Why is Wave mad this time (I need advice) · 2:31pm Feb 20th, 2015
Yesterday, in the last blogpost, I said that my minds wasn't even near to writing. I also promised to explain myself today.
The thing is, that recently I had an argument with a good friend. He asked some things of Centro and South America (he's USAer and I'm Chilean) for a book he's writing. I threw an offhanded commentary of how prone are Latin Americans to mistrust USAers in politics and he took it very bad.
At first I thought I made the mistake, but in his reply he sent me an orgy of evidence that he looks down at Latin America (or shitty third world countries as he said), has little to no idea on how things work and has literally not a single bit of respect for the place.
I told him that he needed to be more respectful and even cited some pieces of history to clarify things that he seemed to misunderstand. He continued with another rant about how USA is better, how we should be thankful they're not invading the rest of America and a longer than necessary myriad of wrong facts about history. The major offender was this one:
Pinochet was a fucking hero and should be celebrated there. For all of his slaughter, he prevented far more than his adversaries would have.
No.
Of course not.
For those who doesn't know, in the 1970's elections, here in Chile happened something unique in the world; a socialist candidate, Salvador Allende Gossens, was elected by a democratic mean. No revolution, no dictatorship, no hate speeches. Just another politician, another president. He wasn't a saint but he was far from being outright bad, lot of social programs but the poor guy had no clue on economy.
Not the best, but not the worst. Provably a future side note in Chile's history.
But apparently, the CIA thought that a socialist government was a menace to their lifestyles (how did our country at the end of the world affected then has always been a riddle for me), here's where Pinochet enters. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, a total bastard, was the general in chief of the Chilean Army Force those years. In September 11th, in 1973, he and the other military heads (navy and air force), with all the support from the Estates, directed a coup d'etat.
What happened next was brutal. Santiago filled with tanks, La Moneda bombarded, houses being raid by the military, hundreds (maybe thousands) of people dissapeared. It was the darkest moment in Chile's history, something that would make Hitler and Stalin shiver in horror, something that lasted seventeen years.
So, excuse if I take offense when someone call the biggest monster of my country's history a 'fucking hero'. Especially if it's someone from the country that made it happen in the first place.
Here's two possibles sides of this; One, he's trolling me, which is disgusting to say the least. Two, he's serious, which is even worse.
Either way, I think I lost a friend here, a good friend that I even used to admire: I remember looking up at him, admiring both, his ideas and written work. Right now, I'm not even looking. Am I wrong?
Fuck.
No. You're not wrong. That INCONSIDERATE ASSHOLE is who's wrong.
Ah yes, typical US ignorance. This coming from one who lives in the USA, we are an uninformed and bigoted lot (as a whole, individuals break the trend all of the time) who say whatever is on our mind without looking at facts or caring about others' opinions. We also tent to think that we could take over the world if we wanted, to which I have a one word response: Vietnam.
This guy, whoever he is, is an idiot to the highest degree. He obviously knows nothing about what he's talking about, and is a disgrace to the United States. I myself am very patriotic. I love my country and know it to be strong and (mostly) good. However, we have many flaws, as both a country and a people. I sincerely apologize for the inconsiderate and frankly disgusting words of your former friend.
And as for Pinochet, anyone who can call the leader of such a massacre a hero deserves to spend a month visiting memorial sites all over the world set to honor those who dies so needlessly. Send him to this city where the massacre took place. Send him to Auschwitz in Germany. Send him to the former Soviet camp in Russia. After a month of that, he'll either have seen the error of idolizing a mass murderer, or he will be irredeemable.
I am not saying that what happened in Chile stacks up to the slaughters of Hitler and Stalin, because the number difference is so great and the conditions there so horrible that such a comparison would be laughable, but it seems that Hitler, Stalin and Pinochet were cut from the same cloth. Hitler and Stalin just had an entire country to work with.
In conclusion, buck your so called friend. Unless he comes back on his knees begging for forgiveness and sincerely repenting for his words, don't give him another thought. Not even a negative one. He's just not worth it.
The asshole is wrong.
And the reason that the US had such a meddlesome personality in the 20th Century is because Woodrow Wilson, our president/facisist dictator of the 1910s-early 1920s, felt it was his god given duty to go and tell the world what to do, and to create world peace, with no regard to the differences in culture, philosophy and nationality that the world had. Of course, this was in the wake of WWI, which had really messed up everybody. So, everybody got into the badly built 'world peace at any cost' boat, and so the League of Nations (think the UN with even less balls), went around messing things up. Bonus points for having Germany pay the entire debt of WWI alone (which was just as much the UK and France's fault as it was the US), which caused a massive economic collapse, which caused the perfect time for a fella by the name of Hitler to step in and seeze power.
After WWII, the Western World had a deliema: the Soviet Union, who had helped us win only due to 'enemy of my enemy is my friend', was now absorbing the entire of Eastern Europe into the exact kind of sadistic, satanically evil oppression we had just destroyed with the war. Only difference was that this was communisim, which is just as satanically evil as Nazisim. So, the US, being the only one rather unscathed from the horrors of war due to the ins and outs of geography, had to take on the task of staving the expansion of communisim, which meant getting involved in a lot of minor countries affairs. The reason of this was 'the domino theory', which proposed that if a nation fell to communisim, it would set off a domino effect, causing most, if not all of the nations in the area to fall to communisim as well, which would give the USSR more and more power.
This leads to why we even got involved in Vietnam. Unlike WWII, where we had an almost universal sense of Good vs. Evil, the Cold War was fought in shades of grey, and therefore a lot harder to sell to the general populace. Didn't help that many of the major universites and collages of the US, who are responsible for building the morals and philosophy of the next generation, where hives of socalist/communist sympathizers, who, even if they were aware of it or not, were all being used as 'useful idiots' by the Soviets, who would frequently send in agents and men to sew the seeds of socalisim and communisim, which are basically identical, with communisim being socialism armed with an AK-47. This leads to the young generation, the one whose support is vital, being turned against the government. It didn't help that JFK got us in Vietnam in the first place, sending in various CIA agents and the like to manuver behind the scenes. When he got shot, LBJ was left holding the ball, and he simply escalated the conflict, officially starting the war in 1965. It then hopped to Nixon, who tried to end the conflict decievely, but was fought at every turn by a Senate and Congress that loathed him, and a populace that didn't trust him (not that he's perfectly innocent either).
This leads us back to Chile, and why that bastard got power. Fearing that the Socalists would side with the USSR when they took power, the US worked against them, and we got Pinochet as a replacement, who was, at the time, the lesser of the two evils. He of course, killed a bajillion people, and Jimmy Carter didn't had the balls to go and depose him, and that's why things sucked in Chile.
I hope this clears some things up. The guy you were speaking with is an asshole, and US policy is FAR from perfect, but trust me, it could have been far, FAR worse.
Ah, when will everyone learn that my native Ireland is the best country in the world?
lh4.googleusercontent.com/-JJdbGuHZ_TM/TYIprFkJMXI/AAAAAAAACL0/2KTGkBqiCLk/s1600/white-i-love-ireland-2-t-shirts_design.png
But I kid, there's a difference in being proud of where you're from and being a dick about it. I'm 25 years old and during my life? I was born in Belfast, Ireland, we moved back to America when I was 2 years old, and between the ages of 10-15 I spent my summers in Ireland with my grandparents. In short? I love the U.S. just as much as I do Ireland, though I still wish to live in Ireland permanently at some point. My point is that I don't look DOWN on any country, or any kind of minority.
I'll admit, stereotypes exist because admittedly there HAS to be quite a few who fit the stereotype for the stereotype to exist to begin with. The Irish drink. A LOT of Irish drink, it's just a fact. However, I for one due to the long list of alcoholism in my family and the fact the one time I DID try it I was drunk on my first sip(Partly due to my father being Creek Native American, and a known fact is not a lot of Native American's can hold liquor very well), I decided NOT to be a drinker. I'm a pale as a sheet and could EASILY pass for Irish(My sister is another story), but ultimately?
People who have NEVER been to a different country? Have no right to comment on it OR it's people without PROPER research or I dunno..... ACTUALLY GOING THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
2815646 trust me, I don't like FDR, but he was nowhere near as bad as Wilson or Jackson or Carter or Bucanan.
At least he handled WWII well, all things considered.
You know what, by this point, I don't even care who was right or wrong. After a whole day of cooling down, I now know that I still have friends here, good friends. Thank you all, for showing me. If you ever need anything, anything, I'll be ready and glad not only to repay you, but to help in any way I can.
You're good friends.
Diego and Wave Blaster
2814419
Actually, I'm more concerned of loosing a friend in that way. But don't insult him, he just doesn't know. Thanks, pal.
2814655
Huh, actually, in qualitative terms (percentage over raw numbers) Pinochet is right between Hitler and Stalin. If Chile were any bigger (like it was in the colony) it could have been far worse. Hell, under that f*cker's command, it was exactly as in 1984, and that's f*cked up as sh*t.
Anyways, I would be cool with just an apology, I would never kneel (general principle) and would never ask anyone to do it.
2814762
You know what, I can get behind the 'domino effect', heck, the CCCP started in the same way. And I can get the fear to the CCCP since what happened in the gulags is far and wide known to be at Hitler's level. But Allende was something different, he wasn't a dictator, he wasn't an absolute power and he won a free, democratic, election. Even if he was THAT bad, or leading us there, the next year he would have lose the elections it could have been the end of it.
Even in the worst case scenario, Pinochet never was the lesser evil. In fact, he IS the worst case scenario, he became as twisted as anyone could be. Our Museo de la Memoria (Memory Museum) has things that compete with Mao Tse-tung.
Well, thanks for the history lesson anyways, it's always refreshing and instructing to read something from other perspective.
2814767
Well, if we're talking about stereotypes, we Chileans are supposed to be a world of snark "A country where old people, young people and even kids are always ready to say something sarcastic." I'm not sure if feel offended or flattered or even react to it.
2815646
Yeah, here we have a king's share of that. In Chile's history, every president has been seen either as a god or a demon, depending on who you ask (yes, even the son of thousand rats of Pinochet has supporters).
Look, what actually affects me here, is that the relation I had with guy I'm talking about started with a lot of admiration. You remember the first times you and me spoke? How little I could hold my act together because I was talking to an AWESOME! writer? This started the same. It's hard to see someone fall from that high.
2817480
Yeah, that's actually a good thing. Nice. Thank you, mate.
2817462
Then you are a better man than I am.
2817462 Oh... well now I feel like an asshole. I'm sorry dude.
2817716
Nah, we're all grey these days. If it wasn't for subjectivity, we would be all in our path to hell.
2817880
Don't be sorry, in my own moment of rage I said and shouted (in two languages) enough sh*t to make Tarantino blush. You're just supporting me and I'll allays thank you.
Man, I feel cheesy as hell.
2818042 Dammit now I'm hungry cause you said cheese.