Quote:
Originally Posted by ilbegone
This I know, the ones who talk were at a safe post, those who were in the middle of arms and legs flying don't want to remember it. Some suffer more than others; I knew a vet who dived under the truck when a helicopter buzzed us, on another like occasion another, who was restricted by a positioning device, said that he couldn't take it anymore.
I know just one person who said that he enjoyed being in Vietnam at the time, that there is "nothing like the thrill of hunting a man who is hunting you". The man was an adrenaline junky, which led to subsequent other problems in his life, and I do not doubt for a moment he would off someone he believed ripped him off or treated him with little more than casual disrespect.
Mexicans do tend to be sheep, it's a part of the culture - it has to do with generations of cultural coping with their national history which has periodic episodes of senseless bloodshed. You are either the one to take and exercise power, or you are one of the many sheep. And, I believe there is a cultural tendency towards violence between males in Mexico. Octavio Paz observed that the reason Mexico has so many Fiestas is because it's such a sorrowful country, and that the fiesta lets them become drunk enough to let loose and proclaim themselves brothers - and kill each other to prove it.
That may have to do with stuffing it all inside and having to be a sheep to be under the cultural umbrella, until it comes out under the influence of alcohol or a general, regularly scheduled breakdown of society. Then the anger is taken out on someone else. That's my guess.
The fleeing of it is nothing new. The first large migration to the US from Mexico was during the ten year 1910 Mexican revolution. More recently, migration was about money after the 1981 recession, now we're in the middle of the one hundred year cycle of senseless slaughter - Mexico doesn't have a future because the past always cycles back. To change all that requires a cultural change to where there is a future. However, due to the national Mexican inferiority complex, that's not going to happen.
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Interesting interpretation of Mexican history. The 100 year cycle of violence. I read a couple of Mexican history books and in the early 1800's they had a huge conflagration with massacres, etc. Then again in the Mexican revolution of 1910.
After the Mexican War in the 1840's there was some suggestion that the US should annex all of Mexico. The Southern Senator John C. Calhoun vigorously opposed any such move on the grounds that Mexican culture would undermine America. Time has proven him correct.