Murder Culture

Kevin Matsui

10/18/15

Blog 5

Darrell Y. Hamamoto’s article, “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence,” was an interesting article choice for an Asian American class. One of the points in the article that I found interesting was the idea that “militarist imperatives of the imperial state have given rise to ‘blowback’ in the form of violent crime within civilian society.” I am not sure if I agree with the author’s argument that wartime killing is the reason for this increased homicide rate in the U.S.  If you look at society today, it is not military veterans that are murdering people, but mentally ill psychopaths. While there may have been one case with the U.S. Marine Corp going on a killing spree, I don’t think it is the war exposure but some other mental illness that caused the murdering. But at the same time I can see how war against another country can lead to a hatred for those people. Seeing American soldiers being killed by another race can result in a hatred for people of that race, especially if they are living in “your” country.  How then are we to eliminate this racist discrimination from happening again?