The globalization of the macabre

Greetings from tomorrow.  In light of the Fort Hood shootings, I thought I would share with you a sampling of national headlines from my morning copy of the Asahi Shimbun: "2 more boyfriends of Tottori fraud suspect turned up dead" "Gangster kills self after shooting three" "Death sentences upheld for cultists" "Head of young woman found" ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

Greetings from tomorrow. 

Greetings from tomorrow. 

In light of the Fort Hood shootings, I thought I would share with you a sampling of national headlines from my morning copy of the Asahi Shimbun:

At least half the headlines were related to violent crime. 

I don’t think a pattern can be drawn from one day’s worth of headlines.  I suppose it’s possible that the English-language editors of Asahi are thinking, "Push the violence!  It’s the only thing the dumb, stupid, not-so-bright Americans understand!" 

Still, this sort of thing always reminds me to always cast a skeptical eye towards headlines devoted to acts of individual violence.  The deaths are important; the motivations of the killers, less so.  Unfortunately, the world does not suffer a shortage of variegated homocidal impulses.

UPDATE:  Megan McArdle expresses the point I was trying to make in a more direct, non-jet-lagged manner:

There is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this.  Gun control would not have stopped a commissioned officer from obtaining guns.  Barack Obama had no power to stop this.   Infectious PTSD is a lousy theory.  And nations certainly do not–and should not–shape their foreign policy around the possibility that a random psychopath will start shooting up a crowd.  Evil people do evil things.  That’s all. 

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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