Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are cutting us down
Should have been done long ago.

"Ohio", Neil Young.

Its the reaction of people feeling their familiar, comfortable world slipping away from them.
They want to retaliate, to punish, to crush those they feel are responsible. Whether those they hurt have anything to do with their problem is irrelevant. They just feel the need to strike back, to torture, to kill. They want to see them squirm, to plead for mercy, they want to rub their noses in it.

I remember hearing the Neil Young line, "Should have been done long ago" long before I heard the song. People were happy to hear about the kids being shot at Kent State, as if they had anything to do with the Vietnam War, or the fact we couldn't win it.

I was about the age of those kids when it happened. I was in my early 20s, a college senior and a veteran. My reaction was, "That's too bad, panicky, untrained troops, inexperienced officers, a situation out of control, a breakdown in discipline, what a shame". I didn't see it as a political act, or as government repression, or vicious rioters. It was just an unfortunate accident. There should have been no deaths, no shootings, at worst, maybe a few busted heads. But people older than me tended to react with barely concealed glee. "Shouda been done long ago..." The soldiers, even their officers, could be forgiven. Those who celebrated the deaths of those kids cannot.

My wife is six years older than me, she was almost 30, a married woman with kids, when the Kent State shooting occurred. We married about a decade later (my first, her second) and she told me her reaction when she heard people in her family and circle of acquaintances saying "shoulda been done long ago." She was a Pennsylvania coal miner's daughter, not some hippy dippy college kid. But her first thought was "What is wrong with these people, those are someone's kids?" I guess that's why we married.

Maybe there is something to Robert's RWA theory.