So I realise this is my first update in 5 years. I was younger then. I refuse to read my older entries, as I'm probably going to stare at them in abject horror. It was during a time when one of my first ever bonds online was showing the first symptoms of failure, and I was desperate. I saw a romantic, idealistic world, made promises that I kept to the very end, and I wrote until I could no longer put myself through trying to make a one-sided friendship work.
I will acknowledge that since then I have made the same mistakes. I would like to think that I was still a romantic, still an idealist, but I have come to realise now that I value my friendships as something deep and meaningful, as something that connects me with people I have never seen.
Those whom I share these bonds with may not see it the same way. May not invest in it as much as I do. May cease to keep me in their thoughts as soon as they turn off their computers.
But I digress. I'm not here to lament the fickleness of today's generation, nor will I discuss in any greater length why I have yet to find any real panacea for loneliness. What I lament instead is related to an essay that is due in just under two weeks.
I'm taking a paper called Sociology of Death and Dying. It is the most interesting paper I have taken in university to date, and I have been in university since 2007, so. Figures, right? Last semester before graduation and I stumble upon something that has opened my mind up to the world. I don't think I have ever sat in any other class and considered my life, my own death, and the society I live in. My final semester (of undergraduate study) ends in June, and though I'm happy that I have done a Japanese major, I'm left wishing that I had taken Sociology as a major instead of Psychology.
Anyway, I have an essay for this paper due in just under 2 weeks, which I have yet to start. Looking over the topics, I wanted to write about 9/11. I want to write about how it has impacted the years since 2001 - how the 'post-9/11 era' terminology emerged, the idea of terrorism, the legitimisation of further discrimination against religious minorities, how power and access to resources have allowed America to shape 9/11 and discuss it in American terms, rather than the perpetrators'.
The official death toll for 9/11 is 2752. I have chosen to cite this article because at the bottom you will notice it says 'this excludes the 10 hijackers'. Obviously the ten hijackers aren't dead.
If you take a look at the wikipedia article for 9/11, notice that it says 'nearly 3000 victims and 19 hijackers died in the attack'. Now I'm not sure what kind of mathematics they teach over in good old America, but 2752 is not 'nearly 3000'. Do you know what is 'nearly 3000'? 'Nearly' is a subjective term but I think many would agree that anything under around 2950 does not count as 'nearly 3000'.
Have you ever been to a supermarket? How would you feel if your total bill amounts to $27.52 but they asked you to pay $30.00 since it's 'nearly 3000'?
How many times have you heard 9/11 and 'Ground Zero' in the same sentence? 'Ground Zero' was used before, when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. Somewhere between 150,000 to 216,000 people died from those bombings. That was really ground zero. How could you possibly compare 9/11 to the atrocities that happened in Japan in World War II?
It is not the first time I have been made aware of this disparity. In fact it has been something that I have been considering every once in a while over the past few years. I am left feeling both pained, frustrated, and very unhappy. Are 2,752 American lives worth more than 150,000 Japanese lives?
I went to Hiroshima in 2008. I lived and studied in Tokyo from October 2009 to July 2010. The Hiroshima Peace Museum is really quite interesting. I wouldn't say it was good, because museums are all biased, but it wasn't as bad as, say, the one next to Yasukuni shrine. People from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have paper-crane folding sessions in primary school. They are very nice people, very helpful even to foreigners, and they are very peace-oriented.
Why do people from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have these 'Peace Classes' when America was the one that dropped the bombs?
Why is the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki described in American high school textbooks as 'necessary and proper actions taken to end the war'?
It's not that I don't like Americans. I just have this butt-clenching, sphincter-tightening reaction towards blatant stupidity, towards ignorance and arrogance. I have been hearing reports of people celebrating on the streets because of Osama bin Laden's death. I'm not sure what there is to celebrate - the fact that it took you ten years to find him? The fact that millions of taxpayers' dollars have gone into the ten years it took to find him? The fact that now airport and public transport security has been markedly increased because everyone's paranoid about a retaliatory measure being undertaken? Should we celebrate inefficiency or was the 'any excuse to have a day off and worsen our obesity epidemic' policy still in effect?
There are many more topics one can adopt to slander America. The tragic joke that is the American Dream. The powerless President that is nothing more than a puppet for Congress. The idea of 'God-given rights', or God-given anything for that matter. The so-called 'war on terror'. The wars in the name of freedom that is actually about acquiring limited resources. But the same can be said about any other country - the price for global dominance is Donald Trump trying to run for a plush Republican seat.
No, I'm joking. The price of global dominance is the constant scrutiny, the criticism. There are good reasons why many people harbour such great resentment toward America, why some people have very, very strong anti-American sentiments. But they're not necessarily about any one individual. If you think about it, if you ask people the right questions, it's not really about America itself. It's just the way the power structure was built.
There's something wrong about the world. It's not just today, it's not any one country, any one people or any one person, for that matter. It's just convenient to put the blame somewhere, and America happens to fit the criteria perfectly.
I have so much more to say, but I think I'll save it for another time. If you've made it this far into my ramblings, good on you. If you haven't, well. At least I will have gotten something off my chest.
Oh and uh.
God bless America.
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