Thursday, April 26, 2007
Hate crime bill - Unequal valuation, protection, assistance, and access to justice under the law
"If Seung-Hui Cho's horrific actions were not an act of 'hate,' then what where they?"
"All violent crimes are 'hate crimes.'"
First a word on mischaracterizing Cho's outburst as a hate crime: I disagree. I think Cho's mental state simply deteriorated more and more into mental illness over the years, reaching an inordinate mixture of despair, loneliness, hurt, powerlessness, and possibly incapacity in correctly deciphering various aspects of people and reality around him from a psycho-emotional perspective. He displayed severe introspection and a huge defensive by withdrawal behavior. Several of his recorded statements express enormous, profound hurt and despair, and abandonment. And then there is the gigantic anger and frustration that is the product of all this, which turns into a volcano of rage. To me, Cho's rampage was more an expression of his own desolateness, his own suffering, his own despair, his own reaching a point where he saw no light, no way out, nothing. At a point like that, he could have decided he was going to end it all, but he felt he wanted to take out part of his anger at a blind target on the way.
