40 miles worth of amusement

so i finally went to visit the museum of tolerance today because the philosophy class i'm taking this summer requires me to. the trip itself took about a little over an hour due to traffic, because the museum was farther than i thought it would be. got there and went through all kinds of security inspection, including the metal detector gate that wouldn't stop beeping even after i took off everything i had with me that was metal. the security guard looked at me suspiciously, but since i was wearing a hawaiian shirt, shorts, beach sandals, with backpack on, sunglasses, and a cap, he probably thought i was just a mere tourist. he ran the handheld metal detector around me a couple of times and it kept beeping around my groin. ha ha ha. i was tempted to say "sorry, i had a terrible accident a couple years back and had to have it replaced with a metal one," leaving the it part open to his interpretation, but he doesn't seem like a guy who would take a joke, so i kept that thought to myself since i didn't want any unpleasantness. in the end he decided to let me go even though the metal detector kept going off on me.

like other museum, this one has BORING written all over it. so to keep myself motivated, i tried to amuse myself with things that i'm supposed to be symphatetic about. like hate speech and holocaust. sorry, no offense.

there are, however, some interesting things.

in the tolerance section, i got to see a video on a bigscreen TV about how words can cause different things, varying from one extreme to the other. the video has a message from osama bin laden that says something like "calling all muslim to kill the american people and plunder their money," and a quote from someone i can't remember saying in sarcasm something along the lines of, "how can muslim not be the right religion? it's founded by mohammed, a demon-possessed pedophile who had 12 wives." these were supposed to be sad and whatnot, but i thought the quotes were pretty funny. it's funny how people can say many different things, sometimes even without proofs, and THERE ARE STILL people who would believe and hold it true deep inside their hearts. this video reminded me of the doonesbury strip in LA times this morning:



this is by far the funniest doonesbury ever. first, the conclusion was totally unexpected. second, it hits GW right on. ha ha ha. props to trudeau.

nothing else in the tolerance section seemed interesting to me. there was this big room that said something like "millenium machine" in the front, but i walked in there and after pressing a bunch of buttons, nothing was working, so i left. there was a video, footage from a news channel about LA riot in 1992, but that was just that, nothing interesting. one thing i did find interesting though, was a quote from simon wiesenthal, printed in huge letters on the wall: "freedom is not a gift from heaven. one must fight for it everyday." true, but brought to my mind this: WHO do we fight in order to gain freedom? people who oppress? but why do they oppress us? can't be just because they feel like it. then this crossed my mind: these people, who oppressed us, they want freedom also, and for that, they oppress. oppression is THEIR way to fight for THEIR freedom. but ironically, WE ALSO GAIN OUR FREEDOM FROM OPPRESSING PEOPLE.

don't believe me? let's see.

we now think that america is a free country, a melting pot. sure. but how does america gets to be a free country?

let's recap.

columbus got lost looking for india and accidentally landed on this huge land with a bunch of natives living in it. columbus thought it was india, so he called the natives "indian" when they're actually native americans. these natives know nothing about the foreigners, and even if they had intention to harm the foreigners, it's because these foreigners tresspass their lands. wouldn't you start throwing sharp heavy objects and whatnot if a bunch of people you've never seen before jumped over your fence, carrying guns and swords? well, exactly how the natives felt. then the british troops came along and invaded the east coast. natives felt threatened, natives attacked. brits felt threatened, brits yelled "savages" and started shooting. then british started their colonization of this so-claimed NEW land after they successfully got rid of the natives. from here, you all know what happened. british government opressed the new colony, george got pissed, then mel gibson-like people, along with george, chased away the british troops and declared this to be america, a free country. sure, we are now free. the new colony got rid of an oppressing government (british) and freed themselves. but look back, how did we get this land in the first place? it's not god-given, although some people would like to claim it to be so. WE OPPRESSED THE NATIVES FIRST. oppression seems to always has been the initial movement that triggers something big. sure we fought for our freedom, but what were we fighting for? A LAND THAT WAS ONCE SOMEONE ELSE'S AND WE TOOK IT OVER BY FORCE. so i called this quote an overrated one and left. think about it.

went to the holocaust exhibit of the museum, which was not quite so amusing since it was not any different than those i've seen on TVs and movies. the best part of the exhibit was the free please-take-one card with the history of holocaust survivors. if the museum guards weren't already looking at me suspiciously i'd have taken a bunch, just for memento. the so called self-guided tour "by lights and sounds" weren't that interesting either; it's much more interesting to see the wooden and wax figures and the setups they have for display, since all the facts they mentioned was already mentioned to me back in history class in highschool. one interesting quote that i couldn't get off my mind was by a german (i think) on one of the videos whose name i couldn't remember either. he said something like this: "if you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it." sad, but it's true, and i speak of experience.

maybe it's the nature of human, i have no idea; but if you speak of something even without a factual evidence, as long as you have the charisma and the convincing look, people WILL believe you. unless of course, they know the truth. if you get A's in your physics class, it is likely that people who get lower grade will come to you for help, and sometimes they can get really curious, up to the point where they start asking you questions which answers you don't have. i've experienced this, and it seems that these people would rather have me LIE to them than say "i don't know." see, i don't like lying, since everytime i lied to my dad for some reason he always found out, so i deemed myself horrible at lying; so everytime people ask me a question which answer i do not know, i told them the truth: "i have no idea." but for some reason i could never figure out, people always say, "oh come on, you should know. you're smart." since these people NEVER accept "i don't know" as an answer, no matter how many times i say it, i am always forced to make up answers. fortunately my answers are usually close enough to the correct answer, but still, at the time i was forced to answer, i DID NOT KNOW the answer, and yet people would still rather have an answer than "i don't know." so after years of dealing with this, i came to a conclusion that what that german guy said is true. as long as people regard you highly, they will most likely believe whatever you say, regardless of whether you can supply them ample evidence or not. it's the charisma and the public speaking skills that count in this world. i guess that's what brought hitler to his position back then, clinton to almost 8 years in office, and JFK to assassination by some kook. i mean, seriously. look at JFK. "ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country." if that line were said by GW instead, people will go "oh psh, yeah, right. i've done enough for this country, time for some payback." so brush up on your public speaking skills. =)

enough political talk for today. i need sleep.