Week 5 - Andy Ho - A03

This week’s reading Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence by Darrell Y. Hamamoto exposed every aspect of killing. I was impressed by the reading since it classified many types of violent death including serial murder, mass murder, sniper culture, and so on. Mr. Hamamoto also provided many detailed cases of each type; therefore, the reading reflected how chaotic our world was. I was shocked when I read about “Ted” Bunny’s case. This sadistic murderer had a gruesome fascination with death. After killing a victim, he always had a sense of “complete power, mastery, and control.”  (Hamamoto 2) I think he is the embodiment of a demon in this case. The demon doesn’t need to have a hideous appearance. Unfortunately, there are numerous demons disguised as young and charismatic people in our society today. Moreover, I also find that extremely disgusting when I read about “The ‘Dishonorable’ Night Stalker” Ramirez and his despicable cousin Miguel. They both sought out yellow people such as Asian American women as the main focus of their murderous psychosexual urges. In particular, Miguel showed off his absolute domination over Vietnamese women (or should we call his ruthless act in this case) as “he presented photos of Vietnamese women perform fellatio on him with a gun held to their head.” (Hamamoto 7) This is such an outrageous and disgraceful behavior. When I imagined about this scene, I felt sad, angry, and helpless simultaneously. Vietnamese women don’t deserve to be treated like that. The reading therefore once again unravels the dark truth of violent death, and it also reflects what a degenerate world we are living. Today, our planet is in its most peaceful time as there wasn’t any major war occurred for the last 80 years. Although aggression is human nature, I am hoping that we can keep our world peaceful for as long as possible.

Question: What do you think about the saying “Just because we don’t see crimes every day doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

Reference:

Hamamoto, Darell Y. (2003) Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence.

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