dianavan, DUH. By using simplified tenses I must have left my point unclear. Let's try again. It's a pretty simple point.

If you were to dash into heavy traffic in a delusional state, would you therefore not be subject to being run over by a bus?

I am NOT saying the passenger could have been thinking in those terms. I AM saying that people who are looking at what happened in a supposedly objective frame of mind, and judging what was done by the authorities as wrong, may be thinking that the world can and should run on the assumption that mental illness will control the reality to which we're all subject.

Even if the bus driver in my example COULD read the delusional person's mind, s/he would not have the magical power over physics to stop the bus instantaneously and, therefore, SHOULD have. In the same way, even if the person who shot the passenger could have known the person had a mental disorder, and believed it-- could s/he have taken the risk that the same person might have been "crazy" enough to build and bring a bomb?

It's the kind of Monday-morning quarterbacking in the opening post that our culture is so rife with these days. WE WEREN'T THERE. The people entrusted with passengers' lives WAS there. They made a split-second decision in favor of saving HOW many lives. If there HAD been a bomb, and the passenger had NOT been stopped, would the passenger's mental illness have resulted in kudos for the security folks, for being so kind and understanding? No. They'd have been asskicked.

The shooter, and the shooter alone, has to live with having done what training and policy required. For us to judge that person and the policies, without actually knowing a thing about the reality of being in that position, is the height of pretense.

Our society seems to lack the capacity to witness tragedy without immediately going into accusation-mode. It's magical thinking-- it's not based on the simple reality that some poor working stiff got up that day, had his bowl of Cheerios, went off to do an honest day's work, and got landed with having to enact an ultimate decision. Another regular Joe got up that day and as the day went on, something inside went horribly out of control. That's a tragedy-- not an opportunity to take shots at policies before even knowing what actually occurred.

Monday-morning quarterbacks tend to be people who try (and fail) to control the situations in their own hands-on lives. People tend not to take them seriously, in their own lives, because in their own lives they are really lousy quarterbacks and aren't allowed near the ball. So they bloviate in public instead. It reminds me of a bar full of drunks egging each other on to blame the world for everything while getting drunker and more obnoxious with each loudly-proclaimed judgment on the world. The opening post in this thread reads like a drinking song. Agree? Take a drink. Disagree? Take a drink.

I think yesterday's situation is more serious than an excuse for a drinking game.

~Susan