"It Couldn't Have Happened To A Better Country."

My thoughts go out to the people of Japan.  May you

all find strength in the face of this disaster. 

The great and talented Aldous Huxley once said, "If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves."  Cynical? Yes.  Depressing?  Absolutely.  True?  One hundred percent.  In the past couple of weeks, I have found myself looking around and just wanting to clock someone right in the face.  Day after day, I am subjected to idiocy on a scale that makes me wonder if Mother Nature is just pissed at us for being collectively stupid.  

Case in point: A man walked into the gas station I now work at for the weekend paper early Saturday morning.  He picked up the local bundle, and glanced at the headline as he placed it on the counter.  With a smile, he told me, "It couldn't have happened to a better country."  I looked down and saw the image of a Japanese soldier with a civilian over his shoulder, stumbling away from certain disaster.  My heart sank as I realized that he was talking about the 8.9 quake that had hit Japan.  I couldn't help myself.  "What do you mean?" "Payback for Pearl Harbor," he said like it was obvious.  Before I could even respond, he put two dollars on the counter and walked out.  

This, I think, was a good move on his part.  I was more than willing to risk losing my job in order to strangle a middle aged man that had clearly failed history class.  I am a bit peeved that I missed such a glorious opportunity, so maybe one day he'll stumble on this blog of my and read my following response:

Dear Grimy Man,

     I would not wish an 8.9 earthquake or the following tsunami on any country.  The mere fact that you think that this earthquake was your own personal revenge for an event that happened seventy years ago is both pathetic and ignorant.  In case you weren't aware, the citizens of Japan were the first and only unwilling participants in humanity's nuclear bomb test that didn't happen over a desert or an ocean.  With a death toll that made Pearl Harbor look like "minor incident", the two bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki officially doomed the human race.  God literally closed the pearly gates and relocated Heaven so that we wouldn't be able to find it.  In fact, the radiation from those two bombs are still doing damage to the Japanese.  Pregnant woman who survived the explosions gave birth to children with horrible defects, and the number of people who developed/have cancer could probably fill an empty New York City.  They have cancers over there that you probably have never heard of, grimy man.  So to say that this earthquake was payback for Pearl Harbor makes you look subhuman.  I was tempted to ask you if there was an amoeba piloting your body.  What really bothers me is that I probably wasn't the first person you had said that to, or the last.  My only hope is that someone more intolerant of bullshit than I am heard you say that and kicked you in the taint.  To demonstrate how much of a hypocrite you are, allow me to draw a comparison.  Let's go back nine years to September 11th.  Pretend as though you heard some German guy say the same thing you said to me.  Would you be pissed?  Probably.  Would you still be pissed even if he told you that it was justified because Americans stormed his country seventy years ago and killed thousands of Germans?  More than likely.  And why is this?  Probably because...

YOU DON'T SAY STUPID SHIT LIKE

THAT EVER FOR ANY REASON.

                                                          Sincerely,

          Someone That Passed History Class

The astounding thing here is that this isn't some isolated incident.  While it was the first time I had heard that said, it was unfortunately not the last.  Why is all of this anti-Japanese stuff being stirred up again?  Do we as Americans feel the need to kick them while they are down?  I really hope not.  The first atomic bomb we dropped on them was more than they deserved by far.  The second was unnecessary on every level.  Besides, what if this quake had hit California instead?  What the Japanese were running around saying, "Good!  That's payback for those two bombs, bitches!"  I don't think we would appreciate that so... why would they?  Think before you speak.  

...That being said, the media needs to stop covering this earthquake thing and get back to the important stuff.

Every time he says, "Winning", I die

a little inside.  

The important stuff being Charlie Sheen's gradual hypomanic descent into madness, of course.