1.22.98

Alternating snow and sunshine today. The dryer is dead - hopefully for real this time so when the guy comes to look at it we won't look like totally idiots. Still have to go grocery shopping. Also have to go to the bank and pay for next week's trip to Soraksan by electronic transfer. Eeek! And...I'm addicted to 1942. It'll pass, I'm sure.

Yesterday I started talking about American hegemony and how it is hard for me to look beyond my culture to see how it is affecting others. I thought about it last night while trying to fall asleep and again today as I finished up that paper I’d started yesterday. I feel anger about it. I want to defend the US but as soon as I start, I realize I can’t because I’ve thought of an instance I know where the US Government has acted maliciously toward another group. Like, David’s grandpa was the Guatemalan Ambassador to the US in the late 40’s, early 50’s. He was assassinated in a US gov’t supported military coup in that country. Why? He was an anthropologist who studied the indigenous people and a proponent of their empowerment. Sometimes those persecuted groups live within the boundaries of the US. Yet I still feel nationalism and am proud of my country. For all it’s shortcomings and evils, the US tries to learn from its mistakes, I think. At least some people do. Not convinced that politicians ever really care, nor do military advisors who need conflict to validate their titles. And then I also have this random vision of greasy white guys in old reclining chairs in front of the TV, beer cans populating the side table - those people don't give a shit either. I get really upset when I read articles written by Koreans who blame the US military occupation for colonization and even murders. I want to tell them that our soldiers are on their land to protect them from war and it is in everybody’s best interest to prevent war because if another one started our people we be sent to die, again, on somebody else’s land for somebody else’s conflict. I think it’s totally myopic of Koreans to blame the US for the division between the North and South. Even if the Soviet Union had abdicated control over the North after accepting the Japanese surrender, do they really think the country would have moved into the future without strife? Divisions in the peninsula go back thousands of years. Have they forgotten? Is it a coincidence that the country is presently divided politically along similar lines as in the Three Kingdoms period? The truth is that Koreans still have regional prejudices not too far unlike those afflicting groups in the Baltics who were somehow able to maintain peace under the control of a common oppressor, but when that oppressor is gone it's business as usual again. So I get mad because it seems so whiny and childish to blame all the present problems on the US. Like, "Oh, woe is me! Our government would never have been so brutal if the US military hadn’t occupied us after Japanese surrender." Well, we will never know, will we? Perhaps all of Korea would be like the North and those who are free to criticize their own government and that of the US would’ve been denied any meaningful education at all. In fact, they could all be starving. See? Look how I defend my country. Look at my anger. I can’t stop going on about it. Then I think that their perspective is oh-so-certainly valid. Koreans were, of course, powerless when the US military arrived on the scene. And the psychology of being colonized has held strong for nearly 100 years as the people endured the Japanese and then felt indebted to US aid. Further, the people have a perspective on that "aid" that well-to-do Americans will never understand. We all think we’re helping the world. Meanwhile, our government micromanages the so-called aid in ways that may not only be harmful to the recipients but more beneficial to US interests. And, what makes their accusations so much different than say, women challenging patriarchy? I think maybe it’s the same and it’s important to give them voice. From my position of privilege, I am, of course, uncomfortable to hear that my privilege oppresses others. So I guess we have to be strong, you know? Be strong and hear what other people say so we, the ones with privilege (power) can initiate change. Heard on something interesting on CNN the other day: An Algerian guy was talking about why Algeria hasn’t requested outside help to deal with all those massacres. He said something like they knew what the US had done to Iraq and didn’t want that to happen to them. Ahh! (This is the point in my train of thought where the evil of the world overwhelms me and I direct myself to take a step back and remind myself I don’t have to bear it all.) Whew.

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