Let's Talk About Evil.

What an outmoded concept, these days, right? I mean, everything can be accounted for by "childhood trauma" or "schoolyard bullying" or genetics, or whatever is the excuse of the week.

There's a problem with this.

There is a DIFFERENCE between someone who has an organic, or mental, dysfunction of such magnitude that they are unable to accurately perceive the world around them and those who are able to make rational decisions.

This is why there is an insanity defense in court. Someone who is physically or mentally unable to understand the consequences of their actions cannot make rational decisions, which means that they cannot be held guilty of a crime. Guilt is not determined by action, but by INTENT. This is why, despite murdering a lot of people, some famous serial killers were remanded for psychiatric care.

However, insanity doesn't account for it all.

There are people who are not insane, who choose to do evil things.

For example, the Virginia Tech shooter, Cho Seung-Hui.

This is a man who killed his first two victims, and then stopped, reloaded his weapons, took the time to mail a bundle of documents and video clips to NBC (who, I should note, obliged him by playing them,) then chained the building doors shut so that escape would be barred, and proceeded to go on a shooting rampage, culminating with taking his own life.

Was he crazy?

Did he have childhood trauma?

Was he bullied?

Was it the fault of the video games he may or may not have played? Or maybe violent movies?

Let's see. He purchased extended capacity magazines, guns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, which he did at multiple stores to avoid suspicion - the act of a rational man premeditating mayhem. (I would note here that the extended capacity clips he purchased, despite MSNBC's legally illiterate reporting, are quite legal, and were never subject to the clip ban they mention on the page. He was firing pistols. The ban was on clips for assault rifles. Gooooooo, MSNBC fact-checkers.)

He practiced, the month before, at a shooting range in Roanoke, so that he'd be used to handling his legally-purchased chosen weapons - the act of a rational man, premeditating mayhem.

He recorded a collection of video clips, and added to that a stack of documents, prepared beforehand, to mail to the media - the act of a rational man premeditating mayhem.

He procured a chain and lock for the doors, and planned his attack on the single building on campus most difficult to exit by any means other than the single, chained door - the act of a rational man, premeditating mayhem.

This man was not crazy. He was rational, deliberate, and focused. Intentionally, with malice of forethought, he set out to create an act of premeditated murder of unprecedented scope - that would ultimately end with the deaths of 32 Virginia Tech students and faculty. No childhood trauma or schoolyard bullying could have created in him an insanity which allowed for planning the way he did, and yet left him incapable of comprehending his actions; he chose, as a rational, sane adult, to commit an act of evil.

Many of us would like to dismiss the idea of evil in favor of trauma or mental illness or upbringing or whatever the current favorite scapegoat is. Sadly, that's not the whole story. Evil exists, whether we like it or not.

Millions of victims of childhood trauma exist. The overwhelming majority of them, as rational adults, make a decision - every day - not to beat their families, or abuse children, or shoot innocent bystanders.

Millions of people each year are subjected to similar levels of "bullying" and general mean-spiritedness in school, without blowing off steam by blowing up other schoolkids.

Millions of people diagnosed with the current crop of favorite mental disorders exist, and yet they are able to function each day, despite being bipolar, or manic-depressive, or having ADHD, or what have you, without killing 32 people in premeditated shooting rampages.

Millions of gamers, the world over, play violent video games every single day without fail, and yet somehow, as rational adults, because most people are basically decent, they manage to choose, every day, not to go on irresistible violent rampages because Hexen or Doom or Heretic or Unreal or Quake or Grand Theft Auto or Halo or Prey or F.E.A.R. or S.T.A.L.K.E.R. or Oblivion or Pariah or Serious Sam or Duke Nukem or WHAT HAVE YOU, told them to.

Even more millions of people manage to avoid violence despite having seen hyperviolent movies like Oldboy, despite the efforts of the Associated Press to blame the shootings on that, too.

And yet, the media's simultaneous attempts to play up the horror of these events, and yet portray Seung-Hui as a victim, continue. Despite the bereaved family members' refusal to appear on MSNBC because of the network's airing of the killer's package of ramblings, and the fact that a prominent forensic psychiatrist told them "If you can take Imus off the air, you can certainly keep Cho from having his own morning show," MSNBC is standing by their decision to play, over and over, the material the killer sent them. In fact, they claim they have done so with extreme sensitivity. Tell that to the bereaved, if you can get them to talk to you.

There were heroes that day. Zach Petkewicz barricaded the door to his classroom, saving the lives of everyone inside, as Seung-Hui was unable to enter. Professor Liviu Lebrescu, a Holocaust survivor, saved the lives of his students by blocking the door to his classroom with his body, costing him his life, but allowing his students to escape out the windows.

And yet, ultimately, this reduces to the story of a man so consumed by evil that he planned and executed an attack on a school, killing dozens, so that he could get on TV. The media is gleefully obliging him, but that seems to be their job these days.

The real villains of the piece are those attempting to shift the blame for what happened to the shoulders of his classmates, his family, video games, movies, society as a whole, or anywhere other than where it belongs - squarely on the shoulders of Cho Seung-Hui. Placing blame on any other factor devalues - and insults - everyone who's ever undergone a similar experience and DIDN'T kill a bunch of people in cold blood.

Cho Seung-Hui was an evil man; he planned and committed a horrifying act of evil; and he met his end while doing so.

None of that makes his cold-blooded, rational, planned, thought-out decision to commit murder less than evil, and refusing to acknowledge it as such merely empowers similar actions on the part of other evil people.

Let's hope that poor Regina Rohde - who survived Columbine, and now attends Virginia Tech - can make it safely through the rest of her life without encountering any more of them. I'd bet, for her, twice is enough. Although, I gotta say, if it DOES happen again, Regina, I want to see some John McClane-style ass-kicking out of you, mkay? You've had practice by now, you're ready.