The Cartoon Reality Test

It's unlikely that anyone unfamiliar with Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "South Park" could have an inkling of the depth of Cho Seung-hui's delusional mindset.

And unfortunately, misguided parents will try to lean on all the wrong people in their quest to find answers as to why this clearly disturbed individual went on a shooting rampage at Virginia-Tech University this week.

I suspect that Cho Seung-hui has strong feelings about Nuclear Weapons, the sparring of Korean traditional values with western religion, as well as some fairly backward ideas about how to woo members of the opposite sex.

I bring up Stone and Parker because they appeared in the Micheal Moore documentaries Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 911 with a clear idea of how fanaticism takes root in Nuclear-Weapon-Conscious communities.

Obviously I'm piecing together disparate facts...but I have NO interest in exploring the deep underlying psychoses that drive someone to gun down 30-some-odd fellow students.

But I'm almost certain that Trey Parker and Matt Stone (with input from Marylin Manson) are onto something, because it is apparent to me that the fear-response to saber-rattling with Nuclear weaponry (and fissile materials capable of fueling atomic bombs) happening in Iran and North Korea is reaching a fever pitch here in the USA.

Some people (OK, most people) just can't handle the idea of imminent nuclear war. Some of them freak-out and shoot people. Again, I'm not analyzing the deep causes...I'm just observing that in some unbalanced minds, killing the evil (or rather the perceived evil, in their own personal experience) has become synonymous with killing the Devil.

But just to set the record straight, I don't look at this tragedy as a mere subject of commentary...I really wish for healing here...I'm just attempting to drive the peripheral discussion into thoughtful directions, so as to help discourage this sort of tragedy again in the future.