POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY THE DAILY TELEGRAPH'S TOBY HARNDEN
Toby, this kind of rubbish will earn you a place in the dust bin of journalistic history.
Cho was seriously mentally unbalanced. Full stop.
A case like this has nothing to do with evil, except in the minds of the superstitious and uninformed.
What may well be evil is television and newspapers exploiting this horrible story to no good purpose.
Many of us recognize such disturbed people, owing to unfortunate life experience, as the English teacher did, but it seems clear, after dozens and dozens of cases like this, that many, or most, simply do not.
As for stopping them before the horror strikes?
Well, American public institution suffer from a plague of political correctness, a huge inert mass.
Also, American schools such as this one profit handsomely from overseas students. They pay truly gigantic fees just to attend, often on the order of $25-30,000 per year, without room and board, which goes for tens of thousands more. Do you wonder why authorities are reluctant to act against one?
Last, considering the extreme and even bizarre way American authorities do react once motivated we might in many cases end up by wishing they hadn't.
You've only to look at the witch hunts of the 1950s or contemporary gross excesses such as widespread secret imprisonment following 9/11. Or simply look at New Orleans after all that sound and fury. A mess to this day.
