Week 5 - Yingjun Huang

ASA 002 A01

Yingjun Huang

Week 5

Reading Empire of Death and the Plague of Civil Violence by Darrell Y. Hamamoto was a thrilling experience because the article was filled with examples of serial or mass killers one after another. In the end, I believe that the author stated that these killers were affected by the government that has proceeded massacre during wars in Vietnam, Southeast Asia, and many more other places, leading to the conclusion that domestic violent killers behave like what government has behaved.

I agree with the author on how government behaves affects people in its nation. It’s not like that the government taught people directly to be violent, but the culture or in other words, the atmosphere that has formed from it is what led to such action.

But I have a strange feeling that this doesn’t sound perfectly alright. Cases I read from the article were people once served in the military or have relatives served in the military, then turned into a terrifying killer. Though the brutal military action from the government could have affected these people, but could it be that their own psychological or immoral issue has a greater contribution on the reason they became murderous beasts?

I couldn’t help but began trying to think of a solution for this situation, but roots to the very origin of this problem are so complicated (Government, military, psychological consultation) that there seems to be no perfect solution. Maybe the very first step to stop this type of domestic violent killers is to make federal government stop being militaristic and hostile.

A photo of the sniper, Charles Joseph Whitman, who killed 15 people in a tower.

Question:

Massive violent killing is deemed absolute crazy and inhumane; however, these killers were affected by the hostile militaristic government to behave that way. I wonder what power does the government have that can turn people into such murderous beast? To what extent can the government be affecting people’s behavior?

References:

1. Darrell Y. Hamamoto. Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence. From Boggs, Carl Ed. (2003) Masters of War: Militarism and Blowback in the Era of American Empire. New York, New York: Routledge. Retrieved October 22, 2017.

2. Charles Joseph Whitman [Digital image]. (2017) Retrieved October 22, 2017 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman