iPhone's autocorrect, however, was most helpful in "correcting" my error:
hiv --> HIVSo now my mom may be thinking I can't go to California this August because of my new HIV. Let's just hope she reads my lengthy iMessage texts as carefully as I proofread them.
This succinct email was sent from my iPhone.
...
Holy Batman.
ReplyDeleteAurora never happened?
Gah?
DeleteAre you asking why I haven't blogged about that?
Yup. In view of the continuing Korean fixation on US culture, it strikes me as an awfully significant event.
ReplyDeleteI really have some problems with the continuing American policy of remaining mute about the author of the Aurora massacre, while deifying the victims and survivors. It perpetuates the dangerous myth that in some manner modern society is perfect, wholesome and proper, and then when things go wrong, the problem is with the individual, and not with the collective. But the reality is that the collective enjoys immense power compared with the tiny latitude of freedom begrudgingly granted to the individual; and in these times and with the pressures many of us face, it is no wonder some individuals lose a proper sense of proportion. And the reality is that the collective has become dangerously, viciously insane.
ReplyDeleteAt least Piers Morgan - a Briton - has the guts to raise the problem of gun control; and kudos to Michael Moore and Michael Bloomberg for pointing out the absurdity of American gun control laws, that allow semi-automatic assault riffles to be owned by the general populace. Even Pres. Obama finally questioned their appropriateness; but just how sick is a US society when the reaction to Aurora is to boost demand for these implements of collective murder? Then we have the violent US-made TV fodder that continues to assault our consciousness, conditioning us to regard gun ownership, violence and explosives as normal and wonderful: Lock’n’Load, American Guns, even Myth-Busters, whose sole contribution to human society is their evident delight of blowing things apart.
I cannot help but compare the reaction to such events with the seeming lack of compassion of the US people at large to the disasters they have made, and continue to inflict on other cultures – the mass genocide of Indochina, the terrible infliction of nuclear assaults on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which is not to discount the horrors of Japanese colonialization); Bush’s second excursion into Iraq, the unholy alliance with an Israel that continues to occupy Palestinian land and oppress its people, the insidious grooming and programing of the mass populace to accept an eventual strike on Iran (presumably to ensure US/Israeli dominance in the region, to protect oil interests), etc. How about a few US TV documentaries on interviewing the millions of families of the victims, and the survivors, of US intervention in Indochina?
All of this coinciding with a relentless imposition of US foreign policy, as if the globe were solely intended for the delight and mass consumption of the privileged US citizen, whose material prosperity must be guaranteed, no matter what the cost to the planet, its eco-system, and to other peoples and their cultures.
God forbid, are we that lacking in imagination that we can only conceive of the world as being either capitalist or socialist? That power is the sole and ultimate reality?
Could the American people please learn to contain their extreme violence and aggression within their own borders? Maybe then the Chinese might start to reflect on the horrendous events of their Cultural Revolution. Many thanks – a concerned global citizen.