Rant in A Negative

It's a new week.  Since I'm scheduled to be in town the whole week, we can get down to some serious writing.  I spent the whole weekend thinking about what I wanted to write about, so this should be at least semi-deep-thought-ish.

I had to take the 6:45am ferry to Vung Tao for work on Friday.  Despite being forced to arise at 5:30 to make this trip, I actually prefer the early ferry mainly because the boat is a little bigger.  Sometimes I like to stand outside the cabin in the little smoking section and watch the ships pass.  The size of the ships compared to the width of the river never fails to amaze me. 

We arrived in Vung Tao, disembarked, walked through the terminal and outside into a beautiful morning looking for our driver who would take us the rest of the way to our destination.  As we looked around we noticed two men talking.  One was sitting on a motorbike and the other was standing with a strip of what looked like metal in his hand.  It didn't look like they were arguing, but a few moments later, the man lifted the piece of metal and smacked the guy on the motorbike across the back.  It didn't look like the blow was all that forceful, and sometimes Vietnamese men like to wrestle around in the street.  At times what is actually playful joking can look like fighting.  I didn't think much about it until the man struck with the metal again, this time much harder.  Once he started hitting the second time he didn't stop.  He hit the man across the back and shoulders four or five times before hitting the defenseless man, who was not attempting to fight back but protecting himself from the rain of blows, in the head. 

Even though we were standing about 20 yards away from the action, there was a loud crack as the weapon connected with the beat-ee's head.  Immediately he put his hands to his head as blood poured from the wound in his forehead.  The beator must have sensed things had progressed far enough because he folded up what I now saw to be a pair of aluminum nunchuks in his hand, walked to his motorbike, placed them under the seat and drove away.  No one made any effort to stop him. 

I've never seen so much blood.  One of the eight or so security guards who had been standing around watching the beating fished a hankerchief from his pocket and gave it to the bleeding man.  Another one helped him off his motorbike, which he had been straddling during the entire scene and wheeled it out of the way of passing cars while the bleeding man staggered to a bench outside the terminal building.  None of the six to eight security guards made any attempt to break up the fight, but rather watched until the man with the weapon decided he was finished and left the scene. 

I watched the whole episode slackjawed.  When the area began to dissapate, we found our driver, whose car sat directly behind where the assault occurred.  I found myself stepping over an eighteen inch soon-to-be puddle of blood to reach the car door.  As I passed, I really wanted to snap a quick photo of the blood on the street, but I figured that would be rather tacky, so I just avoided it and went on my way.  I suppose that means you'll just have to take my word for it that it actually happened.  We drove through the puddle on our way out of the ferry terminal.

When we sat down in the car, we asked the driver what happened.  His response was, "It was about love."  The whole altercation according to him was over a woman. 

I spent the rest of the day, and a good portion of the weekend thinking about what happened.  This is not the first time I've been witness to a beating in the street since we lived in Vietnam.  And when westerners gather to recount those tales, it's usually in a, "Isn't this a crazy place to live" huff.  We tend to use these public scuffles as evidence that as westerners we are somehow more civilized or above that behavior.  We use diplomacy, not violence, to solve our problems.

Then on Saturday I read this

For those of you too lazy to click a link, it tells the story of Trayvon Martin, a 13 year old kid in Florida who, while returning home from a convenience store to buy candy, was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch captain.  Trayvon was (gasp!) black and the shooter was white.  Trayvon was also unarmed when he was shot, unless you count a bag of Skittles and a can of Nestea as weapons.  When the shooter (who's name I'm not going to make more famous by mentioning it here -it's the victims we need to remember) saw Trayvon in his yard he called the cops.  Despite the cops telling him to do nothing, he stepped out on his front porch anyway and shot the child.  So far the shooter has not been arrested claiming that he shot the 13 year old in self defense.  Really?  You're 28 and he is 13.  Did this require a firearm?

I'm not here to get into a debate about gun control, but compared to that, a fight in the street resulting in a headwound requiring stitches feels pretty minor, yet as Americans, we insist that we are somehow better or more civilized than other countries.  That is annoying, but what is way more annoying is that I had to hunt around to find an article about this incident.  It happened more than ten days ago, so it's now off most people's radar.  The incident has not sparked any discussion of gun control in America.  Does a person with an alarm on his house inside a gated community really need a firearm to protect himself?

Do you want to know how I protect myself?  I'm friendly.  I don't treat people like shit, I don't look down on them for disagreeing with me.  I don't yell, I don't fight and I try to be respectful of other people and their opinions at all times.  If someone wants to break into my house it shouldn't be because they have some sort of vendetta agaist me, they want my stuff.  And my stuff is just that, STUFF.  My laptop is not more valuable than your life no matter how much of a scumbag you are.  If someone comes into my house with the intention to kill me, well then there's nothing I can do about that.  And frankly, the odds of that happening are so slim that it doesn't warrant owning a weapon.  How many people have you met who deterred a would be criminal using a personal firearm?  I've never met anyone, and I've lived in a lot of places.  Bringing a loaded pistol into my house makes my home a lot more dangerous than the threat of being attacked by nameless and faceless criminals.  People that own guns under the guise of protection are living with the notion that they actually need protection.  And the word that describes a person that needs protection is FEARFUL. 

In Vietnam guns are illegal.  The only place I ever see guns with any regularity?  The US Embassy.  I walk by it a few times a week and there are always guards stationed outside; some with AK-47s (oh irony) and some with pistols in their belts in addition to the widest sidewalk in the city and foot-thick steel reinforced concrete bollards between the street and the concrete walls surrounding the embassy.  I also walk by the Austrian embassy almost every day.  It's a house.  You ring a bell and they buzz you in.  Is all this security really necessary?  I can't really imagine any scenario in which someone might need to be shot outside the US embassy, but there they are anyway making the US look more important.  You may be thinking to yourself, "yes, but our embassies have been attacked in the past, so it's important for them to be protected."  You'd be right, our embassies have been attacked in the past.  But rather than say, "we need guns to protect them" perhaps we should ask ourselves, "why were they attacked in the first place?"  Is it  possible that constantly showing the US as grander than you and possessing things that are normally illegal tends to breed resentment? 

Thinking about that got me to thinking about this:  Americans hate, hate, HATE to be helped or be made to feel helpless.  Myself included.  Someone recently mentioned how irritating it is when they're fishing around in their wallet for taxi fare and the diver tries to reach in and help.  This action is automatically received by Americans as an attempt to rip us off rather than help.  No one's motives are ever pure or in the spirit of just being friendly.  If someone wants to reach in your wallet, then they want to steal your money. 

So can someone explain to me why if we hate to be helped or made to feel helpless so much, why is it that we insist on helping everyone else?  Why is there an overriding sense of "America knows what's best for you" around the world?  This is at the heart of the backlash to the Kony 2012 movement.  It's just like Americans to think that it's up to us to solve the world's problems, just as long as no one interferes while we try to solve our own.  Somehow it seems appropriate that the guy who narrated the Kony 2012 viral video was picked up by the police over the weekend for running around in the street in his underwear, screaming incoherently and masturbating publicly.  He's too busy solving the problems of others to worry about his own. 

And why should anyone receive this "aid" without a healthy heaping of skepticism?  If we can't stop shooting black people in our yards at home, how does anyone expect us to stop that from happening in other countries?

End of rant...

Just so this post isn't a total downer, here's proof that I didn't make up that sign I talked about a couple weeks ago:

I want to put a witty caption here, but the sign stole my thunder.

And for those of you playing at home.  The light is STILL ON.   This has to be some kind of record.  Three weeks and counting.  Good luck in your office pools.