Hi, Lance...
You've written a wise and respectful post about the heroism of Prof. Librescu, and I hope everybody who visits here will stop by your blog as well.

But as you always do, you have also managed to make a larger point about how we got to this incomprehensible moment. It was noted in the mainstream media that Prof. Librescu was a Holocaust survivor, but your post drives that mere observation to full explication: "The Holocaust represents the Shadow cast by the Enlightenment, rationality in the service of depravity, science supporting insanity. Progress, technology, efficiency, which once promised to usher in an industrial utopia, instead turned the factory system and assembly line into the human slaughterhouse.."

And the shooter, I think, was this process writ small. I blame technology, but not in the facile "this supports my agenda" way the anti-videogamers would have it. The package delivered to NBC speaks volumes: here was a sequestered consciousness, living in the echo chamber of his own media environment.

"Richard McBeef" is certainly the best-known play from his writing class, and this eventuality cannot have been lost on this desperately disturbed young writer, posing for the camera and reading his incomprehensible screed. "You are famous," whispers the camera, "You are Dylan Klebold. You are Eric Harris." "Kill them all. Tell the world," says the computer. The Glock chimes in, "You are Jesus."

Yes, media are deeply complicit. But it has nothing to do with violence in videogames. And our late mentor, Neil Postman, would have been horrified, but not surprised that this madness took place at the last hope for consideration of and resistance to technology's unchecked dominance, the school.

Best Regards.
-j