Aaron Seitz Blog Week 5

Aaron Seitz

Section A03

Week 5-Monday May 1

Response to “Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence.” By Darrell Y. Hamamoto

            The reading for this week connected to the theme of “Imperial University” by exploring the broader topic of American imperialism and how that has led to an increase in violence and mass murder in the United States. The reading explained that along with the development of America, there has been a recent increase in serial killers. What is more surprising is that many of these serial killers have had racial motivations in one form or another. I was very surprised to read that the concept of a serial killer is a relatively new idea. I was completely unaware of the seemingly obvious correlation between U.S. wars and mass murder in the U.S. This does make sense however since more and more people are being exposed to violence. With the increase in exposure comes an increase in the act of violence as well. I also believe that the reason a lot of these mass murders seem to target a specific race is because the violence people are exposed to generally is violence toward a specific race. With the example of the Vietnam war, many U.S. soldiers fought against people living in Vietnam who were the perceived “enemy.” This meant that after the soldiers returned home they could still retain those feelings of hatred or fear toward people of the same race who lived in the U.S. If former U.S. soldiers were not able to cope with their feelings of hatred or fear, the chances of them committing terrible crimes seemingly would be much higher than someone who did not experience war first hand. American imperialism is very dangerous and I believe the bigger picture here is that we cannot let our universities fall into a similar pattern of imperialism.

Question: How is American imperialism taught in schools here in the U.S. and is it taught differently in other countries?

This picture explores ideas of American imperialism and how other countries are also involved.

Resources:

[American Policy of Open Door in China]. (n.d). Retrieved April 29, 2017, from https://sites.google.com/site/teachmeonegai/ed-tech-ma/sed-646/databases/world-history-political-cartoons-on-imperialism

Boggs, C. (2003). Masters of war : Militarism and blowback in the era of American empire. New York: Routledge.