Apologizing In A Sorry State By Mitch Miyagawa

Apologizing is usually what a person would do if they have done something wrong, or if they have personally hurt another individual. However, sometimes an apology is given when it is something that people have done in the past. There have been so many wrongs in the past that some people still feel the need to be apologizing for them, and some people still feel they are owed an apology from the governments of the involved countries. In “A Sorry State”, Mitch Miyagawa discusses the many apologies that have been given out by governments around the world and what those apologies truly accomplish.
There has been an apology given for every war, every case of discrimination, and every misguided choice. The apologies are meant to right the wrongs of the past, to allow people to feel heard and to remember the wrongdoings. With so many apologies being given out, it is being asked what they actually mean. Are these apologies sincere or are they a way of burying the past? Mitch explains that these apologies start to lose their effects and the meanings behind them when they are given out so plainly. There is …show more content…
That rather than remembering the events and acknowledge the pain of the affected families, they are trying to just look past the unfortunate circumstances. Near the end of his essay, Mitch references a moment in his private life and explains how apologies get so complicated “We say sorry when we are responsible and when we are not. We say sorry when we were present or when we were far away. We are ambiguous about what apologies mean in the smallest personal interactions. How can we expect our political apologies to be any less complicated?” He suggests that as a society the meaning of an apology has been downplayed so much that it cannot be expected that the government would be any different, an apology is not something that can be simply transferred to the next incident in any