More Cultural Enrichment
by Thomas Fleming
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
In Houston: Jackie Tran, a Buddhist Vietnamese, beat his son unconscious, hoping to drive out the demon the three year old had swallowed with some meat.
Santa Clara, CA: An Indian father killed five members of his family and then himself.
Charlotte: Police are searching for an Asian or Hispanic man believed to have used a hunting knife to murder a mother and her three children. The killing appears to have grown out of the drug-dealing Asian father’s dispute with business associates.
Binghamton, NY: An Asian man, perhaps with an accomplice, killed up to 13 people in a center designed to help immigrants.
Mobile: A Vietnamese immigrant has been convicted of throwing his three small children off a bridge.
These are only the latest ghastly incidents in a series of killings involving Asian-American males. In 2007 a Korean immigrant terrorized Virginia Tech; then there was the deer-hunting Hmung who opened fire on Wisconsians who reproached him for hunting on private land, and the Asian who beheaded his fellow-passenger on a bus in Manitoba. On VDARE Brenda Walker speculates that it is the immigration experience that is to blame: “Immigrating to a completely foreign culture is a vastly more disorienting experience, where the possibility for failure is real and life-affecting. Remarkably, many foreigners come to this country with no knowledge of English or understanding of how the society works, yet expect to find jobs, navigate a complex modern culture and somehow achieve the American Dream of deluxe home, trophy children and other bragging rights to impress the homies.”
This is surely part of the story, but we know too little of the cultures of these immigrants to rule out the residual effects of the killers’ cultural traditions. The Hmung, for example, are known to be violent people who have formed drug-dealing gangs that engage in bloody vendettas with their rivals. I used to have a Hmung employee who, when he was fired for incompetence and pilfering, told his supervisor: “It good thing we not back hom in my country or would have to kill you.” Not, would want to kill your or would be able to kill you, but would have to kill you.
On the other hand, some Asian men seem so passive and emasculate that they must have trouble coping in a more macho society, where they have to endure what they regard as attacks on their sense of honor. When they snap, they snap not like predators that can turn off their violence, but like the jackdaws that will peck an enemy to death, because they are not wired for fighting and the rituals that defuse violence. I note how few Japanese males have been involved in these incidents. If my perception is correct, it surely cannot be because the Japanese have no tradition of war and violence. Quite the contrary. A Japanese Samurai, with a change of weapons and a little coaching, would have been right at home inn Tombstone. Is that, perhaps, one reason why they can function so much better in the West? Or is it simply that they are a civilized people? I just don’t know.
I don’t know, but this much is clear: The common assumption, that we have to be afraid of the African and Mexican elements inour society but not the Asians, is turning out to be entirely wrong. If Brenda Walker is correct, immigrants are harmed by the process of immigration. That is a promising speculation; however, we do know for a fact that we the natives are being harmed, not just by crime and violence but in our minds. We are no longer at home in our own country but refugees of a sort–refugees from Western civilization.
[Subscribe online to Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture. Click here for details].
1 Comment by Edward on 6 April 2009:
The Japanese do mass pop culture better than we do. I do not think that most of them receive a very large culture shock in coming to America, except for the fact that our people are much dumber.
Are Asians currently the largest percentage of the newly arriving immigrants?
2 Comment by robert on 6 April 2009:
Hmong culture in Highland Park, Michigan, is explored in the film Gran Torino, directed by Clint Eastwood. Don’t go see the movie if you believe everyone should just get along. Sometimes things don’t work out even if there is part of us that doesn’t love a wall; fences do end up making better neighbors — or at least living neighbors.
3 Comment by T. Chan on 6 April 2009:
Re: Japanese men — Dr. Fleming, I think very few Japanese individuals or families are immigrating to this country? I believe Japanese students tend to return home after they finish their studies, while the third- and fourth-generation descendants of those who came in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are rather Americanized.
Also, while the samurai tradition may be maintained by certain nationalist groups and martial arts schools, I think most Japanese men today are ’sheep’ — they are the intentional product of mainstream Japanese culture, in which social harmony is over-emphasized. Also, corporate culture requires docile workers. And finally, there is the impact of absent fathers toiling away from home as salarymen and domineering mothers on male children.
I believe most of the schocking murders committed in Japan in recent years were done by maladjusted individuals, or those who had snapped because they couldn’t deal with various pressures.
4 Comment by TJF on 6 April 2009:
Thanks to Mr. Chan. I have a part-Japanese relation whose family are quite nice people. I have always found the Chinese and Japanese I have met to be worth knowing, and though I can scarcely be said to understand them at all, I do not feel as alien as I do with most other Asians, though it is also true that some of the Vietnamese I have met are very French. I know so little of Asia that even my idle speculations are probably pointless. Last week I spent an your with a distinguished Jesuit scholar who has lived most of his life in Japan, teaching English literature at a university. We talked about the psychiatrist Takeo Doi, two of whose books a Japanese law professor sent me and which I read. The learned Jesuit opined that Japan had changed a great deal in the 50 years he had lived there but that he did not know if the changes were deep or superficial.
5 Comment by T. Chan on 6 April 2009:
Dr. Fleming, would you be referring to Fr. Milward? I met him once at Boston College–I would have liked the opportunity to talk to him about his experiences in Japan.
I should add that there are many Japanese men who are posted in the United States for work, but I believe their assignments are usually temporary, and they tend to be married. I think it is the norm for their families to relocate as well, but I could be wrong about that.
6 Comment by TJF on 6 April 2009:
Yes, Fr. Peter Milward, who was visiting Rockford briefly to see his friend Peter Stanlis. We did have quite a number of Japanese immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th century, so many that California, as i recall, blocked further immigration from Japan, provoking a row with the Japanese government.
7 Comment by Chris on 6 April 2009:
Mr Chan, I lived in Japan for three years and it is my observation that the samurai culture (to the degree that I understand it) still lives on. The salary men are samurais in suits. They come across as passive and quiescent but they are internally very tough.
8 Comment by T. Chan on 6 April 2009:
Chris:
it is my observation that the samurai culture (to the degree that I understand it) still lives on. The salary men are samurais in suits. They come across as passive and quiescent but they are internally very tough.
Perhaps they imagine themselves to be successors of the samurai, just like the corporate execs who may read The Book of Five Rings or similar works, but I don’t think they are successors of samurai culture as a martial tradition. My suspicion is that the typical Japanese person has an aversion to violence, without distinguishing between right and wrong use.
9 Comment by T. Chan on 6 April 2009:
I should say that a similar aversion to violence exists in the more ‘educated’ parts of Chinese society.
10 Comment by CS on 7 April 2009:
On the subject of the samurai, if you’ve not already seen it, I highly recommned Takuan Seiyo’s lyrical article about the real “Last Samurai”, General Maresuke Nogi over at Brussels Journal.
11 Comment by Bruce on 7 April 2009:
“My suspicion is that the typical Japanese person has an aversion to violence, without distinguishing between right and wrong use.”
I don’t know much about them either, but their Manga (in it’s printed and video form) is often ultra violent and perverse (graphic rape of young women, often by hideous creatures, is a common theme). Some of it’s worse than about anything produced in the U.S. I have no idea what this says about them or how it affects them.
12 Comment by Michael M on 7 April 2009:
There is an extraordinary formalism in Japanese culture which extends strongly into the code of conduct of the individual. When things go badly out of kilter, the tendancy is to place the blame on self rather than on “society,” which one might recall was still often the norm in this nation until some decades ago. While the Asian is always a mystery, still one can easily picture Japanese men on the deck of the Titanic behaving with the proper dignity and gravity of the men of that time. As with the older British still, there is always that hightened awareness first of how one appears to others. Certainly the let it all hang out America at present presents to them an even greater mystery than they do to us. Even when Japanese youth adopt the ways of Western pop culture, they appear to do so in a selective and formalistic sense that borders on parody.
I would highly recommend Yukio Mishima’s Sea of Fertility tetrology:
Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, The Decay of the Angel — if for nothing else an illustration of the Japanese aesthetic under the pressure of the 20th century. For the thing itself — the imperial necessity of maintaining outward appearance and show of order — nothing I have encountered better illustrates it than Kurosawa’s battle epic Kagemusha.
As for those Asian cultures more under the sway of traditional Buddhism, there is a great mystery. Buddhism is of course a great sentimental favorite to certain of our own countrymen, but I seriously doubt a Westerner (even one little schooled) can penetrate it. A sincere effort to penetrate it, illustrating the profound and perhaps unpassable difficulties for the most schooled Westerner, is illustrated by the Merton-D. T. Suzuki dialogue, Zen and the Birds of Appetite.
Hinduism is of course nothing but the perpetuation of caveman religion into the modern world, albeit with a lot of wrinkles. It is the sort of thing which underlies all Asia once the veneer of higher things such as Buddhism or Confucianism vanish. With astonishing speed, he truly stony Westerners of our time and place quickly move from a shallow, chip on the shoulder assumption of “Buddhist” superiority to the truly hard stuff — cults largely animated by agressive extrapolations from old Asian nature religions. I have encountered some of the victims — and their victims — in 32 years of law practice, and I wish I could share their sagas with you. But frankly, I see little difference between them and the Asian-American examples cited, at root. The total grinding into dust of the individual, which begins with the self and one’s own spirit as first victim, justifies any subsequent behavior towrd “others” even if, for the moment, not carried to conclusion. The same sort of killings, with similar alibis, are now also becoming common in the once sedate UK — perpetrated not by Asians but by Brits who have lost their own thinning veneer.
13 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 7 April 2009:
Japan is certainly a hard country to figure out. When you watch the post-war samurai movies they seem Western, almost Christian in spirit. Perhaps total defeat caused them to reevaluate their traditional values. Modern consumerism and corporate conformity seem to have ended this reflective period. And that Manga is strange indeed. It seems to be taking over entire isles of American bookstores. Some of these “books” have moral themes, but we’re a long way from the Hardy Boys.
14 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 7 April 2009:
How is the first generation raised on manga, anime, and cartoon network going to turn out?
15 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 7 April 2009:
The Bladensburg, MD that I drove through this morning is rapidly becoming a Mexican town. Bladensburg sits two miles east of Washington, DC and is famous for being the site of an American military debacle against a smaller British force in 1814 which resulted in the evacuation of the capital and the burning of the White House and the Capitol. It is also where duels were held in the early 1800s; Admiral Stephen Decatur, who whipped the Barbary pirates in the Jefferson era, was mortally wounded during a duel in Bladensburg in 1820. Today, the old late-1940ish Bladensburg shopping center complete with the larger parking spaces required by the stylistically superior automobiles of the day is filled with Mexican stores with signs in Spanish. The post-World War Two apartment complexes of the town are filled with Mexicans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans. Spray-painted MS-13 signs grace bus stop shelters, mail boxes and strip mall walls. Of course, whites are a tiny remnant in a part of America no longer really American. The de-Americanization of Bladensburg bolsters the Democratic majority in Maryland even if the tensions between blacks and Hispanics cause political and public safety turmoil. Ironically, the de-Americanization of Bladensburg is a dagger drawn to the work prospects of low-skilled blacks in the metro DC area as businessmen prefer to hire Hispanics as workers in the construction, restaurant and janitorial trades.
With all their praise of valuing diversity it is not difficult to deduct that white leftists hate themselves as well. They hate their culture, their history, and their ancestors mouldering in their graves.
16 Comment by Robert on 7 April 2009:
“With all their praise of valuing diversity it is not difficult to deduct that white leftists hate themselves as well. They hate their culture, their history, and their ancestors mouldering in their graves.”
Thanks Derek. You speak well of what once was a country and is now a polyglot boarding house “of apartment complexes filled with Mexicans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans. Spray-painted MS-13 signs on bus stop shelters, mail boxes and strip mall walls with tiny scattered remnants of America amidst the ruins.”
17 Comment by Sempronius on 7 April 2009:
“With all their praise of valuing diversity it is not difficult to deduct that white leftists hate themselves as well. They hate their culture, their history, and their ancestors mouldering in their graves.”
I’m not sure about that.The problem may very well lie in the opposite direction.White leftist arguably love themselves too much.Their disregard for fellow whites,including the deceased,is often based on an inflated sense of their own worth.
Support for “diversity” manifests this in two ways.It allows them to distinguish themselves from the anti-immigrationist hoi polloi.Furthermore,their exaggerated sense of superiority over third-worlders leads them to indulge the latter in a dare-devil fashion,driven by the notion that Western Liberals are so far above their new found clientes that no amount of indulgence can adversely affect them (the Liberals).
Thats my sense of these monsters.
18 Comment by T. Chan on 7 April 2009:
How is the first generation raised on manga, anime, and cartoon network going to turn out?
I suspect that there will not be much difference from those raised on comic books and American cartoons, and what passes for children’s literature for the past 20 years. Video gaming may have a bigger impact, though.
19 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 7 April 2009:
“I suspect that there will not be much difference from those raised on comic books and American cartoons, and what passes for children’s literature for the past 20 years. Video gaming may have a bigger impact, though.”
Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic, but the cartoons and comic books I grew up on seemed far better. When I was little shows taught the value of manners and cooperation, and when I got a bit older the shows were about the good guys vs. the bad guys in one form or the other. These shows had little if any depth, but they had a very basic moral compass. Cartoons now just seem to be hyper, crude, and absurd without any sort of grounding. Maybe I am wrong, and I am just seeing the worst. Maybe these Japanese cartoons will even be a bit of an improvement, but I would rather see kids watch something American.
20 Comment by Frank on 9 April 2009:
Japanese manga can actually have some depth and isn’t as global oriented. The American stuff is multicultural, feminist, and otherwise without substance – pure poison. Has Stan Lee created his Homo superhero yet?
Take a look at the Naruto manga. It’s currently the most popular, and what substance it has is good. The village orientation and pessimistic view that a perfect, global order probably isn’t possible should go over well among paleos. The arch bad guys are usually dreaming of global conquest, and the current bad guy believes he’s doing right by such conquest.
Ideally entertainment should come from one’s own people, but we live in America.
21 Comment by MarkB on 9 April 2009:
Completely OT, but not sure where else to post and hoping for a response…
Sometime, possibly in the late ’80s or early ’90s, TJF wrote, if my memory serves, an eloquent defense of ritual and tradition in church services. Unfortunately, I no longer have my stack of old “Chronicles” mags to search through. My church has slowly teetered over the brink into dismal abyss of “happy clappy” services. I would love it if TJF or someone else could recall the month and year of this issue, so I could pester my library into finding me a copy of it, which I could then forward to my church “Worship Alive” committee (Saints preserve us!).
Thanks!
Please return to your regularly scheduled erudition…
22 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 9 April 2009:
Frank,
I am being overly pessimistic. I once saw an episode of the “Death Note” series. Its exploration of the corrupting influence of power, even when used for good, has merit. Truth is truth wherever you find it, right? But parents have to read the comics and screen the TV shows before trusting them with their kids. You just can’t blindly trust pop culture any more. Chronicles constantly reminds of that.
23 Comment by Frank on 9 April 2009:
Chesterbelloc: “You just can’t blindly trust pop culture any more.”
No you can’t. I watched the Death Note anime – it was good in its reminder that power is dangerous and corrupting. It also praised strategy, which I fear Americans downplay.
I was actually going to reply that I was being overly pessimistic about American pop culture. While I don’t know of any good comics or cartoons, there are some good children’s movies, most of them not recent.
And there are some very bad manga series. Bleach is sexually corrupting, as well as promoting of multiculturalism. And Code Geass is essentially Marxism.
—
I don’t watch cable TV, and I’m interested in locating virtuous entertainment, not so much for myself but for recommendation to others for their children or, if I’m blessed with any, for my own.
24 Comment by Robert on 9 April 2009:
MARKB,
Trying to keep your question alive for you by repeating it. I would be interested in that same issue because I just got home from Maundy Thursday services 25% in spanish, 25% St. Louis Jesuit Pop, 25% Traditional Latin Hymns and 100% distracting. Hard to know anymore where multi-culturalism ends and Babel begins.
“Sometime, possibly in the late ’80s or early ’90s, TJF wrote, if my memory serves, an eloquent defense of ritual and tradition in church services. Unfortunately, I no longer have my stack of old “Chronicles” mags to search through. My church has slowly teetered over the brink into dismal abyss of “happy clappy” services. I would love it if TJF or someone else could recall the month and year of this issue, so I could pester my library into finding me a copy of it, which I could then forward to my church “Worship Alive” committee (Saints preserve us!).
25 Comment by Chesterbelloc on 10 April 2009:
“I don’t watch cable TV, and I’m interested in locating virtuous entertainment, not so much for myself but for recommendation to others for their children or, if I’m blessed with any, for my own.”
Well said Frank. I think that the tempation to pretend pop culture is OK for our children will arise when we are older and busy with our careers, etc. We must remember to be proactive in locating good programming for our children. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that Christianity is a fundamentally different way of living. Good think we have Good Friday to remind us. Have a good Easter.
26 Comment by Etienne Gervaise on 11 April 2009:
@24 Frank
While I don’t know of any good comics or cartoons …
South Park, while vulgar is the most politically incorrect show on the tube, and regularly skewers loud-mouthed lefties — especially the non-thinking Hollywood sort. The Simpsons is the best written show, period, and has entertained my children from a very tender age since most of the jokes require some life experience. And King of the Hill is also excellent, in my opinion, Mike Judge can do no wrong.
27 Comment by MarkB on 11 April 2009:
@23Frank….
We simply don’t get TV. No cable, satellite or even decent antennae. In our neck of southern Indiana this means no TV. But we rent/own a number of DVDs from back in the day, and seek to balance the damage that even old school TV does against the hunger all kids have for “screen time”. Thus we have a fair amount of control. Most importantly, though, limit the amount of time they sit in front of any screen. (30min/day in our house) Start with the Sound of Music. Add Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins. Throw in a batch of Mayberry RFD. You’ll get the idea as you practice. Talk to them at their level of understanding, about the lessons of the shows, plus about how the contrived picture manipulates reality, so they watch critically. If you watch with them, and enjoy the good parts with them, they’ll listen to you about the bad parts. Our three are all teenagers now, and we enjoy watching good shows together. Anyway, that recipe seems to have worked Ok for us so far. Good luck and have fun!
markb
28 Comment by Clyde Wilson on 13 April 2009:
I am inclined to agree with Sempronius (17) rather than Derek (15) on the nature of leftists. In my observation, they are generally people who have an exaggerated sense of their intelligence and their importance. They are just clever enough to catch the fashion—that being leftist is a cheap way to make themselves feel superior to us plain folk. Also, if self-hatred were the key, then leftists would hurt themselves,but their whole thing is to hurt other people for their own profit.
29 Comment by TJF on 13 April 2009:
There is an insight, I think, in each position. It is the nature of Leftism that it offers a sense of superiority by rejecting everything that ordinary decent people believe, beginning with monarchy and Christianity, moving onto private property and patriarchy, and finally to a rejection of heterosexuality and the dominance of the human species, but in accepting these childish positions leftists implicitly hate everything that their ancestors were and everything that, underneath the crazed veneer, they really are. Straight white acquisitive males come to believe that straightness, whiteness, property, and social distinctions are evil, even as they go on chasing women and making money and buying property. Whatever is real in them, they are compelled to hate or at least act as if they hated. It is as if they are afflicted with the Patty Hearst syndrome.
30 Comment by Derek Leaberry on 13 April 2009:
If I could tweak my previous post, I would agree that the Leftist loves himself in a narcissistic way. For example, Jean-Paul Sartre’s favorite person was John-Paul Sartre and he was the sun of his world and everybody else was to revolve around him, surely the mentality of a perpetual child. However, by rejecting his ancestors and his history and his culture, the Leftist engages in a most extreme form of self-hatred. I can not fathom or respect this aspect of the Leftist mindset.
31 Comment by Robert on 13 April 2009:
Derek,
I once heard the late Hamish Frazier tell a leftist during a debate at my Alma Mater that the real reason leftist opposed the death penalty is because they knew in their heart of hearts that they deserved it !!! I don’t know that I agree with this, but there is always something twisted in liberal truths –Just as the witches did tell some truths to MacBeth. But to even look upon a man such as Christopher Hitchens is to see unhappiness and misery and then to wonder how such a man could ever hope to give what he does not possess — however sincere his efforts and remarkable his talent.
32 Comment by Nicholas Moses on 14 April 2009:
@31: A young lady last year found out what parish I attend in Paris (you can probably guess) and with no provocation on my part, candidly told me that she had had an abortion because otherwise she would have had to “stop studying.” I did not mention that my own mother also was in school when I came along!
Some weeks later when it came out somehow that I favoured capital punishment for some crimes, she acted as though I had been the one who murdered her child. “I don’t understand how you can sit in Church and pray to God and then support killing people!”
I don’t want to be too uncharitable. This young lady, not really an intellectual nor necessarily a committed “leftist,” had redeeming qualities, but for whatever reason they were often well-hidden when it came to general life choices. But the complete inanity and hypocrisy of the leftist complex suggests that you are not far off.