Hmm...

So 58 people died in New Delhi in three syncronized bombings around the city. Wow. It must be jarring to the Delhi-ite psyche and perhaps the Indian psyche as well. To have a major quake disrupt Kashmir and now yesterday/the day before yesterday, to have coordinated bombings in the capital...I wonder how the people will react.

I guess it's the same for Americans. We're experiencing a tough time--I don't know if it's tougher than before--I didn't live in those times. But, the memory of 9/11 still lives on in daily life--the memory that we are vulnerable, that we aren't indestructible, that we aren't untouchable, that our technology and our culture isn't as widely-accepted as we like to think it is. Failures in the White House leadership that have surface as of late--FEMA, Plame, and a few other things--don't encourage a feeling of national unity or that we are becoming better prepared or safer. Society is under social fabric changes as well. Gay men and lesbians are pushing for rights and social conservatives are pushing back as well. Gay marriage is a hot-button issue for social conservatives who now have more political power than say 15 or 20 years ago and can push for restrictions against gay marriage. At the same time, Americans still are dealing with the divisions from the history of racism, slavery, and class division. The New York Times ran a series on class division. We still have the memory of racism and the civil rights struggle around--it still exists in all parts of the US--even overt racism. Rosa Parks died--she will lie in State at the Capitol. Wow. She changed the world. Will we have leaders today who will change the world as she did? There is also the sense that even in political association the American people are very much divided--the Red State-Blue State thing. I wonder how much of it is true when the 'majority' president holds a majority of a few million votes (of less than 3 or 4% of the electorate). Obviously it's not like he has the mandate of a comfortable 55 or 60% of the electorate.

Hmm...I'm rambling on. I just really feel the need for society to change today. I don't know why...but I think I can feel the pressure that society here in the States is going through because I feel like I'm under a lot of pressure too--pressure that I put on myself--crushes, school, life outside of school, soka gakkai, being a good person. I feel slowly that I've lost that grip on control that I had even just a day or so ago. But you know what, it's more like that I'm slowly letting go of that grip rather than 'losing' the grip--that I'm tired of holding on to that grip.

Sigh.

Some kid killed his neighbors--a father and daughter--just across the street from SUA. It made national coverage in CNN. Aliso Viejo has now become a real community.