Pop, War, and Innocence

I originally didn't think anything of Michael Jackson's passing, and was actually pretty annoyed at how much media attention this guy was getting. Especially when the great Robert McNamara, savior of the Cuban Missile Crisis, "whiz kid" of Ford Motor Company's revival during the post-WWII period, and architect of the Vietnam War, died the same week as Jackson, and nobody even cared. I saw only one article on the matter, whereas I saw countless articles that just had the same headline of Jackson's daughter saying what a great daddy he was.

But just today, as I was eating clementines from Kroger at the dinner table, mumbling to myself about what I hate about the world, I realized that Jackson may really have been a heroic figure of some sort, in a similar way to what McNamara was. Both seemed to struggle throughout their years with the concept of innocence. Both sought to define, to protect, or to create innocence. But they failed. Miserably. Jackson surrounded himself with symbols and themes of youth, which he considered the heart and soul of innocence. But instead he was sued for being a pervert, and died young from drugs. Pity. But McNamara did not do much better. He assumed he was protecting the innocent from backwards ideology, brainwashing, even from world destruction. But he merely brought more death, more inhumanity, to the world than he began with, responsible for the deaths of many innocents.

So before you tell me to go take a philosophy class about innocence and what it means to achieve and maintain innocence, I will say, how do you know someone who thinks they can tell me what innocence is, will not actually just rob me of it. Heck, by reading this very blog post, this could be the end of your innocence. Sorry about that. But what use was it to you anyway. Who knows. So that's what makes me wonder, is there any use in trying to be innocent... not that I'm going around killing and stealing, but rather, just toying with the idea and thinking of what should be done with all these people around me who think innocence is a virtue. Ponder that, Mr. Pei.

I've also been thinking about immigration lately. As my friend Jay will gladly tell me, it's really difficult to immigrate to the US. And people like my Dad will gladly tell me how this country is successful because it was built by immigrants who could not exercise their full potentials elsewhere. I myself would like to think that the US is the "light on the hill", which attracts the best and brightest from all over the world to come here and lead successful lives, which the rest of the country can benefit from as well. So should immigration quotas be relaxed or tightened, or kept as they are? As you can probably tell, I say relaxed. Globalization is removing the need for feudal and nationalistic views on the world's identity. We have passed the age of Individuality, of the Personal Potential. We're now in the age of Do-Anything-Anywhere, and Maximized Efficiency of Humanity (MEH...). My old friend Ayn Rand was right, when she called for the praise of human innovation and objective efficiency of manpower. But individuality, I think, cannot be accommodated for in all cases, as not everyone is ideal, and the world right now has people born in all the wrong places and situations, and with no way to get out, save death. It will take great, orchestrated human effort, eased by freedom of movement and migration, to save the world. If the US is the first to really promote that, then it will all begin here. Not that I'm patriotic ;)

Anything else? Updates on my summer, I just came back from Dallas this weekend, to meet my family there. Always fun to take advantage of the weekends to run away and see family. And now I'm sitting in the Maroneal business center, because my apartment has no power. At first we thought a Shamoor was pulled (i.e. someone forgot to pay the bills), but the power company says we should have power. Damn. So I'm sleeping in a non-airconned room in Houston's summer heat tonight. Oh well, I'm sort of used to it. Singapore manned me up. Oh speaking of which, I found a Singaporean restaurant in Houston! I was actually going out to Chinatown to just get some dimsum or something. I tried this place called Hong Kong DimSum. Misleading. Sure enough, they have dimsum, but most of the menu was actually Singaporean dishes. So I'll probably return there every once in a while, to get my fix of SIN :)

And that's all for now that I can recall. Good night!