Does the price of a small domestic massacre matter?
Is $8 million a fair price for 33 dead and 17 injured? The price does not even make a nick in the trillions we are paying for a non-domestic bloodbath in the sand; how could a measly $8 million matter?
This diary explores the cost of only one small, domestic massacre. Only one Bad Guy with a coupla guns, about 175 rounds of ammunition, and a depthless rage.
This killing spree, this small domestic massacre, is different for me only because the bull's-eye was painted where it mattered most.
April 16, 2007
Thirty-three people were killed on the campus of Virginia Tech in what appears to be the deadliest shooting rampage in American history.
New York Times
We've no shortage of horrors to digest in our daily lives.
We have seen jets crash into skyscrapers;
a truck bomb reduce a federal building to rubble;
an entire city's population drowned or stranded to starve;
thousands of catastrophically wounded or dead soldiers.
Destruction is so easy. A moderately informed fella with some fertilizer, a truck, and a brain simmered in propaganda, can wreck a nation's confidence and destroy countless lives. A boy with two guns and a few clips of ammo, in a couple of hours, can kill 33 people, cause injuries to another 17, and remotely devastate every person who knew or loved those killed or injured.
Destruction is easy. Expensive, yes. But the costs reach far beyond dollar amounts. Yet dollars are concrete measures, so we will begin there:
Given that the university has incurred expenses approaching $8 million responding to the tragedy of April 16 and faces other security related investments, this will tax the university's ability to maintain all programs with consistent quality.
-- Sept. 6, 2007, email to university staff,
from Virginia Tech President Charles Steger
$8 million could be a bargain for 33 lives: it's less than $250,000 a pop. Toss in the 17 injured and it rounds nicely to $160,000 per life. Whatta deal.
Once upon a time, my daughter worked in the building where the Virginia Tech shooter racked up his scores. Only a fortunate slip of time took her out of the kill zone before the boy loaded up.
She was not there as a patriot. She was there to do a job and earn money so she could go back to school. For some reason, financial aid programs no longer had much money for bright, hard-working students with below-average incomes.
Gosh, something about that sounds familiar. Some echo ...?
Years before the Virginia Tech shootings, Cindy Sheehan unfolded her camp chair and sat to wait for George Bush. I thought she showed remarkable restraint. Had I been in her shoes, trying desperately to make sense of my child's death, I cannot believe marches, posters, T-shirts, speeches, songs, support groups, activism, and multiple arrests would accomplish the job.
Had I lost my utterly beloved child to anyone's bullet, IED, misguided jet, or fertilizer bomb, I suspect I'd be quite insane.
Not everyone wants to be a parent. I didn't. Life tossed the job into my lap. Turned out it's about the only worthwhile thing I've done during my time on this good Earth.
Oh, how I celebrated her first handstand! I happily cleaned the melted crayons off the electric heater. I photographed my beautiful little girl with the double rainbow she discovered arching over our house. I blew up the rubber swimming pool by myself, until I thought I'd faint before it would hold three inches of splashable water.
My bank account holds a few dollars; the balance fluctuates, sometimes down to mere pennies. It has never contained $8 million.
My investment account, by which I measure the value of my life, hasn't a cent. Instead, it overflows with joy and pain, experiments, patience, frustrations, and hours upon hours of clumsy, loving efforts to protect and raise a child in freedom. Anyone who would dare take that from me would, indeed, strip me of my total worth.
Cindy may have seemed a bit nutty, showing up with her folding chair and her question. Other Americans may appear to be a tiny bit unhinged as they shout and wave their signs, as they hold aloft photographs of the beloveds they lost in collapsing towers, in misguided jets, in the flooded acreage of New Orleans ... or overseas, in the sand.
No, $8 million would not be enough for me. Billions would not be enough for me.
We will pay the price of Mr. Bush's war as long as we live. We will welcome home young people whose traumatic brain injuries and unbearable levels of strain could send them to gun shops seeking a coupla weapons and a few clips. We will pay the price in dollars, yes.
But the highest price, we will deduct again and again from that essential investment account, that total worth.