Much is being made of this kid being a legal alien of Korean background. But, the thing is- this kid had been in the US for most of the formulative years of his life. His teen years. He had a chance to soak in American thinking, values and ideas. He's a reflection of us.

I find I am angry about this. I get passionate about things. But, not often do I get angry. I'm angry because the culture that produces these monsters refuses to look inward on itself long enough to realize why these events keep happening to us.

The interesting thing about Moore's documentary is that he argues that our problem are not the number of guns. There are other cultures that are gun cultures. It's our mind set. The mind set of fear. Fear of other. It's why most of the events of the later half of the 20 century happened. Well, that or the pleasure princple (that is we live for hedonistic values such as economic utils).  That principle infects everything too. I told an evagelical friend of mine that his version of Heaven was like Disneyland where the Christians go to have a good time.

This kid in his ramblings was American through and through. His distain for others that he thought were trying to be better than himself. His treatment and view of women.  His loner nature.  All of it screams cowboy culture. Fear of other.

I'm not sure what can be done about all of this. This is deeper than politics. Politics is how we govern ourselves collectively. But this is both a collective and individual issue. Americans must be instrospective enough to change, or else this will happen again, and again, and again.

I made that same warning about 9/11 to a friend who said I was being heartless because I felt our own inability to change had contributed to it. Less than a short while later Bush would prove me right with Iraq.

At first, these things may not seem connected, but they are. They are connected because they are all coming out of the same psyche. I don't know whether it will ever change. But, if it doesn't, Virginia Tech will become somewhere else with a different body count. It will happen again.