inexperienced. I think what pushed him over the edge was his attempts at meeting girls during college.

During college, he probably got "friended" in mySpace and thought those girls were interested in him. Yet when he tried contacting by phone or email, his social inexperience caused him to be "creepy" and he felt rejected. He had at least 2 or 3 rejections that we know of. I'm thinking that the last rejection set him off and that's why he went to the dorm and killed that poor girl and RA.

This is the same line of thinking that I'm guessing.

 

[toekramp]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: Dacalo

Originally posted by: jinduy

Originally posted by: toekramp

Originally posted by: jinduy
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.


what a crock of bs that people said they left him alone and didn't do ne thing to him. not saying that's a valid excuse for going postal but i wish some of those students would be honest.

shens.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

Well, getting picked on especially if you are Asian is nothing new, I can recall many personal experiences. It probably was exacerbated for Cho since he was so anti-social and did not speak to anyone.

I think everyone agrees that there's no excuse for what he did but it is important to understand his general mindset and "reasoning" (if any) for why he perpetrated such a large scale crime.

You need to put that quote in context and let it be known that was a HS quote, not VT. I attended school there for 4 years, and that makes the students look immature and ignorant. Something that they are not.

 

[TraumaRN]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: ShockwaveVT
The guy was seriously mentally ill (schizophrenic) and it resulted in extremely odd and anti-social behavior. Certainly some of his fellow classmates picked on him because of this, but there were also plenty of people who attempted to treat him like any other person, only to have their friendly advances spurned. Most people will give an odd guy a chance, but after a couple attempts to be friendly are rebuffed and the guy constantly acts like an asshole, they will write him off as a wierdo jerk and treat him like one. It all adds up to a loss of respect from his peers, and near-total self inflicted isolation. Don't think for a second that this is the fault of his classmates, its his mental illness that led to his ostracization and eventually to his psychotic actions.

You can't exactly come to that conclusion that it was due to his illness that he was quiet and thus caused the chain of events. We do not know if his illness came first or if it was developed due to the harassment he received. His roommate was on MSNBC earlier talking about how although he didn't talk much to his current roommates, he did converse more frequently with his previous roommates. This just adds another factor to an equation that'll probably never be completely understood when it comes to understanding Cho's mindset.

But you can come to that conclusion from watching the video. If you've dealt with a few schizophrenics in your lifetime you can how Cho would easily be a schizophrenic. Like I posted earlier, the flat affect, lack of emotion, feelings, monotone voice...his behaviors...it all fits someone who is schizophrenic. And given the onset of him acting like this it makes schizophrenia even more likely.

Here are a couple of the 'positive' symptoms of schizophrenia(they are classified as positive or negative)

Positive
delusions **
auditory hallucinations
thought disorders

Negative
apathy
lack of emotion **
poor or nonexistant social functioning **
flat, blunt and/or constricted affect and emotions **
poverty of speech(not speaking/talking alot) **

The ones I've double starred are things you can pick out either from the videos or accounts of his life according to others. He was schizophrenic and he was probably in a state of psychosis at the time of these killings...

 

[exdeath]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath
Who said it only applies one way? And I have updated my option 3 to prevent you from abusing it and misapplying it.

And yes, I think a lot of it has to do with PC policies and elementary school teachers taking too much prozac. There are always going to be people who lack self control and good judgment, but indoctrinating and pampering their self esteem in public schools to think that their fragile egos can never be hurt by someone...

It doesn't exactly leave them prepared to properly deal with it when it does occur does it?

You're telling us that you want people to treat others as they would treat themselves, then you continue by telling us that if treated badly, to suck it up.

Also, people have committed atrocities throughout history and it's not because people are becoming more liberal. Do you think dictators of the past who killed on a global scale because they lived in times that were too liberal? Your argument is full of fallacies.

I am not talking about the history of humanity here. There are always going to be evil people in the world. I am talking about the decline of American society in the last 30 or so years, partly as a result of the spread of unchallenged liberalism. Specifically the parts of liberalism that eliminated concepts such as personal responsibility, for example, and I can only address the small parts that bother me. I can't pretend to cover every possible aspect of the decline in society and the rise in these kinds of incidents.

One real fallacy however is that guns cause this, and using your style of pointing out history, there have been guns in society for hundreds of years, with even less restrictions than what we have now, and we never had these kinds of problems before with the frequency that we have them today. Sure you had gangsters mowing each other down with sub machine guns in the 20s, but we had that before guns and always will. But even gangsters of the 20s had enough respect for society to not shoot up a school of innocent people. Obviously then it has only to do with peoples behavior, which is in part strongly influence by social policy.

You're telling us that you want people to treat others as they would treat themselves, then you continue by telling us that if treated badly, to suck it up.

Yes that is exactly what I am telling you. All you can do is be responsible for your own actions not do it to others. But there is no guarantee that others will not do it to you. If they want to be asshats there is nothing you can do about it, but it doesn't give you any right to kill them or force them to behave, unless their actions directly threaten someones physical safety.

 

[krunchykrome]

Originally posted by: toekramp

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: Dacalo

Originally posted by: jinduy

Originally posted by: toekramp

Originally posted by: jinduy
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.


what a crock of bs that people said they left him alone and didn't do ne thing to him. not saying that's a valid excuse for going postal but i wish some of those students would be honest.

shens.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

Well, getting picked on especially if you are Asian is nothing new, I can recall many personal experiences. It probably was exacerbated for Cho since he was so anti-social and did not speak to anyone.

I think everyone agrees that there's no excuse for what he did but it is important to understand his general mindset and "reasoning" (if any) for why he perpetrated such a large scale crime.

You need to put that quote in context and let it be known that was a HS quote, not VT. I attended school there for 4 years, and that makes the students look immature and ignorant. Something that they are not.

Ignorance and immaturity can be found anywhere, even VT. Im not trying to defend cho at all, but I dont see how someone can assume he wasn't made fun of while at VT.

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
But you can come to that conclusion from watching the video. If you've dealt with a few schizophrenics in your lifetime you can how Cho would easily be a schizophrenic. Like I posted earlier, the flat affect, lack of emotion, feelings, monotone voice...his behaviors...it all fits someone who is schizophrenic. And given the onset of him acting like this it makes schizophrenia even more likely.

Here are a couple of the 'positive' symptoms of schizophrenia(they are classified as positive or negative)

Positive
delusions **
auditory hallucinations
thought disorders

Negative
apathy
lack of emotion **
poor or nonexistant social functioning **
flat, blunt and/or constricted affect and emotions **
poverty of speech(not speaking/talking alot) **

The ones I've double starred are things you can pick out either from the videos or accounts of his life according to others. He was schizophrenic and he was probably in a state of psychosis at the time of these killings...

My posts are all speculation and I would hope that people much more experienced than I can pick out what's wrong with him. My post that you quoted was in reference to his Middle School days when he was picked on. He, at least to our knowledge, was not picked on in College. The poster that I was responding to said that the root of his problems came from his mental illness that caused his alienation of other students. My only argument is that during Middle School and High School, we do not know if he was schizophrenic at that point, thus it's hard to come to a conclusion if he was always mentally ill or if his illness developed from his inability to integrate into US society.

 

[TraumaRN]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
But you can come to that conclusion from watching the video. If you've dealt with a few schizophrenics in your lifetime you can how Cho would easily be a schizophrenic. Like I posted earlier, the flat affect, lack of emotion, feelings, monotone voice...his behaviors...it all fits someone who is schizophrenic. And given the onset of him acting like this it makes schizophrenia even more likely.

Here are a couple of the 'positive' symptoms of schizophrenia(they are classified as positive or negative)

Positive
delusions **
auditory hallucinations
thought disorders

Negative
apathy
lack of emotion **
poor or nonexistant social functioning **
flat, blunt and/or constricted affect and emotions **
poverty of speech(not speaking/talking alot) **

The ones I've double starred are things you can pick out either from the videos or accounts of his life according to others. He was schizophrenic and he was probably in a state of psychosis at the time of these killings...

My posts are all speculation and I would hope that people much more experienced than I can pick out what's wrong with him. My post that you quoted was in reference to his Middle School days when he was picked on. He, at least to our knowledge, was not picked on in College. The poster that I was responding to said that the root of his problems came from his mental illness that caused his alienation of other students. My only argument is that during Middle School and High School, we do not know if he was schizophrenic at that point, thus it's hard to come to a conclusion if he was always mentally ill or if his illness developed from his inability to integrate into US society.

I hope I didn't sound like I was attacking you as I wasn't. I've dealt with mentally ill people on a nearly daily basis on my job and just wanted to point out whether or not he was picked on in high school and middle school shouldn't matter by this point....BUT if he was schizophrenic he would certainly look at peoples past transgressions and not let them go. From my standpoint as a health care worker and a nurse this wasn't just about some rejection...the rejection maybe set his off, but it was ultimately his mental illness, specifically some sort of schizophrenic or psychosis that caused him to do all this.

 

[toekramp]

Originally posted by: krunchykrome

Originally posted by: toekramp

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: Dacalo

Originally posted by: jinduy

Originally posted by: toekramp

Originally posted by: jinduy
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.


what a crock of bs that people said they left him alone and didn't do ne thing to him. not saying that's a valid excuse for going postal but i wish some of those students would be honest.

shens.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070419/ap_on_re_us/virginia_tech_shooting

Well, getting picked on especially if you are Asian is nothing new, I can recall many personal experiences. It probably was exacerbated for Cho since he was so anti-social and did not speak to anyone.

I think everyone agrees that there's no excuse for what he did but it is important to understand his general mindset and "reasoning" (if any) for why he perpetrated such a large scale crime.

You need to put that quote in context and let it be known that was a HS quote, not VT. I attended school there for 4 years, and that makes the students look immature and ignorant. Something that they are not.

Ignorance and immaturity can be found anywhere, even VT. Im not trying to defend cho at all, but I dont see how someone can assume he wasn't made fun of while at VT.

i am referring directly to the quote. and yes the last part of my statement is a generalization that is obviously not always true.

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: exdeath
I am not talking about the history of humanity here. I am talking about the decline of American society in the last 30 or so years, partly as a result of the spread of unchallenged liberalism. Specifically the parts of liberalism that eliminated concepts such as personal responsibility, for example.

Do you have any proof that the liberalism in the US these past 40 years have caused a US decline? University of Texas Austin massacre. Prior to this VA Tech shooting, the worst shooting to occur on school campus occurred in 1966. Seems like tragedies can occur whenever and it's not likely due to Liberalism.

Yes that is exactly what I am telling you. All you can do is be responsible for your own actions and not do it to others. If they want to be asshats there is nothing you can do about it, but it doesn't give you any right to kill them or force them to behave, unless their actions directly threaten someones physical safety.

Like I said, I'm not excusing Cho or giving him justification for what he did. Obviously, his mindset was not the same as yours and quoting the Golden Rule is great, but unless everyone follows the Golden Rule, you'll always run into injustices. Also, words and actions can affect a person just as much as physical violence. Quoting a catch phrase from childhood days does not make it any less of a reality that words can indeed hurt people.

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I hope I didn't sound like I was attacking you as I wasn't. I've dealt with mentally ill people on a nearly daily basis on my job and just wanted to point out whether or not he was picked on in high school and middle school shouldn't matter by this point....BUT if he was schizophrenic he would certainly look at peoples past transgressions and not let them go. From my standpoint as a health care worker and a nurse this wasn't just about some rejection...the rejection maybe set his off, but it was ultimately his mental illness, specifically some sort of schizophrenic or psychosis that caused him to do all this.

This is good information to know and no, I didn't take your post offensively, just clarifying my previous point. So, it may very well come down to diagnosing mental illnesses earlier on even in childhood, which in this case may have saved many lives. The difficulty of Cho's case was that many Asians (particularly immigrants) are taught to be introverted and the additional factor of him being moved to an entirely new country makes it difficult to diagnose a mental illness over anxiety from change.

 

[GTaudiophile]

Originally posted by: exdeath

Originally posted by: jinduy

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath

Originally posted by: jinduy
Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled. Finally, after the teacher threatened him with an F for participation, Cho started to read in a strange, deep voice that sounded "like he had something in his mouth," Davids said.

"As soon as he started reading, the whole class started laughing and pointing and saying, `Go back to China,'" Davids said.


what a crock of bs that people said they left him alone and didn't do ne thing to him. not saying that's a valid excuse for going postal but i wish some of those students would be honest.

No excuse, not at all.

But wow, what happened to tolerance and diversity? What happened to teaching kids to brush it off and not care what other people say about them and all that stuff?

I don't know that this is the case here, but people like Cho are bred here in the USA every day when our K-12 schools teach our young children that they are special and perfect and that their self esteem is impenetrable.

And they go out into the real world and can't cope with people who are rude or don't give them the special treatment and accommodation they were taught to expect.

Every person has their limits. He seemingly tolerated the mistreatment throughout Middle School and High School and most of College. I'd imagine something pushed him over that edge between his sanity and insanity.

He's also, to begin with, an introvert which means he will always have a harder time being accepted and asking for help. It's not an excuse but it's his reasoning and whether you agree with it or not, I imagine it plagues the minds of many children. I doubt Cho was looking for special treatment but being moved from your native country at a young age and then to encounter ridicule and racism on a macro scale will do wonders on ones mental growth.

agreed. i found it a bit unrealistic how the vt students were portrayed to be all perfect and left him 'alone'. i'm certain he got picked on a bit and he finally reached that point that sent him into rage. i know i've felt rage where i've gotten into fights in high school. cho just happened to hold it in to friggin long, tho.

I hold grudges and experience rage and get picked on too. But there are socially acceptable ways of dealing with it that don't involve the deaths of innocent people.

What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"

Thats right, from the 60s on we started teaching kids that words break their hearts and give them reason to feel sad. Boo hoo.

Tough it up, flip them the bird, and keep walking the other way. Sheesh.

It's time to shed our society of the bleeding heart touchy feeling liberal crap we've been trying since the 60's and go back to the basics such as:

"sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"

"don't do onto others as you'd not want done onto you"

"stand your ground and fight back if you have no other options and someones safety depends on it"

etc.

They worked a whole lot better in the first 200 years of our country's existance than the last 31 years of "everybody is special" has.

A-******-men.

 

[exdeath]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath
I am not talking about the history of humanity here. I am talking about the decline of American society in the last 30 or so years, partly as a result of the spread of unchallenged liberalism. Specifically the parts of liberalism that eliminated concepts such as personal responsibility, for example.

Do you have any proof that the liberalism in the US these past 40 years have caused a US decline? University of Texas Austin massacre. Prior to this VA Tech shooting, the worst shooting to occur on school campus occurred in 1966. Seems like tragedies can occur whenever and it's not likely due to Liberalism.

Yes that is exactly what I am telling you. All you can do is be responsible for your own actions and not do it to others. If they want to be asshats there is nothing you can do about it, but it doesn't give you any right to kill them or force them to behave, unless their actions directly threaten someones physical safety.

Like I said, I'm not excusing Cho or giving him justification for what he did. Obviously, his mindset was not the same as yours and quoting the Golden Rule is great, but unless everyone follows the Golden Rule, you'll always run into injustices. Also, words and actions can affect a person just as much as physical violence. Quoting a catch phrase from childhood days does not make it any less of a reality that words can indeed hurt people.

Simply quoting it does nobody any good if you don't sincerely believe it and subscribe to it yourself.

No, no proof, it's not really possible to prove anything like that other than pointing out two coinciding trends, a process which has possible fallacies of its own. Call it a mere theory then if you will. We can't prove gravity or economics either, but they both yield repeatable results that are no less valid then the simple observation that a society with more armed citizens results in a lower crime rate and not a higher one.

As a result of liberal social policies we have more people walking around in our country with fragile egos, a sense of entitlement and self indulgence, a lack of responsibly for ones own actions and tendency to blame others, and a sense of privilege to do what one pleases as long as it feeeeeels good with no afterthought given to the consequences. All hallmarks of liberal policy stemming from the 60s, and they certainly don't contribute to curbing this kind of activity.

Where did Cho learn that it was ok to be jealous of rich people and murder them for having nice things, for example? The idea of taking property from people who have more by force of violence is liberal ideology. Jealousy has always existed and always will, but taking from or punishing people who you are jealous of is a liberal practice.

It isn't a direct connection, or to even say that Cho himself was liberal. It has more to do with the latent social values that are indoctrinated into children in schools at the subconscious level.

 

[MyThirdEye]

I hold grudges and experience rage and get picked on too. But there are socially acceptable ways of dealing with it that don't involve the deaths of innocent people.

What happened to "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"

Thats right, from the 60s on we started teaching kids that words break their hearts and give them reason to feel sad. Boo hoo.

Tough it up, flip them the bird, and keep walking the other way. Sheesh.

It's time to shed our society of the bleeding heart touchy feeling liberal crap we've been trying since the 60's and go back to the basics such as:

"sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me"

"don't do onto others as you'd not want done onto you"

"stand your ground and fight back if you have no other options and someones safety depends on it"

etc.

They worked a whole lot better in the first 200 years of our country's existance than the last 31 years of "everybody is special" has.

Amen

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: exdeath
Simply quoting it does nobody any good if you don't sincerely believe it and subscribe to it yourself.

No, no proof, it's not really possible to prove anything like that other than pointing out two coinciding trends, a process which has possible fallacies of its own. Call it a mere theory then if you will. We can't prove gravity or economics either, but they both yield repeatable results that are no less valid then the simple observation that a society with more armed citizens results in a lower crime rate and not a higher one.

As a result of liberal social policies we have more people walking around in our country with fragile egos, a sense of entitlement and self indulgence, a lack of responsibly for ones own actions and tendency to blame others, and a sense of privilege to do what one pleases as long as it feeeeeels good with no afterthought given to the consequences. All hallmarks of liberal policy stemming from the 60s, and they certainly don't contribute to curbing this kind of activity.

Where did Cho learn that it was ok to be jealous of rich people and murder them for having nice things, for example? The idea of taking property from people who have more than by force of violence is liberal ideology.

It isn't a direct connection, it is more to do with the latent social values that are indoctrinated into children in schools.

Well, suffice to say, we could argue about politics all day long but since this is a VA Tech thread, I'm going to just leave it as us having differing opinions.

As an afterthought, I'm sure Cho didn't develop his hatred of others having nice things because of liberal ideologies. More likely from his twisted ideologies that allowed him to break that threshhold that holds everyone else back from committing atrocities.

 

[Queasy]

What is Ismail Ax?

CHICAGO ? All at once, the world went searching for the meaning of "Ismail Ax."

Those two words, written in red ink on one arm of Cho Seung-Hui, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech student suspected of the campus shooting spree, set off a massive Internet hunt by the public Tuesday for clues to what might have motivated the nation's worst mass killings.

Almost as soon as the Chicago Tribune's Web site reported that detail, which then was picked up by news organizations around the world, the blogosphere filled with theories about the possible meaning of "Ismail Ax." Hundreds of bloggers speculated on a link to Islam or to literature; thousands offered their opinions and millions read the commentaries, according to Technorati.com.

Technorati.com, a Web site that tracks the blogosphere, said that by late afternoon Tuesday, there were nearly 300 blog posts regarding Ismail Ax. There were other reactions. A TV repair-shop owner in Corpus Christi, Texas, registered the domain name www.ismailax.com Tuesday morning.

"When I hear a name, I register it. I have about 200 names right now," said Raymond Patterson, who registered the site five minutes after he heard the phrase "Ismail Ax" mentioned on a Fox News broadcast. He said he had no intention of making "blood money" from the site.

As for the term's meaning, one popular theory comes from a story in the Quran, the holy book of Islam, about Ibrahim and his son, Ismail. This theory picked up speed because many bloggers wondered if the shootings could be related to terrorism.

In Islam, Ibrahim is known as the father of the prophets and, upset that people in his hometown still worshiped idols and not Allah, he smashed all but one statue in a local temple with an ax. Ibrahim's son is Ismail, who also became a prophet. Ibrahim is Arabic for Abraham, who plays a significant role in Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

Two theories come from literature, where Ismail is spelled Ishmael.

In one, tied to James Fenimore Cooper's novel "The Prairie," Ishmael Bush is known as an outlawed warrior, according to an essay written in 1969 by William Goetzmann, a University of Texas History professor. In Cooper's book, "Bush carries the prime symbol of evil ? the spoiler's axe," the professor wrote.

Also, the narrator from "Moby Dick," Ishmael, is considered an enigma who is well-educated yet considers his time on a whaling ship worthy of time at Yale or Harvard, according to education site Sparknotes.com.

Cho was an English major at Virginia Tech.

Other theories speculate that Ismail Ax could be a reference to Cho's nickname on a video-gaming site or that it is a misspelling of Turkish hip-hop artist Ismail YK.

 

[exdeath]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath
Simply quoting it does nobody any good if you don't sincerely believe it and subscribe to it yourself.

No, no proof, it's not really possible to prove anything like that other than pointing out two coinciding trends, a process which has possible fallacies of its own. Call it a mere theory then if you will. We can't prove gravity or economics either, but they both yield repeatable results that are no less valid then the simple observation that a society with more armed citizens results in a lower crime rate and not a higher one.

As a result of liberal social policies we have more people walking around in our country with fragile egos, a sense of entitlement and self indulgence, a lack of responsibly for ones own actions and tendency to blame others, and a sense of privilege to do what one pleases as long as it feeeeeels good with no afterthought given to the consequences. All hallmarks of liberal policy stemming from the 60s, and they certainly don't contribute to curbing this kind of activity.

Where did Cho learn that it was ok to be jealous of rich people and murder them for having nice things, for example? The idea of taking property from people who have more than by force of violence is liberal ideology.

It isn't a direct connection, it is more to do with the latent social values that are indoctrinated into children in schools.

Well, suffice to say, we could argue about politics all day long but since this is a VA Tech thread, I'm going to just leave it as us having differing opinions.

As an afterthought, I'm sure Cho didn't develop his hatred of others having nice things because of liberal ideologies. More likely from his twisted ideologies that allowed him to break that threshhold that holds everyone else back from committing atrocities.

Agreed. There will always be stupid people regardless.

If it's not some self righteous entitled liberal murdering people because his fragile ego was hurt and he did what felt good to cope, it's some self righteous religious zealot who thinks an invisible man in the sky gives him a divine right to murder people who are different from him :roll:

 

[StormRider]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: DeathBUA
I hope I didn't sound like I was attacking you as I wasn't. I've dealt with mentally ill people on a nearly daily basis on my job and just wanted to point out whether or not he was picked on in high school and middle school shouldn't matter by this point....BUT if he was schizophrenic he would certainly look at peoples past transgressions and not let them go. From my standpoint as a health care worker and a nurse this wasn't just about some rejection...the rejection maybe set his off, but it was ultimately his mental illness, specifically some sort of schizophrenic or psychosis that caused him to do all this.

This is good information to know and no, I didn't take your post offensively, just clarifying my previous point. So, it may very well come down to diagnosing mental illnesses earlier on even in childhood, which in this case may have saved many lives. The difficulty of Cho's case was that many Asians (particularly immigrants) are taught to be introverted and the additional factor of him being moved to an entirely new country makes it difficult to diagnose a mental illness over anxiety from change.

My feeling is that the main cause was that he was mentally ill from the very beginning and was not able to handle the teasing that a normal person would be able to shrug off. Everything was magnified to him. And his mental illness caused him to behave strangely which probably exxagerbated things and cause people to shun him more.

I don't think it's possible to stop all teasing in elementary, middle, and high schools. It's part of the growing up experience. I'm wondering if it is even a neccessary part of growing up for normal people because the behavior is so universal.

I am uncomfortable with the idea that Cho was a victim and that society caused him to do this. The same thing happened with Columbine. But when I read about their lives it made me wonder how much worse did they have it compared to others who were also teased and shunned in high school. They apparently had friends (they at least had each other) and one of them had a girlfriend.

Cho considered the Columbine kids to be martyrs. And I'm afraid some mentally ill kid out there will consider Cho to be a martyr and will copycat Cho and try to out do him for the fame.

 

[50cent1228]

i saw those vid 2day morning...wow that guy was troubleddd

 

[exdeath]

What I'd like to know is why the news doesn't use words like 'gruesome', 'horrific', 'bloodshed', 'chilling', etc., for days on end while showing pictures of 15 bloody body parts being pulled from a mangled car wreck and show the pictures of smiling happy families every time there is an auto accident that kills someone.

Nope, just "accident with fatality... but hey more exciting news, gunman causes bloody gruesome terrifying slaughter at a school! Is global warming to blame?"

Why are those innocent deaths trivialized as just another day of afternoon traffic while shootings are glorified like action flicks? They are both equally needless and preventable... why is only one an acceptable fact of life?

 

[glutenberg]

Originally posted by: exdeath
What I'd like to know is why the news doesn't use words like 'gruesome', 'horrific', 'bloodshed', etc., for days on end while showing pictures of 15 bloody body parts being pulled from a mangled car wreck and show the pictures of smiling happy families every time there is an auto accident that kills someone.

Nope, just "accident with fatality... but hey more exciting news, gunman causes bloody gruesome terrifying slaughter at a school!"

Why are those innocent deaths trivialized as just another day of afternoon traffic while shootings are glorified like action flicks? They are both equally needless and preventable... why is only one an acceptable fact of life?

Probably the rate of occurrence.

 

[exdeath]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath
What I'd like to know is why the news doesn't use words like 'gruesome', 'horrific', 'bloodshed', etc., for days on end while showing pictures of 15 bloody body parts being pulled from a mangled car wreck and show the pictures of smiling happy families every time there is an auto accident that kills someone.

Nope, just "accident with fatality... but hey more exciting news, gunman causes bloody gruesome terrifying slaughter at a school!"

Why are those innocent deaths trivialized as just another day of afternoon traffic while shootings are glorified like action flicks? They are both equally needless and preventable... why is only one an acceptable fact of life?

Probably the rate of occurrence.

Rate of occurrence, being that these kinds of events are more rare, might demand a little more attention, but not so much that they purposely lead people to believe this is some kind of epidemic. It also doesn't mean they have to turn it into an action drama flic with all their choice words and fear mongering. An auto accident with body parts everywhere is a "sad day" but a school shooting is a "gruesome chilling scene awash in bloodshed!!!!" *gag*

Auto accidents are just not politically motivating, thats all there is to it. Sick fvcks. I do not miss network TV.

 

[TraumaRN]

Originally posted by: exdeath

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath
What I'd like to know is why the news doesn't use words like 'gruesome', 'horrific', 'bloodshed', etc., for days on end while showing pictures of 15 bloody body parts being pulled from a mangled car wreck and show the pictures of smiling happy families every time there is an auto accident that kills someone.

Nope, just "accident with fatality... but hey more exciting news, gunman causes bloody gruesome terrifying slaughter at a school!"

Why are those innocent deaths trivialized as just another day of afternoon traffic while shootings are glorified like action flicks? They are both equally needless and preventable... why is only one an acceptable fact of life?

Probably the rate of occurrence.

Auto accidents are not politically motivating. All there is to it. Sick fvcks.

And most auto accidents are not as 'gruesome' as one might think. Sure an open fracture here or there but for every car accident we get as a trauma code at my ER we probably get 5-7 that are no where close to a trauma code and just need a couple x-rays and a vicodin.

Even car vs person or car vs bike accidents arent as bad as you might think.

The only truly horrifying car accident I've seen was car vs person on a freeway. Broke something like 20 bones and nearly took all the skin off his one leg from road rash...

But generally car accidents happen too often to cause any sort of news attention.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: glutenberg

Originally posted by: exdeath
Who said it only applies one way? And I have updated my option 3 to prevent you from abusing it and misapplying it.

And yes, I think a lot of it has to do with PC policies and elementary school teachers taking too much prozac. There are always going to be people who lack self control and good judgment, but indoctrinating and pampering their self esteem in public schools to think that their fragile egos can never be hurt by someone...

It doesn't exactly leave them prepared to properly deal with it when it does occur does it?

You're telling us that you want people to treat others as they would treat themselves, then you continue by telling us that if treated badly, to suck it up.

Also, people have committed atrocities throughout history and it's not because people are becoming more liberal. Do you think dictators of the past who killed on a global scale because they lived in times that were too liberal? Your argument is full of fallacies.

OH, and it's also the liberals' fault. don't forget that part of the argument. Apparently exdeath thinks a world without morals is one without raging angst-filled bullied kids.

exdeath wasn't even alive in the sixties. I fail to see how his observations about the social climate in that decade is valid.

 

[SpiderWiz]

I searched for this video but didn't see it posted here. http://www.onetruemedia.com/share_view_player?p=28e879982f4cfb4b908a98

This is a moving video. I post here instead of creating yet another thread.