RSS
Home
Shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, shows just how stretched - and stressed - we all have become
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
If you are disturbed by today’s shootings at Fort Hood, Texas – and are feeling particularly vulnerable tonight – your feelings are real. And they are a sign of worse things to come.
This shooting was different than previous shootings in recent history. Most had been carried out by losers, men who had failed both personally and professionally, so there was nothing to lose and everything to gain from a brief moment of morbid celebrity.
The shooter in this case, however, was an Army officer. A doctor. A professional. Someone who had everything to live for, even if he felt fairly certain he would return from combat as mentally unstable. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, was at worst average, but anyone who earns the right to be called “doctor” is anything but average. Allegedly, he was recently given a poor performance review. At worse, that would prompt him to go look elsewhere for employment as soon as he could.
What is disturbing about today’s shooting at Fort Hood was that this was done by a professional, a man who should know better. And not just any professional, but a man trained in psychology. This man knew a lot – and he still went crazy with a gun. It’s one thing for the fringe to go bonkers and shoot a bunch of people. It’s another, more frightening scenario when a well-respected man goes nuts and decides to take several people with him.
As a society, this doesn’t bode well for our future. We are pushing people to the brink daily, but instead of giving them praise, we are chastising even our best for not working hard enough. We send people to war and call them heroes, only to order them back to a potential death because we ‘ran out of replacements’ – and then threatened them with loss of status and money if they refuse to go peacefully. Again allegedly, Hasan was ordered to the Middle East but was not going peacefully or quietly. Seeing no other alternative (apparently), he snapped, and the carnage started. ‘How could this happen?’ people are crying. Step back a moment and you’ll hear the smart money asking ‘why did it take so long for someone to snap?’.
(To be sure, we don’t know proof-positive yet that Hasan was indeed the shooter. The U.S. Army has screwed up stuff like this before, so we’ll just have to wait to see if any other evidence points to someone other than this officer with a Middle Eastern name and a bad attitude.)
We all need to be careful. Walking amongst us are people just like Hasan who are ready to snap. All they need is to be pushed ever-so-lightly, and who knows how big the explosion will be.
This should be a wake-up call to America about how far we are stretching our troops, how much we are damaging are workforce with ridiculous demands – and how close we are to the chaos that could have been prevented if someone in power had just said ‘time out’ – with pay.
Once again, it has been proven beyond a doubt that a man with weapons is a much bigger threat to society than a man in a dress.
