The Virginia Tech Shootings: The Meaning of Meaninglessness

If anyone deserves to be called “wholesome,” Virginia Tech students do. They are children of farmers and the middle class. They study Agriculture (or “Ag” as they call it), and “Poultry Science.” They have one of the best veterinary schools in the country. My stepsister went there, and for two years she lived in the dorm where the first shootings took place. She’s a high school history teacher now. Blacksburg is close to the home of the Carter Sisters, the mothers of American country music. And, if you exit Interstate 81 a few miles north, each of the mailboxes winding up the foggy mountain roads says “Cash.” Blacksburg is near Cash and Carter country, which June Carter and Johnny Cash brought together. Along 81, you can stop at White’s Truck stop in Raphine for chicken fried steak and, just to irritate your Yankee roommate, a Confederate flag coffee mug. I’ve wondered a few times if the shooter ever ate at White’s, or “Waaaht’s” as they pronounce it there. Seeing this part of the world in the news for something so dark is a nightmare. People in southwestern Virginia aren’t nicer or better or less violent than the rest of us, but somehow they might be more innocent.

Right away this tragedy reminded me of 9/11: there’s the adrenaline rush (something bad happened, and it didn’t happen to me), then we gorged on news, which was breaking every second. Then there was the climax of the opera, at the end of Act III, when you finally see the killer’s face. Just when I thought the destruction of the World Trade Center could not get any worse, smoke from Ground Zero drifting over my Brooklyn apartment, we were treated to Osama Bin Laden’s smug smile in our living rooms. Yesterday, we saw the Virginia Tech shooter as he looked right after he had murdered two people and was about to kill thirty more. To make it worse, we looked down the barrel of his guns, and in one photo, saw him with a raised hammer. I banned all news from the house so I wouldn’t see him. But then, this morning, when I went to buy baby food, I ran into him again. The media made him inescapable, as he wanted to be. There will be such an outpouring of support toward the school, that it will flood the grief and dilute it one day. But the people who won't feel all of that goodwill are the ones who are sitting at their computers and in front of the TV watching, alone.

Three days after the shooting, in spite of my media ban at home, we’re starting to hear reporters and Virginia officials ask “Why?” They pose this question, as if it is the Big One, as if knowing why will finally make us say, “Oh, thaaat’s why!” I was lying in bed last night thinking about the shooter and his menacing hammer, the way I closed my eyes and saw the planes hitting the towers for weeks after the attack (no wonder there were lines around the block at the liquor stores in Brooklyn).