It's 11:14 PM. I ate my lunch late at work today so haven't eaten supper yet. I HAVE, however, enjoyed a few frosty browns while surfing the internet and seeing what is up in the world. It's not the best combination. Because there never seems to be anything GOOD up in the world, and my reaction to the garden variety BAD we are pummelled with every single day, is only exacerbated by each successive frosty brown.
Take Canada... PLEASE! Badum BUM! What the giant, steaming pile of SHIT is going on in parliament? Trudeau sees one of his buddies, 65-year-old whip, Gord Brown being obviously blocked by congregating opposition politicians, some of whom had actually spoken to him and knew he was trying to get past them, and darts across the House of Commons floor to save him. I'd like to know what was said. Did Brown say, "Excuse me" before he was blocked? To tell you the truth, it doesn't matter, Trudeau did the right thing and if he bumped someone who was playing party politics and wasting Canadians' parliamentary time and tax money in the process, so much the better! Oh but can I say that? After all, one of the people he bumped... was a woman! About 50% of the air is sucked out of any room in which Canadians are being told this sad story. "A woman!" GASP! How could the leader of our country be so brazenly rude to a member of the ruling sex?
Canadian women reading this can now utter your requisite, and well rehearsed, "Well, I nevers," and then please shut up because you know you are firmly in control of our country. How else would this be anything but a brushed off complaint? Seriously! If Trudeau had elbowed Thomas Mulcair in the balls it might have received a chuckle in the House, but nobody would have heard of it. Certainly Mulcair could not have used a ruptured testicle to further HIS career! Gordon Brown, a 65 year old man, being blocked by younger parliamentarians and having his way cleared by the young, strong, Prime Minister would be a(n) heroic story if a tit hadn't accidentally on purpose gotten in the way. Here's how scared we are of women in Canada: Even though the PM's actions were totally justified; even though it was obviously just childish bullying by people and in a place from which responsible, mature leadership is expected; even though an old guy's weakness was being taken advantage of by peacocking politicians shooting for what passes as street cred in parliament, and they, no doubt, would have had a good laugh later about how they had roughed up the old man and delayed debate a little longer... it was Trudeau making the exact apology that should rightfully have been made by the asshole blockers.
Ask yourself why. And be honest. The bullying of a 65-year-old, and not to mention the gravity of the bill being debated at the time - one about assisted suicide, (which, for the same politically correct reasons I'm bemoaning, cannot be called that but must be referred to in the far less hurtful, "assistance in dying" form, (eye roll)), were instantly back-burnered in favour of what has become something of a level of importance in Canada that is practically unparalleled: violence against women. Now, as I have been trained to my whole life, I have to shift into Canadian and go on for a while about how I loathe violence against women. I do. Just yesterday in a class I caught a boy hitting a girl. It was in response to her hitting him and both were blows of a playful nature delivered with smiles, but I said, and I quote, "Hey, (student's name), don't hit anyone in this class and never, EVER, hit a girl!" Cuz not only am I Canadian, I'm a bit of an old school Canadian. It's reprehensible and immoral to abuse physical superiority, or to take advantage of any kind of perceived weakness. This is the bullet point I'm hoping my half dozen readers will take away from this post.
Having said that, that said, be that as it may, nothing said before the word "but," makes any difference, BUT... it can be carried too far. To have the PM officially apologize, more than once, is too far. To allow, (female of course), MP's to waste parliament time characterizing this elbow bump as "physical molestation," and making it sound like, (I'm not going to use her name because that was one of the purposes of her massive over-reaction), what's her face is lucky to be alive after the incident, is actually insulting to victims of legitimate violence against women everywhere.
As I posted on Facebook, and several people RE-posted, this was absolutely shameful wasting of valuable parliament time and every one of the contributing shitheads could do with a great deal more than a jarring elbow in the tits.
Now, on the other end of the spectrum, Korea... THIS was no elbow in the boob!
While it IS preliminary to be characterizing this incident as nothing but misogyny, it's pretty clear that it was a case of a man who hated women killing a woman. This is violence against women and this is taking advantage of physical superiority, and this is disgusting! THIS is something that needs to be brought up at a meeting of politicians, law makers and people in positions of leadership. And to be honest, if not a bit skeptical, it won't be. Not here in Korea. This is what men DO! It starts when they're boys. Koreans are absolutely BRUTAL when it comes to wielding ANY advantage with a sense of humility and grace. And I don't know if it's the culture, the social compact, peer pressure, history, or if they're just, (God forbid!), innately bad people! But look at every last complaint I've filed in my blogs over the years against Korea/Koreans and it will almost always boil down to this one thing. They get an advantage and they abuse it. And women are not above this either. If there were some way to quantify such things, I wouldn't be surprised to find that Korean WOMEN are worse abusers of power than men. Shift into Canadian apologist again, now I'm not trying to defend this murderer, but a beautiful woman in Korea has great power and in my experience it's almost a perfect, mathematical equation that beauty on the outside is directly DISproportionate to beauty on the inside. It's the plastic surgery capital of the world! Practically none of that is for men. Hell, I think women's DOGS in Korea get more work done than the men!
These Korean "Dwenjang Nyeo," are a curse to be sure, but I've said this a million times if I've said it once: Korean men deserve them! I said I wouldn't be surprised if the average Korean woman is worse, but I would. In the immortal words of my once roommate and fellow teacher, Phillip King, "Korean men are choads." Now, literally, a choad is a dude who has a penis wider than it is long. I have not studied the peni of the Korean closely enough to make this statement anything more than figuratively. Figuratively in the sense that a LOT of Korean men have all the symptoms of small penis syndrome. They are generally gutless and will not challenge you in any truly dangerous way, but they are constantly trying to find safe ways of asserting their manhood and gaining street cred with their homies. It's sad. Very sad. I have explained the Korean "Fuck you hello," numerous times. That's usually where it starts with foreigners. Saying hello to a foreigner and laughing with your buddies when the foreigner politely responds is pretty much, "Mother fuck Elvis and John Wayne cuz I'm Korean and I'm proud lemme hear ya say FIGHT THE POWER!"
If you're a nice teacher, like me, they will push brinkmanship to the very limit in class, but call in a Korean teacher who might call their mother and these "gangstas" burst into tears. It's not just with foreigners. They do it with each other too. It took me a long time to realize this but, when you see two Korean men peacocking, don't buy any popcorn cuz there ain't gonna be no fight. I have seen countless motorists, (driving is another big power grab for these sad douchebags), engaging in mano-a-mano roadraging here and waited patiently for something to happen only to find that both men were equally cowardly and were not going to do anything.
What, I often wonder, makes the Korean man so desperate to gain and ostentatiously display power? Could it be the fact that their history has been one of being the victim of bullying? The Chinese and the Japanese have throughout history used Koreans as their whipping boys. Now there are two ways a person can respond to bullying: 1. They can refuse to ever bully another, having suffered as the victim of bullying, or, 2. They can do the exact same thing to others in vicarious vengeance. If you start out in life getting ripped off in every deal you make, you can respond in one of two ways: 1. Take the moral high ground and drive honest bargains, or, 2. Financially ass rape everyone in vicarious vengeance. Korean men are for the most part ideal specimens of number two. Ahem.
To add another theory, people often forget this whole country was 99.9% peopled with uneducated farmers just a generation ago. They were not intellectual and they were not rich. But they all desired nothing more. I have heard Korean war stories from veteran soldiers about throwing coins on the floor of a bar and watching Korean women scratch, bite and claw each other over them. I watch baseball a lot here. A 3 or 4 dollar baseball has the same effect when it's hit into the crowd. Children are pushed out of the way and the weak are trampled to get that ball! After someone has claimed the ball, chuckles and smiles are exchanged and sometimes so are apologies because they realize it's a friggin' baseball! They can buy as many as they want! It's going to take a generation or maybe two before Koreans get used to their new-found riches. Until then, just about everything is treated like an all out fight to the death for survival, even though it's not. This is the "grace" and "humility" I mentioned that is so rarely exhibited by Koreans of means.
Back to this piece of number two who killed the innocent girl. While an innocent, Korean girl is a rare find, the guy killed a girl. It looks like it was mostly because he had been dissed by women in the past. Why would any woman be turned off by a Korean man? Hmmmm.... But I seriously doubt whether a more in depth discussion or investigation into this plague on Korea that I have so generally and un-professionally diagnosed here will be undertaken. It's absolutely astounding that tragedies like this stabbing don't happen more often. The streets, and bathrooms, of Korea are very safe. But wannabe gangsta thugs, who have espoused the violence of American black rappers, are everywhere in Korea. It sounds a bit contradictory, but I'd like to slap them all upside the head and tell them to pull up their pants and create their OWN individuality instead of copying others'. Those angry black dudes, I'm Canadian so I can get away with calling them NWA's, though I don't want to push it and type out the full words of that acronym, had ancestors who were the victims of some of the worst historical bullying ever, and they are number twos bullying the world back in vicarious violence. It's no wonder Korean boys sense a connection. But I feel in both cases, it's just a very weak excuse to be the violent punks they really are.
I think it's only been archaic mythology like "Jung," a special love Koreans all share with one another, that has kept Korea from erupting with violence like this. Confucian ideals like "Ren" and "Li," which scorn violence as weakness, are getting old. And with every successive generation further abandoning the old ways, I fear it is only a matter of time before this ticking time bomb explodes. The violence of Korean men against women, as well as anyone else with a perceived weakness, is a social issue that needs to be addressed in Korea. I think somewhere between the way things are now in Korea and the way things are in Canada, would be a good target to shoot for.
Just an update: It has been decided that the cause of the above murder was schizophrenia in the murderer. So there are now swirling rumours that Korea will have him off the streets for only a matter of months rather than the rest of his life. After a weekend of trying to get my joy back, and succeeding so very little, I hear this. I can't say I'm surprised. After all, this is the same penile system that came to THIS asinine decision.
To make matters just a little bit worse, THIS happened in Japan. Now I have to follow these parallel stories to see whether fame has any effect on the prison terms of these homicidal wackjobs. Can you guess what my expectations might be?
Now I'm back in people suck mode. Thank you, Korea and Japan!
No comments:
Post a Comment